Vivien and the Scoria

Chapter 4: Before

4th Year of Lord Tante's rule

Solomon's Jewelers

Mount Api

8th night hour

Restless nights haunted me for over a week after Will's Testing, and I stumbled through life in a daze. I couldn't bring myself to go see Twister. I couldn't bring myself to go to work. I could hardly bring myself to eat most days. I spent all my time avoiding contact with people, and obsessively cleaning the house until everything shone while my hands were red, raw, and peeling.

On this particular night I found myself outside Solomon's Jewellers, my place of employment when I wasn't in a slump over Will. The shop was closed for the night, and the lamps that lit the windows were dimmed to their lowest level, allowing me to see the delicate pieces displayed in the cases, but nothing past that. Solomon was renowned across Merasa as the best in his trade, and when I had scored a job in his shop two years ago, I had been thrilled.

Now, I sat cross legged, leaning my back against the windows I had cleaned more times than I could count. Solomon was a very understanding employer, and had given me two weeks off to get used to Will's loss as soon as he heard about what had happened. I was grateful, sure, but in my present state of mind, work was the furthest thing from the top of my priorities list. This place was a safe haven, that's all, and it was pure coincidence that I found myself here on this night.

Sleepless nights had accumulated in a harsh pounding headache that was momentarily soothed by the cool glass behind me. My eyes closed for mere seconds, in order to fully appreciate the mild relief from the pain. In those seconds, my body took back control and I fell deep into sleep, and brought with it the very thing I was trying to avoid – dreams.

The dream was a memory this time around, different from the hellish dreams I had experienced in the days immediately after Will's Testing. A memory was almost as bad in some cases; it showed the happy times, mostly, and reminded me that those happy times with Will would never occur again. This memory was an early one, around my twelfth year, when I had frequently been in trouble with Lady Mara of Api, the mother of Rowan, my arch nemesis at this time, and one of the four leaders of Mount Api.

This memorable occasion found me hiding behind the library in Aernir following a confrontation with Lady Mara that had resulted in her cursing me with a short living silence curse. I can't remember what I had been in trouble for, but I do remember that the silencing curse was a frequent punishment of hers that I had received close to twenty times in the space of a year. The ability to curse as such was a talent unique to the Faercrag family, of which Lady Mara belonged to. It was a contributing factor to by strong dislike of her son Rowan.

I remember that I was in Aernir because I wanted to see if Twister could remove it from me. He was working in the library that day, recording the latest skirmish with the Barbarians that Merasa had barely won. Before I could enter the library however, the trainee warriors passed by me on their way to the training fields on Mount Tanah. Leading them was Rowan, Lady Mara's son, whom I had been banned from interacting with in any way, shape, or form. He knew this all too well, and so led the trainees in pelting me with rotting fruit and mud. No-one stopped him because of who he was, and so I was filthy, couldn't retaliate, and to make matters worse, the librarians wouldn't let me in given my current state.

The dream shifted in the unique way that dreams do, and Will appeared. In real life, this hadn't happened for nearly an hour after the encounter with Rowan, but in the dream, anything was possible. He appeared suddenly around the corner of the library, and found me huddled on the ground with rotten fruit and mud dripped off my entire body. His youthful face broke into a cheeky grin as he took in my appearance, so I cursed him with my middle finger.