CAIRN

Ch 3 - Sent to Me

Thea dreamed that she was wandering through a maze. The maze's walls emitted a faint white light but the maze still felt dark. Between branching hallways lay large dome-shaped rooms with circular doors leading to other, similar hallways. In its narrow corridors she'd meet dark silhouettes that would urgently speak to her in languages she didn't understand. They'd grab her hands and touch her hair while they spoke, but Thea would not feel them. 

At a dead end she came upon a statue. Its face was a mangled mess of marble eyes and mouths and horns. Its ten or twenty eyes all looked at her through pupils encrusted with green gems. Sickly rays of light shot from the statue's eyes, enveloping her in green. She recognized the statue. She knew its name but she could never speak it. The mouths moved, but Thea heard no sound. They started moving faster, using their lips and sharp teeth to spell out the profane, the obscene. Suddenly, the statue fell forward, landing just a couple inches in front of Thea's feet. It shattered instantly.

Thea was awoken by a short, burly woman carrying a laundry basket. She spoke in a thick local accent and gesticulated energetically with her hands. Thea understood none of it. Mercifully, the woman left Thea alone to wake up from her night of sleep in the grass and rocks. Morning had barely begun on the temperate valley where Brenin had been built. In the distance, the town's sounds had begun their daily crescendo.

With a a yawn and a stretch, Thea stood up sluggishly, wiping the sleep from her eyes. Her joints cracked and protested at her every move, making her grunt and whimper. She started the long walk home, stopping at regular intervals to look at the stone she'd found on her hand that morning. In the subtle, quiet language of inanimate objects, the stone testified to her meeting with the voices the previous night. Its teal surface still vibrated from the thunderous quarreling she'd been confronted with in that pale yellow void.

Thea's home was a small, run-down boarding house by the eastern edge of Brenin. Her room was half of what was previously one room in the old house. On the other side of the haphazardly placed dividing wall lived Francine, a spinster who made rent by selling doilies and crocheted hats.

Upon arriving, Thea threw herself onto her old cot, lifting a nasty cloud of dust onto her tiny room's cramped airspace. She was off work that day. Mrs. Ern-- Thea's boss-- was closing the textile store for a couple days to go meet with her sister who lived two towns over.

Thea sighed. She wasn't sleepy, but she was too tired to move. She settled for staring at the ceiling and singing a little song to herself, just to calm down a bit. She did that a lot. Singing to herself quietly and letting her mind wander was how she kept herself content with life. Her imagination would soar above her small town. It'd visit the long shores that lay West. It'd fly across the barren plains of Tyff and then circle around the gleaming towers of the Capital's Palace of Lordships. She'd imagine herself a Magistrate, parading around the halls of the palace in a fine purple robe and sitting among other Magistrates in the Imperial Juris.

Her daydreaming was rudely interrupted by loud footsteps on the hallway. They were too heavy to have been made by Francine, who weighed less than a sack of grain. In fact, it sounded as though there were two sets of footsteps. They stopped right outside Thea's door and silence fell on the old hallway for a few seconds. After a bit, Thea started to hear loud whispering through the door. Whoever these people were, they were not endowed with subtlety. Thea lay still in her cot, hoping these strangers were not burglars or worse, horny town guards.

The door flew open. Thea screamed.

Two stony-faced men stepped into her tiny quarters. Thea kept screaming but the men kept their blank expressions. After a few seconds of this, Thea allowed herself to stop screaming and took a better look at her strange-looking intruders.

One had a long, thin face with a sharp nose. His blond hair draped on his shoulders and his head was mere inches from the roof. His entire frame looked as if he'd only heard of food but never touched it. He was clad in a long red robe with a white rope tied around his waist. His movements were incredibly awkward, as if he were piloting that tall lanky body for the very first time.

The other was a bit taller than Thea. His body proportions just seemed...off. His arms were too short but his torso was too long. There was too much muscle on his arms and legs but too little on his chest. The man didn't move his extremities so much as he swung them around to try and achieve motion. The features on his face also mismatched each other. Soft, gentle eyes met a barbaric nose and thick lips framed by high chiseled cheeks. He wore a dirty white shirt and badly tailored orange trousers. Around his neck, a tight gold chain glittered.

Thea simply stared, befuddled by the intrusion of these curious characters. She hoped that if she stayed quiet maybe they wouldn't say anything and just leave her be.

Her hopes were in vain.