Halcyon (Part 2)

Because I am feeling generous, I'm posting a version of a part of Halcyon. I'm considering redoing the whole thing from the first person point of view. Anyway, here it is. Enjoy.

Part 2

Hylen awoke in sweat, gasping and clutching his chest. Since his injury two weeks ago, he had the same dream every night. He rubbed his eyes, the remainder of the wound above his left eyebrow moaned in protest. He hadn't slept the whole way through the night in nearly ten days. The dream was becoming more vivid by the night.
“Aramia,” he whispered. It was the first time he realized she had been saying a name. “Is it her name?” he thought. He turned every detail over in his mind a thousand times and as he sat in the dark of his room that night, he realized he never saw her face or really any other feature she possessed. All he knew of her was her voice; it was soft, lyrical, but also dark and exotic sounding. She had a strange halting to her speech, as though Common wasn't her first language.
He sighed. He was getting absolutely nowhere. What was the point in fretting about this woman? She probably didn't even exist and yet he couldn't stop himself from trying to glean one feature of her from his dreams. He turned to lie on his side, gazing out his window.
The branches of the trees were casting intricate webs of shadows on his window. The shapes were fuzzy and surrounded by a strange haze and Hylen was uncomfortably reminded of his concussion and the hours of delirium it had caused him. The wind blew the branches, making the shadows weave together like the threads of a blanket.
They rocked back and forth and as Hylen stared at them he could hear the rhythmic scraping of the loom urging the threads to form a new body. They took shape under the clear hands of the moon, moved by the arms of the wind; he was no longer gazing at the of the tree; instead he found himself gazing back into the iridescent blue eyes of a great serpent, its body entirely composed of the shadows that had only a moment ago painted his window panes.
The snake stretched out long and wrapped about the branches of the tree, it's great black body rippling, the shadows which composed it shifting to form the pattern of a boa constrictor formed from the shape of the leaves on the now bare tree. It's eyes shown with the unearthly glow of the moon, which had disappeared from the sky; the absolute darkness made his eyes seem even brighter,
“You've eluded me for a long time, boy,” it said to him, his voice silken and deep.
Hylen found himself unable to speak; his throat had suddenly became painfully dry. He clutched his neck trying to communicate that he couldn't answer. The snake bobbed it's head in acknowledgment.
“I know; I've taken it from you. Everything about you is, and has always been, mine.”
Silence fell between them. The snake let out a low hiss and began to descend from the tree; he passed through the window as though it were as immaterial as he was. He landed silently on Hylen's dresser and stared straight into his eyes.
“You cannot hear my name, can you?”
He gasped, trying to force his vocal chords to move. “Aramia,” he mouthed.
The snake laughed. “You think my name is Aramia? Don't be absurd! That's a woman's name. Oh, I see. You're having dreams now. How interesting you are. Judging by those disgusting black circles, I'd say you've been sliding for a few hours every night for some time; am I correct?”
Hylen nodded. “Sli..sliding?” he croaked.
The snake let out a series of high, airy hisses that Hylen understood to be hilarious laughter. “You mean to tell me,” he said wriggling with joy, “that you don't even know what you're doing?”
Hylen frowned and crossed his arms. First this unwelcome guest had invaded his room, stolen his voice and now he had the nerve to laugh at him. He pointed out the window, back toward the tree.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm not usually this rude, but to think that you can master me is hilarious. You can't even master your own legs.”
“That's a low blow; let's see you control your legs when you pass out,” Hylen thought. “Who'd want to master something as bratty as you anyway?”
“I'm bratty now, am I? Children these days sure have loose mouths.”
“You can hear me?”
“Of course I can hear you. We share the same mind, after all. I'm in all your thoughts.”
“Great. I had no idea my body was a double occupancy model. I guess tomorrow I'll have to tell Danny that I'm still seeing snakes everywhere.”
“I'm no hallucination.”
“That sounds like something a hallucination would say.”
“Oh, shut up, Hylen.”
“Aha! That proves it. If you were real you wouldn't know my name.”
The snake let out a long hiss and shook it's head. “You are remarkably slow. I know your name because I live in you body.”
“Yeah, the bruised up part of my brain that's probably bleeding as we speak.”
The snake slithered forward, stretching out to Hylen's ear, his body now resting beside him. “You,” he whispered, his forked tongue flicking Hylen's ear, “are a fool. My power will never bow to you.” Hylen could feel the scales of the snake scrape on the bare skin of his neck, the chill of the shadows strangely pleasant. “I could crush you right now, if I wanted to, and there'd be nothing you could even hope to do to stop me,” he said as he pushed Hylen's chin up with his tail.
“But why waste my time on an insect? To eliminate one as weak as you would be meaningless.” He tightened around Hylen's neck, now letting his tail hang slack and dangle on his chest. His hands shot up instinctively, desperately trying ton pry the snake free of him as he could feel his head swim with a dizziness he was all too familiar with. As he closed his hands around the snake's muscular body, he could hear the rush of the ocean and a soft voice whispering in his mind.
“Don't fight it. Come with him.”
The snake coiled about his neck once more and Hylen choked and sputtered under the immense pressure. In his mind he struggled as hard as he did with his body to repel this foreign creature from tricking him into death. Though he fought with all his strength he could feel his hands beginning to slip and his eye lids waver.
And, as suddenly as he had attacked him, the snake released him, letting his body fall limply against the wall, his hands still clinging to where the snake had just been. Flicking his tongue in disgust, the snake climbed up the legs of his night stand. He coiled his massive shadowy body up like a pile of rope and stared back into Hylen's eyes.
“Pathetic,” the snake said.
He gave Hylen one last glance and slowly dissolved, the shadows drifting back on to the window, the shine returning to the moon. Hylen's whole body was shaking with fear, his hands still clutching his neck uselessly. He groaned; the hallucinations hadn't stopped at all either. He shook his head, hoping that if he shook hard enough he could uproot the image of the snake that now haunted him. What he wanted most of all was to not hear the call, the sinister voice of the serpent telling him to come die.
He let his head fall against the wall, regretting it instantly as it thudded in the precise place his still healing injury was. He closed his blood-shot eyes and took deep breaths, trying to steady his heart beat; he swallowed hard, forcing the last bit of dryness remaining in his throat to vanish. He was supposed to return to work tomorrow, but he wondered if he could make it through a whole day in his current state. Slipping in and out of reality wasn't exactly something people looked for in a wilderness guide.

On a Side Note...

Oh, in case you care about me and my nightmarish search for a non-bunny wallpaper (and who are we kidding, you do), I found this one (and I didn't even have to repress anything).

If you know this show/these characters, you understand that this is me and Ryan in animated form.