Something Equally Nonsensical

Dawn

Prompt: "Dawn"

Spoilers: Yes, for the first two chapters of the novel I'll be working on after the Syn novellas are done. It doesn't have a name yet (I've toyed with "Cursed," with "Tethered," with "Unfettered," and nothing has felt right yet) but it'll feature the two idiots below, Avi Fleming and Daniel Vail. Naming books is by far harder than coming up with plots, let me tell you. Nothing in this is written in stone, including the genre, which is fantasci/romance but may or may not become paranormal/romance. We'll see.

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Avi had never much cared for dawn — had hardly ever witnessed it, unless he was already up from the previous night — but today, being there to watch the sky change from dark to light was a statement in and of itself.

He was safe.

Alive.

In the distance, somewhere to his left, a column of smoke began to rise.

A shudder went through him, violent, all-consuming, as his ears rang with a piercing sound he couldn't quite name. His fingers clutched the edge of the step beneath him, in a futile attempt to stay in the present. If things had turned out differently, he'd be in there now.

Trapped. Alone. Helpless. Dead even before breathing his last. Burning, burning, burning.

The smoke grew stronger, thicker, and he swore he could smell it even as he knew it was too far away for that. His mind conjured up a voice he'd much rather forget, the face attached to it his own.

"You turned out to be quite stupid, didn't you, Mr. Fleming? When people say 'if stupidity killed'? Well, that's you, isn't it? You brought this on yourself."

He could feel it as if he were still there. The hand on his cheek, slapping it twice in contempt; hard enough to be an insult, lightly enough that it wouldn't actually hurt. Another hand pressing down on his throat to retrieve the collar with the essence stone, his vocal patterns mapped and ready to become someone else's. When the man had spoken again, in addition to wearing Avi's face, he'd been using his voice.

"Enjoy your last week, will you? And don't worry if you get cold. I promise it'll be toasty in here by the end."

Avi couldn't see the woods anymore, vision blurring, another reality superimposed on this one. Safe? He wasn't safe, he'd never be safe. He coughed, the smoke getting into his lungs, eyes watering, another proof he'd never made it out. Hands shook him, but he couldn't see, couldn't move. Trapped, left to die, to burn—

"Fleming. Fleming. Avi."

The blessedly real hands on his shoulders weren't the ones from memory. The face now in front of him wasn't his own — lighter-skinned, thinner-lipped, with more lines and less confidence than he'd worn only a week before. Daniel Vail's face. He was with Vail. Safe.

He tried to speak only to notice the noise ending abruptly the very same moment. Had it been him making that sound?

Hazel eyes narrowed from behind wire-rimmed glasses. "Fleming, are you with me?"

Avi nodded, not trusting his throat. He lifted up a hand to point in the direction of the cabin and only managed to croak "Burning."

"Yeah, I know. It's good — it's what we want. Naiira will be the one on call for that. Now come inside." Vail adjusted his glasses and looked at the spot Avi had been clutching moments before. "That's not the only thing that's burning and I'd like to see some of my security deposit back."

Avi looked down; the smell of smoke wasn't an illusion — he'd lost control of the implants and burned a hole through the porch step as he'd gripped its edge.

He managed another nod, but couldn't get up. His muscles wouldn't cooperate, shaking compulsively whenever he so much as attempted to rise.

Much to his surprise — though, in light of the events of the last day, it shouldn't have surprised him at all — Vail didn't leave him to his own devices. He wrapped an arm around Avi's taller frame, swung Avi's arm over his shoulders, and helped him walk the short distance to the door.

"Come on," Vail repeated. "Let's get you fed and rested so you can go back to being a dick, alright?"

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Time: 20 minutes

Length: 633 words

Prompt: https://www.cameronmontaguetaylor.com/2021/01/26/morning-pages-dawn/