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English
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Published:
2023-03-04
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1,180
Chapters:
1/1
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4
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86

Easier to Bear

Summary:

Byleth isn"t done discussing things with Mirabilis.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Byleth’s mind rests for a night, and then starts its cycle up again, a windmill nudged into perpetual motion. If this is all a dream, she can do her best, but will it matter in the end? Maybe the progenitor god—or someone else—will wake up, and Byleth will vanish from existence and won’t know the difference, but in that case…what, exactly? The dream will remain. Byleth often forgets her dreams in the entire, but on occasion a moment, an exchange of words, or a feeling remains. She cannot recall a dream as complex as this universe, but her perspective may be limited—if this is a dream, can the dreamer access her thoughts? Or are they freestanding, sprouted from spores no longer connected to the main body of thought?

Byleth is no philosopher. Philosophy is impractical, the domain of those who enjoy talking and hearing the sounds of their own voices—oh, by now she’s spent enough time around professors and students of the subject to know that’s not always true, but the notion is stuck in her boots like a cluster of stubborn burrs. Perhaps that’s why she can’t wrap her head around it and can’t stop trying. But Mirabilis had made it sound so easy.

Mirabilis—she’s a paradox. How can a person responsible for daydreams be so confident in the here and now? Then again, wouldn’t she have to be, by knowing her own realm and separating it out from reality? The thought seems to catch in Byleth’s hands and slip through her fingers again. Is that how Mirabilis had felt when Byleth had been explaining herself? Or had Byleth simply not explained herself well?

There’s no point in wondering without asking. Mirabilis is sure to be around. By process of elimination: she’s rarely at the training grounds, although Peony might be there (and might be able to locate Mirabilis); she won’t be working in the kitchens; she prefers sleeping outside of the barracks so she won’t be there either. Claude might be a help, too, if Byleth can find him; he should be able to scout from the skies on his wyvern. 

The possibilities are few, but Byleth is spared the process of narrowing them down further when Mirabilis appears in front of her, wings fluttering at the pace of a dawdling housekeeper fluffing a pillow, one foot trailing just above the grass.

“Oh, Professor, hi,” says Mirabilis, jaw popping as she yawns. “Going to take a nap?”

“No. I was looking for you, actually.”

“Mm,” says Mirabilis. “Funny how that works out. I was looking for a nap, though.”

“Can we talk before your nap?” says Byleth.

“Sure,” says Mirabilis.

“It’s about what you said yesterday. I talked with—the person whose dream I thought this might be.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And…I know you’re right. Regardless of whether this is a dream or not, I want to do the best to prepare my students and fight well. But if it’s a dream, then…what’s beyond that? Am I a part of the dreamer? Will they get my thoughts?”

“I don’t know,” says Mirabilis. “Sometimes. Every time you dream here, it doesn’t create a new version of Ljósálfheimr. It’s the same one, even if you don’t always see the same people when they’re dreaming. Just like this world, right? Someone else could be here when you couldn’t see them.”

“But I don’t go into someone else’s dream, right?”

“Well, it happens,” says Mirabilis. “You can dream with other people. If you want to.”

She yawns, closing her eyes and covering her mouth with her wrist, poking the tip of her nose with her thumb. 

“All this talk of dreams is making me sleepy.”

“I’m afraid I still don’t quite understand,” says Byleth.

“Okay,” says Mirabilis. “I’ll show you.”

She offers her hand. Byleth doesn’t hesitate. Why should she? Common sense and years of people being out for her blood tells her not to; the rest of her common sense says that Mirabilis is, if not a friend, certainly not stranger nor foe. And the people here—the ones Byleth knows and the ones she doesn’t—will at least place victory and Askr’s protection over personal grudges. 

Those justifications are made after Mirabilis has pulled Byleth into the air and off in the opposite direction of the training grounds, towards the open fields. Byleth’s had many a nap hidden in tall grass, restless sleeps waiting for morning and her targets’ schedules to restart or for her turn at watch to start. 

“Okay,” says Mirabilis, dropping to the ground, releasing Byleth’s hand when she does so. “This is a great spot. You can hear the birds, but the sun doesn’t get in your eyes and the ground is pretty soft. And no one will find us and tell us to practice.”

(So this is where Mirabilis goes—a shirking student shouldn’t go about revealing their secrets, but Byleth has a suspicion that the next time she’s looking for a hero who hasn’t shown up to sparring practice, she’ll find them out here.)

Mirabilis is right; the ground is soft. The sun is hidden. Byleth, despite her assumptions, does not feel tense. When Mirabilis yawns, Byleth echoes the gesture, her eyes wanting to fall shut.

She sits up. The air is different. She wants to turn her head and look, to see a familiar town, but none is there. Odd.

“Yep, we’re dreaming,” says Mirabilis. 

That’s right, they’d been discussing—dreams, and how they’re shared. Byleth narrows her eyes.

“How do I know you’re not just a creation of my mind?”

“When we wake up, you can ask me what happened or if I remember. I always do.”

Even in a dream, Mirabilis looks sleepy, but she looks the way Byleth expects her to. Real or a piece of Byleth’s imagination, or both—her hair pools on the ground by her thighs; her wings have caught on the grass. She chews her lip, then opens her mouth and leans in.

The kiss is warm, the feeling like the tug of Mirabilis’s hand on Byleth. They barely know each other; this is a dream—it must be Byleth’s imagination, showing her a path, what the future might be, with or without the guise of the progenitor god. 

“You looked like you wanted it,” Mirabilis says when Byleth pulls back. 

“I did,” says Byleth, and kisses Mirabilis again, and this time thinks only about the grass beneath her hands, Mirabilis’s knee pressing against hers—

The call of a bird jolts Byleth forward, but instead of knocking into Mirabilis, she’s sitting upright, with Mirabilis lying a meter or so away, yawning again. 

What she had said—had it really been her?

“Do you remember what we dreamed about?” says Mirabilis.

“Yes,” says Byleth.

“Okay,” says Mirabilis, dropping her head back down and closing her eyes.

Byleth has too much on her mind to join Mirabilis again, but what occupies her thoughts is not the nature of the world, stretching her brain like an overfilled backpack. This is easier to bear.

Notes:

Thanks for reading!

Many thanks to Fafa for answering my 3h questions <3