Work Text:
It wasn’t her bedroom. She could tell that before she even woke up. Her room in Crow Manor was cold and constantly smelled of bleach from the mildew that needed to be cleaned week in week out.
This room smelled of something slightly stale, like unwashed clothes, some kind of cleaning product (but the kind used on leather, not floor cleaner like she was subjected to) and it was warm. So warm that she could stretch her hand out from underneath the incredibly light duvet — no top sheet between her and it either — and not even have her arm turn to gooseflesh in the air.
So she wasn’t at home.
Slowly she opened her eyes, which confirmed her assumption. This was absolutely not Crow Manor.
But it was definitely a bedroom. A very warm, crushed in bedroom.
Her room in Crow Manor was actually quite big. Which was a relief, since she spent so much time there, avoiding everyone else in the house when she couldn’t get into the second parlour for whatever reason. Being able to move around in the room was a relief. This bedroom was a little larger than one of the linen cupboards she’d once seen the maids clean out after a brief but entertaining rat infestation. One length of the bed was pressed to the wall, the other open to the rest of the room. She spotted — or, rather, was unable to avoid seeing — a mountain of clothes next to the bed. It ranged from underwear and soft looking t-shirts with faded designs to two of the most hideous jumpers she’d ever seen to, stranger than that, some kind of leather armour that she couldn’t understand the function of.
To be fair, the armour was the only thing laid out correctly, technically separate from the mountain, laid on top of some folded out newspapers. A tin of cream betrayed the origin of the smell. Clambering out of bed, she read the top of it. Fireproofing Treatment — For All Your Dragonriding Needs.
There had been a report on the news yesterday that she had listened to while trying to avoid getting her curse near anyone (again) about the latest dragon-clearing efforts in one of the bigger forests in Great Wolfacre. And she’d once read somewhere that dreams were part of how the brain processed memories and thoughts. So, she looked around the strange bedroom that looked nothing like anything she’d ever seen before as she tried to consider this logically, was this all a dream then?
It had to be. A very strange, incredibly detailed dream. But Morrigan forgot most of her dreams, only waking in the night with the vague impression of fire at the back of her throat and a racing heartbeat. She’d probably forget this one too.
“Why aren’t you down already?” A woman stood at now-opened door. She looked kind. Her eyes twinkled a little. “Did you get distracted?”
She rubbed the back of her neck, a little sheepish, and was surprised to find no hair there. She reached up a little further, relieved to find she wasn’t bald in this dream, but her hair had a vastly different texture. It was bouncy, a bit like this woman’s, actually. Was that the other part of the dream? Did she have a mother in this world where she could never really live?
This woman looked nothing like the portrait of Morrigan’s own mother, hanging next to her deserter cousin and a victimised guinea pig in the Hall of Dead Crows. But she looked like a mum. She was definitely someone’s mum. And maybe, just for the remainder of this strange but wonderful dream, she could be Morrigan’s mum too.
“A little,” she admitted, trying not to jump when she heard herself speak. That definitely wasn’t her voice. But that was okay. Because this was her dream and she was just trying to get her whole way through it. Now that she thought about it, she was standing a good bit taller than she usually did — though Morrigan wouldn’t live long enough to achieve her full height, if she somehow did, she fully expected to clock somewhere close to Ornella’s own towering statue of five foot two. It was thrilling stuff.
But being tall was fun. She could see a little bit further, the ground was just that little bit farther away. It was nice.
“You’ve got practise,” the woman whom she assumed was her mum said, smiling slightly. “Remember? Nan said she wanted to try you out on the new Highland they brought in?”
She nodded, wondering what her dream had to do with cows, but having the sense that the armour had something to do with it, so maybe Highland referred to something else? A dream about dragonriding could be fun, if terrifying. But Morrigan had never believed the whole if you die in a dream, you die in real life, mainly because if that were true, she’d already be dead, so this would be fine. Maybe she’d get eaten or toasted (scary, hopefully not) or maybe she’d get to… ride a dragon. Or a… fire-breathing cow, perhaps. But she was leaning towards dragon now.
“I’m leaving in ten minutes, with or without you, so be ready.” She winked at her, closing the door, and Morrigan jumped into action.
