Marika
She felt the clawing flesh all around her, which had become an all too common in this deep and frightful dream she seemed trapped in. Some nights went on in darkness. Some went on with small glimpses of sunlight on the edges of her vision, yet never able to quite find its source no matter how much she tossed and turned, unable to truly rise from the space for which she was bound.
Worse was how often she was back there in the jar, feeling the squirming, wriggling flesh of prisoners, rapists, and monsters of the horrid creatures that had kidnapped and stuffed her inside. She often saw his eyes among them when all other vision seemed impossible in that hot, wet, and awful of prisons.
Then, she would slip again into the darkness and be alone. She had grown unsure of what was worse anymore. The jar, or the solitude.
On rare days, she would hear a voice. A soft voice she almost recognized whispering to her. Soft and so very gentle words that almost touched her mind yet always slipped from understanding. It ached not to hear and be deprived. To be so close to that presence again before it vanished.
She felt things change then. Slowly, her eyes began to blink with the crusts of sleep as light illuminated the small room she was in with lamplight. A window nearby was curtained, but beyond it was only blackness. Not merely the empty darkness of night. It was as if there was simply nothing to be illuminated beyond these four walls.
She sat up with an aching groan as her bones felt cracks and pops all over, a result she assumed from the stillness she long had been stuck in. She felt the satin sheets beneath her, gentle on her rough fingers. The mattress felt strange material beneath, as if one was resting upon a soft cloud. Her eyes, as they at last adjusted to the dim lamplight, spotted a lantern on an old oak bedstand and a few small affects along the walls. Paintings of people she couldn't quite recognize, and pictures of people in strange garbs all of what she guessed were different cultures. Beside a small closet was a woman, at first, but soon noticed by the jointed parts on her hands and the notably prestine clothing that she must have been someones doll, or perhaps a manikin used for dressing new clothing.
She began to swing her legs over the bed and found she was adorned in a white nightgown that thankfully covered her entirely, including her modesty. A soft sigh as she felt a few areas and was glad to see, as far as she could tell, she had been unmolested. She cleared her throat, heavy with flem and a choking amount of it, spitting the contents haphazardly nearby as she coughed from attempting a heavy breath. After a few moments, she recovered, rising to her feet as the woodem floor felt strangely gentle on her feet.
"It seems you have entered the dreaming world, my lady." A soft voice with an accent she couldn't quite parse startled her. She turned, finding what she had thought a doll had opened its eyes and spoken. She had a shockingly lovely face, pale and gentle features with fair skin were it not to be obviously made of some form of porcelain or carved wood. Her fingers moved to hold one another, and they seemed just slightly too long for her anatomy. She wore a long black skirted dress that was partially covered by a red or perhaps burgandy shawl over her shoulders with a bonet on top of her finely kept silver hair. Most startling, however, were her eyes. Deep, beautiful green that almost seemed to have been made out of emeralds.
"Who...?" Marika muttered before clearing her throat and choking back another coughing fit. "Where?"
The doll bowed politely. She dipped a bit lower than the gilded queen thought a person should have been able to with a proper spinal column. "This is the dreaming world. It would seem the good hunter has guided you here in your moment of need."
"Good hunter...?" She inquired as she walked around the bed, her gown idly swishing with her steps along the soft wooden flooring.
"Ah, yes. She has very many names. She has existed longer than most, I suspect, but know not her true age. I believe you may know her present monikor."
"Luna..."
"Yes. She has guided you here in this terrible nightmare to offer sanctuary until you recover, but it will take time and work."
Marika thought on this as she slowly sat down on the small chest in front of the bed. It was a simple green box that had a brass latch, padded on top by the frilly pillows of what could have been a child's once. She swore now she could hear what could be a music box in the distance. "What is needed of me to escape?"
The doll smiled. It was unsettling in that way a dog trying to smile can be. It was cute but had this edge of inhumanity. It curved at her porcelain lips, and the golden matriarch began to wonder if she was really all porcelain and wood or if parts of her were somewhat flesh. Porcelain was not flexible in such a way.
"It will be an arduous journey."
