I had a dream. A man I fell in love with when I was eleven was there, with feathers all down his back, and his dark hair pulled back at the nape of his neck. He wrapped himself in lace, pale and pearlescent, and spoke to me in tongues.
His grey eyes said to me, “Don’t speak,” and sang me a lullaby, crooning in the trees — As the desert sun rose over the meadow, and the ruins of a bombed out city cast hard shadows on the tall grass.
He came close to me and draped his lace about my body. The wind blew it, whipping at my knees. He whispered a grotesque poem — one I wrote from years ago — and my flesh stood on end. There was no wind.
And then his skin was covered in scales, hard and silky, like powder on stone. And his eyes, the sharpest blue, bore into my sockets, pulled apart my limbs, kissed the throbbing from my throat and temples. Cold, grey hands and hips draped in lace darker than the night sky — brighter than the moon.
“Don’t worry, I’ll love you.”
All million languages ringing in my ears. My skin tingles, and we fall into the dirt and debris of the bombed out house. Tattered and worn from the fighting. His tears streak the dust on his face — And I weep for him.
“I could fall asleep…”
The meadow is soft underneath us. The duvet is warm. We look up into the denim abyss and point out constellations, as the boughs on the trees around us sway, whispering, in the warm desert breeze.
I wake in a sweat, still smelling his skin and the lace under my fingers, devastated at the loss brought on by my own ragged breathing and the cruelty of the rising sun.
About the Author: Æverett 
Æverett lives in the northern hemisphere and enjoys Rammstein and Star Trek. He writes both poetry and fiction and dabbles in gardening and soap making. She has two wonderfully old cats, and a dearly beloved dog. He also plays in linguistics, studying German, Norwegian, Russian, Arabic, a bit of Elvish, and developing Cardassian. Language is fascinating, enlightening, and inspirational. She’s happily married to her work with which she shares delusions of demon hunters, detectives, starships, androids, and a home on the outskirts of a small northern town. He’s enjoyed writing since childhood and the process can be downright therapeutic when it’s not making him pull his hair out. It’s really about the work and words and seeing without preconceptions.