When I wake up all I know is pain, from my head, to my stomach that's grumbling like I haven't been fed in days, to my back that's so sore it feels like I've been laying on gravel for several days without moving. I grimace as I go to get up and the dull pounding behind my eyes spikes and forces me to lie back down, groaning. When I hear a voice from my right say,
"Oh, and the zombie awakes."
I slowly open my eyes, and I see a boy maybe a few years older than me with dirt smudged all over his face. He has long pine green hair and bangs that hide his eyes, he brushes his bangs away and what I see makes me yelp and fall off the stone tablet I had been laying on. His irises are golden and almost shine with a hidden internal light.
He just stands there for awhile with a slightly concerned look on his face. I just lay there staring at him from the other side of the tablet unable to take my eyes off of his golden eyes. He seems likewise at a loss for words, "I", he says his voice squeaking and his ears turning red around the edges.
"I'm sorry for startling you." He says trying again.
I shake my head and slowly get to my feet using the stone tablet I had been laying on to help get my wobbly feet under me. I lean heavily on the stone slab and slowly look up trying to keep the dizziness at bay and say, "that's okay I've just never seen anyone with gold eyes before that's all. The mixture of the green hair and golden eyes is quite the fashion statement."
He arches his eyebrows at me and says, "Really? I figured it was a normal eye color."
"Nope I've never seen anyone with golden eyes where I'm from."
"Well, I suppose your town must be an oddity."
He went to go sit on a seat in his half of the, what I now realized was a cell, with iron bars and straw sprawled all over the stone floor. Panic starts to blossom in my chest and my heart speeds up as I remember everything that had happened to me since this afternoon's kickball win. When I realize that I don't even know how long I've been asleep, for all I know I could've been asleep for several days now. My family, they probably have search parties out looking for me, how worried they must be. I slowly sink to the floor and back into the corner I can feel my whole body shaking as tears stream down my face in wet rivulets.
Deep breaths Chelsey, treat this like one of your fantasy novels, it's just pretend. Calm down and ask the strange boy with the gold eyes where you are and go from there. I wipe my tears from my face and get up just enough to see the boy; he's sitting on an old stool staring into the distance as if he isn't really here. I take a deep calming breath, and ask,
"Where are we?"
He jumps as if he had forgotten that I was even here and says, "Oh yes, well I assume that since we've both apparently been captured by nightmares that we are in the kings dungeons and, will probably remain here until he decides to either kill us or interrogate us and then kill us. Unless that is, I can think of a way out of here." He gives me a mischievous grin and then goes back into his thought filled stupor.
"Wait a minute, where am I and why am I even in here to begin with?" I say and get up really fast and sharp pain shoots behind my eyes. Which makes me feel light headed and woozy. But before I can reach out to the stone slab for help he bounds over, grabs my arm and makes me sit on his stool.
"You really should stop doing that, you still getting over the sleep nightmare. You're going to hurt yourself if you don't take it easy till it wears off."
"Okay, but where am I and why am I here?"
He looks at me, concerned; "did you hit your head before they put you to sleep?"
"No!" I yell and wince as my headache flares up again, "Well maybe, oh I don't know!"
He gives me that same concerned look from earlier, like I am some injured little puppy he needs to tend to.
"Seriously where am I?"
"You're in the middle of the Erith Empire, located in the Forest of Draedan."
"And that means we're where exactly?"
"You really don't know?"
"No, I don't, I thought I made that clear."
He sighs, "We're in the capital, "Asinine"
locked away in the king's royal dungeons."
"Well I know that last part. So, I've been kidnapped by nightmares and transported to some fairytale with kings and palaces and people with funny colored hair?" I give a short crazy kind of laugh and hold onto the edge of the stool like a life line.
He looks at me like I'm crazy and says, "What kind of place could you live in for these things to be such a rarity? Where are you from?"
"I'm from Kentucky, where this sort of thing only happens to people in books."
"Hmm, never heard of it," He says, "What did you call it, Kentooky? Ugh don't tell me I'm stuck in prison with someone from the north. He mumbles under his breath, but I do hear something along the lines of "weird northern syllable pronunciation."
Suddenly his golden eyes get all wide and he presses his ear up to the door. I open my mouth to say something, when his hand comes up and smothers my words.
"Shh! He says, Do you here that?"
I close my eyes and listen; sure enough I hear a faint patter of footsteps echoing down the
long corridor. The sound of pattering feet comes closer until a small, frail boy in rags, appears by the door with two bowls of oatmeal. His sunken, hollow eyes stare blankly at us. As he slides the bowls under the wooden door of our cell and walks away.
