Welcome to Valerian Night, where the story comes to you in snippets and snatches, snapshots and slivers of 300 words every week. Your input is valued and needed, for what you say may drive the story into a totally different direction. Follow the meandering coils of story that take Alyxa Fairchild onto a direct collision course with Nightmares, Dreams, Old Deities and New Heroes as her world collides with that of Réveille, the land of Waking Dreams and Dead Gods. Trail after Morpheus as he discovers the foibles and confusions of the human world and finds himself strangely enamoured thereof all the while trying to keep his Dreamer safe and ensure the continued peace of the Real World. Let the young Jazzy open your eyes and show you that the world you see is not necessarily the world you know...

Thursday, April 22, 2010

XVI: Cleansing

Alyxa frowned at the pile of dirty clothes that lay unceremoniously scattered all over her laundry floor in her laundry floor. This was not what she had had in mind for her Sunday afternoon. She wanted to study her Craft books, she wanted to be out in the herb garden, she wanted –

“Oh hell,” she grumbled, and set about making some sort of sense of the laundry.
She must have been at it for a couple of minutes when she noticed that Morpheus was standing in the door, looking at her with those bright eyes.

“What are you doing?” he asked her, voice loaded with curiosity.

“Laundry,” she replied shortly, “cleaning clothes.”

“And…you do this by putting them into the machine and then…?”

“The machine spins them around and makes them clean,” Alyxa explained, demonstrating by putting the clothes into the washing machine and tipping in some detergent.

They watched it go for a couple of minutes. Then…

“Have you seen Bast today?”

Morpheus completely ignored the question, his eyes fixed on the washing machine.

“Have you ever considered doing this?”

Suddenly the washing machine gurgled and bleeped several times.

“What did you do?” Alyxa asked, a touch of worry flooding into her like boiling water seeping through a teabag.

“Made it easier.”

“What what easier?”

Alyxa edged away from the washing machine as it stuttered and then returned to its normal cycle with renewed fervor.

“Your ‘laundry’, it will now do itself.”

“It sounds like a helicopter trying to take off…” Alyxa murmured.

“Come, witchling, let us go and see what the child is doing.”

“Morpheus…I’m not sure abo- ”

He brushed a strand of hair back from her face.

“It will be well,” he said quietly, “see?”

Alyxa glanced at the washing machine. It smiled back at her.

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