The Song of the Sea

8. Banished

"And is it likely that you will thrash around in your sleep?" Jacob asked in not much more than a whisper.

Raephier had to fight hard not to tremble at his words.

"I'm afraid I have bad dreams sometimes," he said.

"About what?" Jacob asked.

Raephier could feel Jacob's breath as he spoke, and it was making it hard for him to think.

"Things from my past."

"You can tell me if you want," Jacob offered.

"I'd rather just try to forget, if that's ok," Raephier replied.

Jacob went silent, and Raephier started to worry that he'd said the wrong thing. Didn't Jacob say that it was ok for him to not answer every question if he was uncomfortable with sharing?

Raephier tried to think of something he could say, any bit of his dreams that he might be willing to share, but then Jacob spoke again.

"If you get scared in the night, you can wake me. I don't mind."

Raephier felt like his mind might explode.

"Thank you. That's very kind."

There was no way that Raephier would ever take him up on that offer. He'd been living with his nightmares for years now, and always dealt with the after-effects on his own. Just having Jacob next to him, would make it 100 times easier to deal with anyway, even if he was asleep.

Despite his emotions being all over the place, as soon as Jacob's breathing evened out, it didn't take Raephier long to also succumb to sleep.

And as sure as night follows day, the horrors of his past returned to haunt him.

The light reflected off a shoal of silver fish, drawing his eyes away for a moment. Movement. That was always the first thing Raephier noticed when he dreamt of home. Everything underwater was constantly in motion. It was one of the things that had taken him the longest to get used to when he was first on land - the stillness. The way everything stayed in its place, and even the air could be so still that he couldn't even feel it moving against his bare skin.

Raephier knew he was dreaming. But despite that, there was never anything he could do about it. Probably because it was a memory rather than a made-up event.

Raephier's attention was eventually brought back to the reason he was here.

He stared around at all the familiar faces in front of him. His parents, siblings, cousins, friends, neighbours. Those faces should have brought him comfort. Should have made him feel safe. But even though he painstakingly searched every single feature on their faces, he felt as though he was staring at strangers.

Horacio, their colony's most senior Elder was speaking to everyone who'd gathered to hear the sentence. But Raephier was too distracted to listen. He'd heard all this before, when someone else had stepped outside of their strict rules. Horacio loved the sound of his own voice and would talk for at least 10 minutes on the importance of their race and the lengths they needed to go to preserve it, before he would actually say what the punishment was.

Raephier tried to fight it, even though he knew it was hopeless, but his eyes were eventually drawn to the King and Queen. The Queen was crying, her face buried into her hands. The King was just staring at nothing. It was almost as if he was frozen in time at the point he'd first heard the news.

Nothing was the same, everything was different.

Raephier hadn't slept well since the incident and so he felt like his brain was swimming through fog. But he tried to focus, and continued to look for clues. The only thing he could liken this feeling to, was the time he went travelling for a month, then came home to find his mum had redecorated their home.