ForevaXena's FanFic . . .

Mistress of Dreams

by Samruskin

DISCLAIMERS: Not many needed on this one. The characters are mine. They sprang forth, from my own heart and mind, with more than a little help from my muse. Some of the dreams, you might recognize as scenes from our favorite television show. There might also be some shared characteristics between my characters and those on XENA: Warrior Princess. For this, I make no apology. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all. No copyright infringement is intended and no tangible profit will be made by me. Hey! Would I be writing fan fiction if I were not utterly and completely taken with this show? No. Since you are reading this, obviously I do write it. I respect the creators far too much to outright steal from them. Is it my fault if these two women are just too damn good to be confined to the TV screen? I think not.

SEX or other warnings: Not really. Not this time around. Just be aware that a foundation is being built and this IS an alt, uber and if women loving women bothers you...well, if that bothers you this is not the story you should be reading. If it illegal where you live or you are underage, move along.

THERE, I think that should cover all the bases. If I missed one, email me and I will make the repair(s).

FEEDBACK: I always welcome feedback. I will admit that negative feedback hurts, so if you just plain hated it I probably don’t need to hear it. But, being who I am, I would read it anyway...so, go ahead. If you found problems or errors, of course, I welcome the alert. Actually, anything you care to share with me will be more than welcome. I can be emailed at: Samruskin@AOL.COM

PART 1

I hovered in that quiet place between wakefulness and sleep. My eyes fluttered open as I felt her approach. We had known one another for a long time. A very, very long time. The Mistress Of Dreams ‘stood’ over me, smiling. Most people still think of her as The Sandman. SandMAN. That still pissed her off! Like a MAN could do her job. Even an immortal man. NOT!

Just for the record: She is never responsible for what you find in the land of dreams. Her job is to gently lead you on your journey. Once in a while she is given the added task of hurrying someone’s return from the foggy, mystical realm. I’ve been on that list a few times myself. She is expressly forbidden to interfere in even the smallest way. The Mistress is not even permitted to answer questions regarding the dreams themselves. The content of said dreams, that is. Hey! I said she is not responsible for what is in the dreams, not that she was unaware of what was in them. Mysti (her name) always knows both the dreamer and the dream(s). Relax. She never  tells. Part of the job description. It is a rule she never breaks. Now you see just one of the reasons why a man would not be a good candidate for this job. Just imagine some of the stuff she sees and NEVER tells. Not even in locker rooms, car garages, or bars. Nor does she ever use the secrets she is privy to for her own purposes.

Anyway. There she was, floating at my bedside. I’d known it would be her even before I had opened my eyes. Much as I liked Mysti, and I liked her a lot, she was not a welcome sight. Not tonight.

I shook my head and moaned softly. "Please. Not tonight. Not again. No more. I can’t take it. That dream is making me crazy, Mysti."

Hers was a gentle smile. She looked at the edge of bed, in question. I nodded and sighed. Slowly she floated onto the bed and sat next to where I lay. The light in her eyes was so...well...kind. It was as though she knew I needed to say something more. She waited.

Again, I shook my head. This time it was to ward off the hot tears springing into my tired eyes. "Please, Mysti. I’m begging you. This dream has been with me for so long and this time I’ve had it every night for two weeks. I really cannot bear it another night. Just leave me tonight, please. No dreams. Yeah. No dreams at all would be a welcome change." I paused as an old thought returned. "Unless you’d care to explain the dream to me?"

The quick chuckle lit the room like the sweet sounds from a babbling brook in springtime. "Devious as ever, I see."

"Can’t blame a girl for trying." I laughed right back. Exhausted as I was from fighting sleep for two days, the laugh felt good.

She shook her head, causing her golden hair to shimmy. "Gillian, you know very well I cannot explain your dreams to you. I am forbidden to discuss the content  of your dreams. With you or anyone."

Looking into her soft, brown eyes, I thought I saw something there. Something hidden. But what could it be? Wait a minute. What was that emphasis on the word "content" all about? My eyes narrowed as I tried to think with an exhausted brain.

Mysti slowly lifted her left hand toward my face. "You know, you really do look tired. Why don’t you close your eyes? Just for a moment.." she soothed.

My eyelids felt too heavy to lift. My breathing started to go deeper, slower. Whoa! I bolted upright. "No you don’t, Mistress of Dreams! What did you mean, you can’t discuss the CONTENT of my dreams? Is there something you can discuss? Have you been holding out on me, Mr. Sandman?"

ooooo. I never saw brown eyes flash quite that color before.

"Don’t call me that! I hate that!!"

Even with the way I felt, eyes burning and stinging, I couldn’t help grinning. "Sorry. Didn’t mean it. You know that. C’mere." I gave her a quick hug. She giggled. "Now. What exactly is it you are NOT saying? That you CAN say, that is."

She closed her eyes, smiled and shook her head. "Somewhere in there is a cohesive thought I bet." She grinned. "Maybe even a question that makes sense."
"Oh shut up."

She stood. "OK".

I grabbed her arm. "You know what I mean. Spill it."

Sitting back down, she took my hand. I was sitting against the headboard now. "Gillian, you know I am quite limited in what I am permitted to say about your dreams. Already you know more than most humans. Do you realize how few even believe I exist? You are very special. More so than you would ever believe, I suspect."

"I know you can’t actually tell me about my dreams. What’s in them, I mean. Or anyone else’s. What do you mean, special? And I have always believed you existed. You probably have my Dad to thank for that. All those bedtime stories when I was a kid, you know?"