She was almost relieved the second time she had The Dream. Her father and Ivy were just back from their honeymoon and it was insufferable trying to avoid her, try not to annoy him, and just do her best to stay out of trouble no matter what. So when she smelled the unwashed clothes and leather polish protection thing, she felt relief, and a little bit of joy.
It was one of the only dreams Morrigan could remotely remember, and still the most detailed. She wasn’t sure why she was a boy, but the life of Hawthorne Swift, dragonriding prodigy wasn’t one she was unhappy to dream about.
Even when she thought her heart might burst out of her throat from fear, she just trusted the body she was in, trusted the dream. And the dragon had been fun! A little scary, a little hard to turn, and she hadn’t been able to do like half of the improvements her coach had tried with her, but it had been so exhilarating, so freeing, that she really hadn’t cared.
“Good morning,” she yawned, leaving the bedroom in a hideous jumper and trousers that were completely worn through at the knee. Her socks didn’t match and her shoes were more scuffed than any Morrigan had ever seen in her life, but she didn’t care, these were the rules. Her brain had invented this Hawthorne Swift for her. All she had to do was be him for the day.
It’s not the way she’d choose to live. If it were Morrigan Crow truly in the flesh here, she’d be swanning about in black dresses and big boots, but this was just for the day and given how much Hawthorne Swift’s body wanted to run and jump around, even when it was nowhere near any dragons, she could understand why he dressed like this.
“Morning, Hawthorne,” Hawthorne’s mum said. She’d learned that her name was Cat — Dave, Hawthorne’s dad had called her that and then laughed at or with her because Morrigan had started looking around for a cat. “Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
She looked at him very calmly, with only the vaguest hint of irritation. Morrigan cringed a little inside, searching back through her mind. She’d had her tenth birthday recently, and there had been another winter storm she hadn’t meant to cause that had knocked down several old trees in the park. What else?
“Nan’s coming over,” Cat said. “Remember?”
Nan wasn’t an old woman vaguely related to the Swifts, rather she was in her mid-twenties and one of the best living dragonriders.
“Right,” she said, straightening up.
“But remember,” Cat tapped her shoulder, drawing her attention back. “She’s been injured. Her leg is still quite… in a state.”
She nodded, “How long?”
“Oh,” Cat went to check her watch but the doorbell rung at that second. “Right now.”
“It’s a lot of work,” Nan said again, straightening up. The leg that she had elevated on one of the kitchen chairs shifted a little. Morrigan couldn’t resist looking at it again but forced her gaze away a second later. “Wunsoc places are incredibly limited. I think hundreds of people will be competing for spots.”
“And how many are there?” Morrigan asked cautiously. This one was cruel. The idea of a future where she got to go to a super-exclusive school for the über-talented in this strange, made up city. Morrigan wasn’t going to get to go to this place. If it were real, she would live long enough to finish the try-outs and die before day one of classes. It wasn’t the most appealing outcome in the world.
But this was Hawthorne Swift’s world. This was his future, all in her dreamlike imagination. He was going to get one, as long as she was asleep. But maybe she could just imagine that it would be her own for a little while.
“Nine,” Nan said.
She gulped. “Not a lot then.”
“No. But I wouldn’t be nominating you if I didn’t think you were capable of it. I’ve seen a lot of promising young dragonriders in my time. And that’s part of it, yes, obviously you need a knack, which you have, but there’s more to the society than just that.”
“Like what?”
“Heart. I know you’ve got that, Hawthorne. And a backbone. Integrity. And a decent sense of duty. You need to be quick, a little conniving.”
“Sleekit,” he suggested, an old word his granny in the Highlands applied to him when he’d played some joke or an other.
“If you like,” she said. “Sleekit. You need to be that. Can you be that?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. It was the right answer, Hawthorne Swift was all of those things.”
“Then,” she said with a smile. “You’ve got a bid, Mr Swift.” She put her hand forward and Hawthorne shook it wildly. Morrigan let a grin split her face even as something churned away in her stomach, the constant reminder that this was Hawthorne’s life. He had a future and he was going to get to live it. Maybe she’d get to have another dream before she turned twelve. Maybe she’d get to see his world again. She couldn’t be sure. She hoped so.
“Up, up, up,” Nan called from the bottom of the arena pit.
