L is for the Lady Life-in-Death

Well, Klahan is more than a little pleased at the response to his post! I don't think he ever expected to be quite that popular, and it is most gratifying even to a nine-year-old emperor.

Now we'll see if our L feature can generate as much interest. Not as much popularity, I'm sure, but interest, maybe . . .

The Lady of Dreams Realized. The Life-in-Death. The Dragon's sister.

Personally, I find her much more terrifying than her fire-breathing brother. She is the more insidious of these two terrifying entities, creatures living beyond time in realms of their own dominion.

. . . he crosses into the world where dreams come true. There they ceased to be dreams and dissolve into nothingness. No color exists in this land, only shades. Even nightmares dare not venture past its borders for fear of losing themselves. It is a solitary world, wherein only one being can dwell.
She is the Lady of Dreams Realized.
The Lady Life-in-Death.

Where the Dragon himself is all fire and destruction, the ruination of all hopes and dreams, the Lady is their fulfillment. She gives to mortal man what he believes he desires. And in so doing, she destroys him. Far from being the opposite of her brother, she is rather his completion. Though seemingly at odds, playing with dice for the souls of mortals and Faerie folk alike, this brother and sister are two sides of the same coin.

"All yours must come to me," says the Dragon. And this is true. For all to whom the Lady grants dreams are granted also their ultimate death.

In Veiled Rose we see her mostly in a woman's shape, white hair, black skin, and eyes filled to the brim with emptiness. The opposite of her brother, with his skeletal face, black hair, and fire-filled eyes. But while her brothers also takes the form of the Dragon, we don't see the Lady of Dreams Realized assume another guise. Perhaps she has one that we haven't seen, however. Perhaps a shape more deadly even than that of her dreadful brother . . .

But we will have to wait to learn more about that! In the meanwhile, we watch her seduce Lionheart into the realm of dreams come true; we watch her manipulate his all-too eager heart into a place of self-justified cowardice. For the sake of his dream, he is willing to give up everything, even his honor. And this, I believe, is a worse fate even than that which met Princess Una at the hands of the Dragon.

The Lady Life-in-Death was initially inspired (as I have stated elsewhere) by a moment in Samuel Taylor Colleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Though I have posted them before, I will again share with you those epic lines:

Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a DEATH? and are there two?
Is DEATH that Woman’s mate?

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was white as leprosy,
The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she,
Who thicks man’s blood with cold.

In the scene that follows, we see Death and Life-in-Death playing dice for the soul of the titular Ancient Mariner. Life-in-Death wins, so the Mariner lives  . . . or rather, he dies in living form. He is given his desire, to live, and in that, he enters true hell. It is a chilling poem, and that moment with Life-and-Death is the most chilling of all.

Perhaps Collerige himself was inspired for this awesome image by a passage in St. Augustine's Confessions.

"For what do I wish to say, O Lord my God, but that I know not whence I came hither into this life-in-death. Or should I call it death-in-life? I do not know. And yet the consolations of thy mercy have sustained me from the very beginning . . ." (Chapter VI)