The message did not travel in one often thought in the conventional sense. There were no frequency signals that traveled crossed the cosmos. Distance; normally the obstacle of messages, simply ceased to possess meaning through it’s delivery.
Creon’s mind touched the bond.
Aurelis now stirred within uneasy sleep, reacting to a vibration. It wasn’t some sound in her mind. It communicated but not with language, but rather a resonance unfolding beneath awareness, as though something deep inside her had stirred still waters. The presence moved through her in expanding concentric waves, each ripple was precise and carrying intention until it emerged within her.
Cymaticly shaped geometries bloomed across the dark of her subconscious visual cortex like radiant circles folding into triangles, spirals dividing into mirrored lattices, and lines intersecting with impossible symmetry. Sacred forms unfolded one after another like living light. It carried with it’s vibrations structure and meaning.
The unborn child glowed within the dreamscape like a small star suspended in warm darkness. She was not merely present, but was the bridge itself between them. The threads between mother and father did not pass around the child but through her. Through shared blood became a shared creation and destiny.
A steady gravitational presence at the center of the waves, impossibly distant yet intimately near, like two particles born together refusing to forget one another regardless of how vast the universe became between them.
“ I am with you”
Deep under the waters of Tythus in the subaquatic city that made up the home of Odan Urr darkness cloaked an apartment except for the warped ambient light from the domed city streets out of Aurelis’s reinforced window. It had taken several hours of travel and a meeting before she had been able to collapse in bed.
And even then another hour before she could finally drift off around 0930 standard Galactic time.
She still hurt during odd movements, but she actively ignored the pain. Unaware of how much time had passed in sleep before she felt the brush.
I am with you
Like her mind had opened into a dream state of the last truly happy spots she opened her eyes and found herself in the restaurant. Its jellyfish gently floating about their tanks the only immediate sign of life. She looked around the room in its soundlessness. Down at herself, wearing the black tank top and dark green sleep pants she’d gone to bed in. Recognizing immediately this was a dream.
Creon stood before her in robes, unlike the armor and severe attire she had become accustomed to seeing him in. The layered garments hung in dark folds beneath a muted earthy outer mantle, the black fabric beneath swallowing much of the ambient blue light cast through the restaurant. The design carried the appearance of something ancient and monastic rather than military.
She looked back around the restaurant beginning to wonder why she was here. Then he was there, standing beyond the table. Whatever curiosity had been present vanished under an expression of distance and stone. Her arms crossed over her chest, half protective half stubborn.
She didn’t say a word, just stared.
His deep green eyes lowered briefly toward her, yet through the Force his awareness extended beyond the woman herself. Beyond the projection of flesh within the mind’s eye. Beyond the presented environment of her expanded domain. His attention was instead to small luminous presence resting quietly within her like the first star seen before dawn. It was so fragile in form yet immense in meaning.
His eyes smiled before his mouth ever did. Joy was too small of a word for such magnitude in glimpsing an undeserved future. Years then passed silently behind his gaze at an instant. The Force showed a peace that had never belonged to him.
Grace in its purest; not earned, not bargained for, nor conquered through wsr or sacrifice, but simply given into the hands of someone who had long ago stopped believing.
His fingers remained slightly curled as he extended his hand outward toward Aurelis, though not specifically at her. The gesture instinctively resembled the way one offers a hand to a child learning to walk.
Aurelis didn’t move, she sat perfectly still in that seat. Staring at his form unblinking.
She had before seen Creon composed, dangerous, cold, focused, flirty, funny, and with a disciplined mask he carried like armor before the galaxy. But this this lacked all defense. The man standing before her was stripped bare in a way intimacy could never accomplish.
She finally after a strained moment, broke the silence.
“What do you want Creon.”
“For most of my life, I only understood how to survive. How to fight. How to carry responsibility until there was nothing left underneath it.”
His eyes lowered slightly with the faint smile fading his face into an expression that carried a quiet ache to it, as though the answer existed in too many layers to place easily into words.
"When I see you, and her, the future stopped feeling like an extension of war.”
“Fragile spheres filled with people destroying themselves over things that vanish with time,” His expression remained calm, though something ancient could be underlying his words.
“… Power. Dominion. Grievances. Names history eventually forgets…” he continued.