Morrigan tugged on the reins, encouraging the dragon to lift, rise on the breeze. They’d been working on this drill all day, and she got the sense that it had been the focus of a few days. Her legs hurt in a way she thought might actually carry over to her daytime role.
“Come on, Hawthorne!” she shouted. “I rode better than that after a dragon bit my leg off.”
She tried not to falter at that. This wasn’t real, no matter how she felt the wind through her ears, how she smelled the smoke and haze rising from the massive, flying lizard she was climbing through the air with.
“Alright!” she heard from Nan. “Come back down, we’ll have a break and then you can take another shot at it later.”
She landed, a little roughly, feeling every bit of impact roll its way through her body before they came to a standstill. “Sorry,” she said, sliding down the side of the dragon. It was a beautiful creature. She wasn’t sure if the dragons in the forests of Great Wolfacre were quite so gorgeous to stare at. Probably not to the people who were promptly shot in the face with fire or snapped up and devoured. But from a distance? A healthy, safe distance. “Can’t quite—” she had to suck in breath after breath, pressing her hands to her thighs. Her armour was surprisingly light, though it was effective enough that she’d never been burned even when a few flames had come dangerously close to her skin. “I can’t get it.”
“That’s okay,” Nan said, rubbing her forehead. “It’s a complicated manoeuvre. I don’t necessarily expect you to get everything right away; that’s the point of learning, isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” she said, frowning a little. “Still.”
“It’s annoying, I know. Tell you what,” she said. “Why don’t we give this one more shot and after that, let’s get some ice cream.”
After another failure, albeit one she had earnestly tried with, she sat on the edge of a brick wall with two scoops of raspberry ripple, one of lemon sorbet, listening to Nan tell her about all the prospects coming out of some fancy dragonriding school in this wonderful made up world she’d dreamt up for herself. The sun was getting lower, casting them in a golden glow, and Morrigan thought that if this were the last time she ever got to be in Nevermoor, then this had been a good day for it.
Hawthorne hated these dreams. “Dreams” wasn’t the word for it, not really. They were nightmares, full of dark, twisty halls, whispers, people glaring at him when he breathed wrong, looked wrong, or just committed the cardinal sin of being… there at all.
Also he was a girl in these dreams. Which he didn’t mind. It was just part of it. At one point, a few years ago, Helena had really gotten into some niche Second Pocket films, all black and white gothic things with flowy dresses and as little dialogue as possible. There were no explosions in those sorts of films, the car chases were dull, and there were certainly no dragons. But he’d sat through a few. Maybe, if this whole Wunsoc thing didn’t work out for him, he could just film something based on one of these dreams and win awards for it forever. Hawthorne Swift, legendary filmmaker sounded pretty good to him.
But in the dreams he was Morrigan Crow, who had something wrong with her, not that anyone explained it to him — and he couldn’t ask, this was basically like being on a spy mission and spies never gave themselves away like that. Her mother was dead — classic, her father hated her — bastard, her grandmother scared the shit out of him, and her stepmother only needed some poison and a threat of military boarding school to finish the full stereotype.
Everyone else cowered away from him in these dreams. They averted their eyes, left the room as soon as he appeared.
And he couldn’t do anything or say anything. At all. Because they were all watching him. Once he’d been going into the town — architecturally boring, basically three thousand or so cloned brick houses — and had said something he barely remembered about someone tripping up and everyone had stared at him and chided him like he’d stuck his foot out in front of an old man hobbling out of hospital. It was genuinely impossible.
But a part of him felt bad for Morrigan. She didn’t exist. His brain had just conjured up a little girl living somewhere in the Wintersea Republic that everyone hated for some reason. It wasn’t his wildest dream, nor his most memorable (monkey king and space exploration on a cheese moon then a guacamole planet held those titles and always would). But sometimes in the mornings after the dream, he’d wake up, and he’d feel both so happy that it was over, and it wasn’t real, and the emptiest and saddest that he’d ever been in his life before.
He sniffed, and wiped his face, and promised himself the same thing that would never come true in a hundred years, that if he ever somehow met Morrigan Crow, that he’d hug her, and be the best friend she’d ever had in her life.
Then he had to rush to training. Bid Day was a week away and he still had some showing off to do.