"What journey worth undertaking is without its difficulties?"
"I see now why she is so smitten with you."
Marika began to question her further only for the Doll to turn, grasping the brass handle of an old oak door that the golden matriarch swore was not there just a moment ago. She turned the handle slowly as the door creaked with movement and pushed it open. "Then let us begin."
A light blinded Marika, and when her eyes returned to her, she was back in her village. Her clothing was not that of a queen or the nightgown, but the old woven threads of green and flowers of her people. For a moment, she felt tears touch at the edges of her eyes, and how worse they grew when she heard a voice call to her she had not heard in eons.
"Mari! Mari!" She heard her younger sister shouting as she turned towards the voice. A small girl with hair like woven stands of sunlight that were loosing tied into a small crown of braids, with eyes like little droplets of ocean water. She had the same skin tone as Marika herself and was dressed in a deep blue gown that flowed in the wind freely as she scampered her little legs towards her older sister.
"Marissa..." She muttered with tears threatening in full now to spill free.
"Look! The great mother taught me to make it!" She lifted a beautiful strand of roses that had been woven like wicker into a circlet, clipped of its thorns, and shaved down just enough to avoid any rough textures.
"Oh, it's beautiful, Issa..." she knelt down and touched the small circlet. It was infact lovely. "Shall I crown you with it, princess Marissa?"
"Yeah!" She bounced eagerly before lowering her head with a cute, slightly stumbling bow. Marika giggled as she set the flowers on her head.
"There. Now you..." As her sister began to stand up again, she saw that her sisters flesh began to drip. She smiled, and Marika could see her skeleton beneath it. "N-no...!"
The village was ablaze now all around them. Women screamed and ran as they were grabbed by heavy ropes, dragged away across once plush fields into cages as Marika screamed.
"Why did you leave me behind big sister? Why Mari?" The now skeleton figure of her sister, still adorn in her crown and clothes, asked her through chattering teeth. "You could have come. You could have sacrificed yourself."
She ran. She ran as hard and as fast as her feet could take her across that burning soil and thick smoke as the air grew full of soft and shrieks in terribly equal measure. She ran until her feet were bleeding, her eyes burned from tears and smoke, and her chest thudded so badly that she swore her heart was ready to rip from her own ribcage.
When the pain of it all became too much, she fell. She tumbled over and began to fall further and further than she ever fell. Darkness surrounded her, and she felt as if she may end up falling forever as the distant light began to fade away.
Then, she hit the ground. More precisely, she landed with a painful grunt onto a bed of rather beautiful flowers. All around, she saw shimmering lights through broken and stained glass windows and recognized an old and dilapidated church. She whimpered softly as she began to sit up a little, seeing the old and broken pews had been moved aside while the flower bed she had landed in was placed in broken upnand shattered boards near an old and half decrepit altar that none the less seemed almost worthy of reverence in the beautiful light.
She marveled quietly at the feeling of this strange, forgotten place. The air felt pure, even gentle here. All the old damage did not seem to detract from its almost divine like beauty. It was beautiful in that way only places that had once been loved could be.
"Hello there. Ya know, it's getting a little too common for pretty people to go falling in my flowers." She heard a light and energetic woman's voice say. She shuffled quickly to find the source, finding her own body now adorn in the black dress she had favored for many years.
Looking up, she was met by the kneeling gaze of a green-eyed girl with long brown hair, placed in a rather long braid, and tied off with a large red bow. She wore a pinkish white dress that was slightly covered by a strange red jacket that stopped at her mid waist rather than her hips, and Marika again would be remissed to call the girl anything short of fair and lovely on the eyes.
"Seems I'll be your guide for a little while, Miss Marika." She said, offering a hand that jangled slightly at the wrist with gold and silver bangles. "If Luna sent you here, whichever way or how, it must mean she believes on you."
"And.." she asked nervously as she took the woman's hand as she helped lift her to her feet, "Where, might here, Be?"
The girl smiled a rather stunning and lovely smile. "It'll all become clear in time. I promise. Do you trust her?"
"Yes..."
"Good. Then let's get going, shall we?"