“Pause.” She held up a hand. “Creon…when I was 16 I found out my own uncle killed my brother and within 5 minutes I was pinned, struggling while he tried to cut my throat. I killed him, to survive. Less than 6 months later I had the blood of 4 others on my hands. EVERYTHING I do is to survive and ensure that the next generation actually has a galaxy to hand down to their own kids.”
Something small recoiled. A faint luminous presence within the dreamscape both delicate and unfinished. No words from it could form. There was no formed understanding of violence or death, yet emotion still moved through her in raw instinctive waves that made it feel as if it experienced her horrors directly.
Like a fragile light had been disturbed by a distant thunder, tiny ripples spread outward from her presence through the dream’s geometry. The once harmonious cymatic patterns briefly destabilizing into trembling distortions before slowly attempting to reform themselves again.
Creon stood perfectly still beneath the dim aquatic light. His silence spoke of solemn patience, allowing the fear, the sorrow, and the weight of Aurelis’ memories to pass through the dream uninterrupted.
“Not even 24 hours ago. You hurt me over something incredibly stupid. You turned something beautiful and fun and meant to be a wonderful memory get get us through the war to come into something painful. I protected us. I prevented YOU from taking her soul.” Her words were turning protective.“ I helped take down several child trafficking rings in my career. Because I couldn’t stand the idea of finding another 14 year old stuck in carbonite in slavery.
I will gladly accept her pain, her turmoil, her sorrow, her anger I will take on those burdens now and when I finally hold her in my own two arms. Because she will not endure what I had to.
I will make sure she is loved.”
It may not have been on her face, but it was in her intentions and in the cracked, pained, vulnerability in her voice,“ I will love her. I already do and that will never change.”
Creon’s eyes lowered slightly, not toward Aurelis now, but toward the unseen luminous presence suspended within the bond between them. When he spoke again, his tone was changed to something softer.
“We name it fear.”
Her presence shifted subtly as he spoke, responding not solely his words, but felt direct intention.
“Left unhealed it takes shape within, becoming anger. Your mother stands within anger now. It darkens into hate, a desire to harm what has harmed you.”
The ambient blue light across the restaurant seemed darker for a moment beneath the weight of the ancient truth.
“That is hate, and it creates suffering. Not only for those it can reach, but for the one who carries it.”
Creon slowly lowered himself then, kneeling before the unseen life as though addressing someone already worthy of dignity despite never having drawn breath. The dark robes pooled around him in quiet folds beneath the wavering aquatic glow.
“And now… through the bond you share with your mother… you have already felt fear. You have felt anger.” His voice lowered further, touched by unmistakable grief. “Emotions you did nothing to deserve.”
The small luminous soul trembled faintly within the dream. Creon’s expression softened completely with tears forming.
“She has shown you that the door door to darkness is not evil in itself,” he said gently. “Every living thing will encounter it eventually. The tragedy comes when one believes suffering is all they are allowed to become.”
His gaze lifted slightly toward Aurelis then returned once more to the child.
"Hear me. Sweet love. You are not your mother’s pain. Do not be shaped by it when it surrounds you.”
Her heart broke, even the psychic image of herself started crying. She said nothing, but tears streamed down her face. She started to back away from the connection. Pain that he was causing bruising whatever hope she’d had left.
“I see…” she mumbled, this wasn’t an apology, an explanation. He didn’t care about her, he only cared about himself, about the baby. “ If you can provide a better life for her.”
Her arms wrapped around the tiny hope inside her. “ If the Force…if you.” her voice cracked again,“ Little one, for you, I will grant you to your father, if it will bring you a better life than I can provide. If that is what you want. Know that even if you won’t remember me, I will always remember you.”
She paused,“ Creon…you win.”
The sadness dominated the space, turning everything into muted shades of grey,“ I am sorry, to you both.” she muttered.
She took a slow deep breath the greys slowly warming back to normal, but the colors were still muted,“ I will stay calm, and when the time comes, I will hand over your daughter, and I will not fight it.”
The dream was ending. Light from the sun came through the glass windows of the restaurant. Her daughter from the visioned appeared, only now her hair was brown instead of Aure’s red, with hazel eyes instead of Creon’s deep green. A Light that now became Grey.
Aurelis looked at Creon and flashed the man a sad smile. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be what you wanted.”
“Me too”