My Title Comes Last, Not First
an excerpt

A dream sequence from my story. The relevance won't be known until the end, but... here it is!

A man with long, dark hair picked his way through a strange and alien landscape, one that Aster, as an observer, could not truly appreciate. He knew that the air was moist and thick, and that he would have been as drenched in sweat as the lean, muscular man who worked his way through the undergrowth of the jungle. A clinging garment of long, green strips of a strangely overlarge leaf hung in a skirt around his waist, bending apart to reveal his muscular thighs. His skin, the deep brown of a man who had seen much sun, shone in the small amount of natural sunlight filtering through the heavy branches of the trees above him, a million singular beads of sweat catching and reflecting the rays of light. In one hand he held a long, smooth shaft of wood tipped with a sharp stone of middling gray. His eyes glittered like inky pools of the blackest crystal, set off drastically by the only adornment he wore; a large, beautiful red flower. The flower itself was woven into his midnight hair by its stem, and by Aster's nearest guess it was at least a hand span across. The red of it, woven with the black of the man's hair, came together in an almost fluid way. Aster noticed then that it wasn't only the way that the flower blended in the with the man's hair, but everything he touched, and even he himself, seemed to blur and bend together.

He picked his way carefully across the greenery entrenching the ground, the large, bare roots of the trees above, fighting the large ferns that continually threw themselves before him. Despite this, each motion of hand and foot seemed silent and effortless, proving, at least, that the man had been in this jungle for a very extended period of time, and knew precisely what he was doing with each step and each movement. Suddenly, he stopped, body poised as though ready to spring, though Aster could not determine what had caused his sudden shift from motion to perfect stillness. The liquid flow of this world around this man before him stopped as he halted- Aster could almost imagine that the fluid motion mimicked the fluid motion that Aster himself could cause by moving his hand through water.

So swiftly that Aster almost could not see, another spear precisely like the one the man before him carried flashed into view- he caught it with his own, turned it away even as his pivoted on his toes to face his assailant. Another man, skin tone slightly lighter, hair shorter and also lighter, thighs less lean and more stocky with muscle, flashed his spear at the man with the flower in his hair, forcing him to step backwards to save himself.

The two were grunting, growling, weapons flashing back and forth, the man with the shorter hair causing the man Aster had followed to step back, and back, the footing growing more and more treacherous. The misty flow of air and world about them both continued, the ripples of their motions carrying in small waves in the directions that the fighters moved, as though they moved in water after all. The red of the flower drew Aster's eye as it began to slip, sliding in it's owners' hair as he swung continuously, his life threatened, fear and rage written plainly on his face. Abruptly, the flower fell from his hair, almost falling slowly as the broad bottom side of it seemed to catch a breeze. The attacker saw the now flowerless man's eyes flicker to the falling blossom in a near-imperceptible look of horror, and pressed his advantage.

Moments after the bloom his the ground, so did the defending man, eyes open and unseeing. Aster felt something akin to terror, but pushed it away- this male was not here with him, or rather, Aster was not here with the dead man, or the other who even now stooped down to pick up his enemy's fallen spear. Aster's dream left him then, and he was no longer watching the warrior triumph over his victory. Aster wondered what all of this could mean, while he could, for soon consciousness left him once more.