"Your father was a very wonderful man. I am very sorry you lost him a few months ago. With your mother dying when you were three, you must feel very alone these days."

New tears. Not hot ones this time, though. These were the heavy, silent tears that come unbidden but with less pain each time. "Yes. I do." I started to wipe the tears away but she took both hands in hers and I just let the tears slide down my cheeks.

"I’m sorry, Gillian."

"I know." I squeezed her immortal hands. "But the dream I keep having isn’t helping, you know? Can’t you just help me stay awake a while?"

She chuckled softly and let her head first bob up and down, then from side to side. She rolled her eyes slightly. "A while, huh? Help you stay awake a while? Gillian, my sweet bard, you have been fighting sleep for days now. This is not good for you. The dream won’t hurt you. You know that, don’t you?"

"What’s a bard?" The tears had stopped. She had managed to distract me from myself.

"Um. A...a what?"

"Don’t pull that with me. You called me a bard. What is it?"

She wouldn’t look me in the eye. That was very unusual for Mysti and I knew it. "Gillian, I..." she seemed to be searching her mental thesaurus.

"Gotcha, didn’t I?" I grinned.

The grin was returned, with just a hint of pink climbing up her neck. Funny. In all the years I had known Mysti, Mistress of Dreams, I had never before noticed that she blushed. Wonder what that was all about, I thought.

"You did, in fact." She paused. "For all the good it will do you." The blush gone, she raised her head in silent triumph. "Rules are rules, after all."

"Oh no you don’t, my inhuman friend."

"Hey! That is NON-human, not IN-human!" We both laughed.

I was holding my sides and shaking the bed with my laughter. Damn, that felt good. She’d always had that effect on me, even when I was a young child. I couldn’t remember a time when Mysti had not been part of my life. I had always believed in her, thanks to my father and all the wonderful tales he told. I remember, as a little girl, some of my friends would ask me where he learned all those fairy tales. I would tell them, with no small degree of indignity, that those were NOT fairy tales. They were stories. I told my friends that, while I had no real knowledge of their origin, I had no doubts as to their truth. The laughter that always followed was never appreciated.

Now, here I was all these years later and, at twenty five, they were still laughing. Not that I hung out with any of my old friends anymore. I didn’t. We spoke if we ran into one another in town or at a mall or something. That was about the extent of my social life now that my father had died. I had always felt something missing from my life. Most people just said it was because I had never really known my mother. Somewhere deep within me, I had always known it was more than that. Daddy seemed to know it too, though I never quite knew how. Once, when I was around 17, I had asked him.

"Daddy?"
"Mmmm?" He had looked up from the newspaper. My Dad always gave me his full attention. I missed him so much.
"Daddy, why do I always feel like there is a whole inside me?"
"Missing yer Mom, honey?"
"Yeah. But I always miss Mom. This is more than that and it is always there. It’s been there as far back as I can remember. And I’ve been having that dream again, too."
"The Mistress is at it again, eh? Honey, the dream won’t hurt you. Someday it might even help you understand how to fill that hole. It did me."
"Huh?" Daddy had a hole in his life? But he always seemed so together to me.
"Once upon a time, I had a hole in my life too, honey. A big hole. A hole I thought would keep getting bigger until it ate me up."
"What happened?" I had asked him.
"Your mother." He smiled.
"Oh." There didn’t seem anything else to say to his answer.

"You don’t remember much about your mother, do you?" Mysti asked gently.

"No. I don’t have many memories of my own; but she was kept alive for me through his memories. Even at the very end, you could see the love burning in his eyes when he thought of her."

The Mistress nodded. "That must have been some hole she filled."

"Mmm. And, you know, he told me that even after all those years without her physical presence the hole remained filled. I wonder if that’s what the emptiness I feel is all ab.....Hey! You really are a sneak, my friend. What is a bard? And no changing the subject again!"

Waving her immortal finger in the air, the dream mistress toyed with me. "You know very well, I can’t...".

"Ah ah ah now. I did not ask you to divulge anything about the dream. Any dream, in fact. You called me ‘bard’. What, I repeat, is a bard? And why does just hearing the word make the hair on my arm stand up?"

Clearly, she was thinking. "All right. A bard is a storyteller, a writer."

"Like Daddy. He was a great storyteller. I must get it from him then, right?"

"Not exactly. But you really do need to go to sleep now, Gillian. I have a job to do here. You know?"

I knew she was only half kidding. She had already spent more time with me than with most people and I knew it. "Please Mysti. That dream really makes me hurt inside, sometimes. I have been having it almost as long as I can remember. When will I ever find the answers? Will it ever stop hurting? That hole in my soul, I mean?" I could see she was trying to decide how much she dared say. I also knew she was easing me back onto the bed and humming that hypnotic melody of hers. The little sneak was putting me to sleep and there was nothing I could do about it. As my two-ton eyelids dropped to a close, I felt her pull the Hunter Green comforter around my shoulders.

The dream mistress leaned in very close and whispered into my left ear. "Sometimes, Gillian, the question is the answer." She softly kissed my cheek and was gone.

Like a laughing child on a hill of snow, I was tumbling. Whether I wanted it or not, sleep was on it’s way. Soon I would be in Mysti’s realm once again. Not far behind would be the dream. Why was I not afraid this time? What was it she had whispered, my dozing mind asked me.

"Sometimes, Gillian, the question is the answer."

Now, what was that supposed to mean?

PART 2

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