In the Absence of Light

Chapter Two - The Rain Carried Lavender Scented Promises

She was shaken out of her thoughts by the soft trembling of the plants she tended to. Bracing herself for the worst, Vega carefully weaved through the shop as a few unsecured jars began to topple off of her workbench. She caught what she could and tossed them into the sink. The windows rattled open, barely hanging onto their hinges. It was annoying. She was sure that the last repair would have stopped them from doing that.

In the distance, a thick cloud of dust rose from the town as another building collapsed. As always, her house hardly bobbled compared to the rest of the area, but it was inconvenient nonetheless. She winced at the sound of glass shattering, a sign that yet another shelf wasn't as secure as she thought it'd be.

The earthquakes had become increasingly frequent in the past weeks, but the little town didn't care.

'Someone has angered Eltanin' they would say, with nary a question over the duality of their god's love. Why bother to bless everyone if they were going to be punished with equal fervor afterwards? It was such a waste to preserve all these people when the tiniest of mistakes could take it all away.

The shaking stopped, and everything went eerily still. Not even the birds dared to sing as the brilliant sky darkened and whispers of snowflakes floated down to the ground. Then, as abruptly as it had all started, the sun returned and it was all back to normal.

Vega returned to her apothecary to survey the damages. An entire shelf of supplies had been shaken off of its supports and landed upside down on the floor. She stepped around shards of glass and scattered herbs, careful not to slip on the thick purple syrup that had spilled next to her workbench. So much for those expensive fae flowers.

Despite having cleaned up and done as much as she could to salvage them, her efforts were for nothing. The brilliant blossoms and fern-like leaves lay smashed before her, mixed with so much glass that she could barely touch them. What a shame, it had been so long since an outsider had crossed her little village, let alone one selling such a precious resource. She'd never get more of it now. She carefully gathered everything onto a cloth, glaring at the glittering mess and cursing herself for ruining such an easy task. If only she had remembered to secure the one thing that really needed it.

She sighed, letting her mind run blank until the frustration quelled itself. "Oh well, what's done is done." She carefully folded up the cloth and hurled it into the trash. There was no use in crying over lost blossoms, not while there were other things to do.

In her preoccupation with restabilizing the shop, she hardly noticed that the sun had begun to set. As stars began to make their appearance in the darkening sky, she made her way back to her room, and her thoughts returned to the dragon.

It wasn't like Vega didn't care about the recurring dreams, she just had no idea what to do about them. And it's not like she could talk to anyone either. Her family would laugh it off or send her to the asylum, maybe even both.

Asking anyone else in town would probably lead to exile if not something worse. True, the elders did seem to know something regarding the dragon, but those who questioned their ancestors had a tendency to disappear.

It was a restless night. The dragon got closer to her with each dream, and this was not a good time to deal with that. She sat up in bed jotting down notes from the day in a leather-bound journal. But there was hardly anything else to do after that, and in spite of her best efforts to stay awake, she fell asleep.

The room spun and swirled as she drifted away. But before everything faded, a bright light filled her vision and the dream she might have had dissipated into a dark cave. The same cave she had first seen the dragon in.

"You're sleeping late today. Trouble in paradise?"

A dark silhouette towered over her with eyes that gleamed like stars amongst the shadows. "Or perhaps," he mused whilst coiling around her like a snake, "you were trying to avoid me."