The Eye of The Storm

Chapter 12

Towards Philippopolis

She woke gasping, her legs and arms drenched with sweat and tangled among her vermilion linen counterpane. She rolled off the thin excuse for a mattress that lay on the grassy meadow floor in her tent. Her forehead was slick with beads of sweat and she brought the back of her hand against the skin, sighing at the realization that it had just been a dream.

It was just a dream.

She repeated this in her head, a mantra of comfort to her in the dark of the tent. At least her father and mother had not been startled by her thrashing. She looked at their calm faces, and their eyelids, still stuck together by the glue of sleep. She knew better than to wake one of them for consolation. Nightmares were a common occurrence and fear was just another thread woven into every aspect of their lives.

It had been a contrast to the dreams she was used to having. To describe those dreams as 'pleasant' would do them a grave injustice. They had been a nirvana of sorts, where she was joined with the life she should have had, with her dead brother and her parents- all their worries erased. No, this dream had been full of terror. It had left her with fear still lodged in her throat.

She clenched her eyes shut, thinking of what the dream had been trying to tell her.

She was standing in the middle of a large field whose borders had no bounds. The grass and the bushes at the outskirts glittered with dew. Preoccupied with the beautiful landscape surrounding her, she had felt as though she was a floating entity. Then she had felt a burning sensation on her skin. She looked down, suddenly realizing that a pair of legs was holding the rest of her body up. Yes, she was in a body and the burning was on her legs! She ripped at the material of her dress like a wild animal in agonizing pain, tearing the machinery of her clothing to shreds. When she saw the olive skin of her legs she had been horrified. Before her very eyes boils were appearing at a steady rate on the once smooth skin of her thighs.

Then she had heard the caw of a raven, shaking her from the terror of her seemingly disintegrating body. In front of her there was a small wooden shack, which hadn't been there seconds earlier. It was overgrown in moss, and panels of  rotting wood were falling out of place. It didn't look like anyone had been occupying the area for many years. The door had creaked open, and she had felt as though she was falling into the entrance. There was a woman standing there. Her eyes were bloodshot and red, and her skin a stark white. She saw Thoren in front of the woman, his eyes open but lifeless. As her vision trailed along his body she saw that his hand was loosely grasping an open wound and there was crusts of dry blood on his fingers. She had recalled the words that he had said to her the previous night, like an omen, about not getting hurt. The woman had stepped out of the house and over Thoren's body-- to her it was just an object in her way. In milliseconds, the woman's body transformed into hundreds of  black ravens that flew at her face.

She woke, gasping.

Playing the dream over in her head didn't give her the extra insight she had hoped. She felt embarrassed for dreaming of Thoren. And because of her embarrassment she was silently glad that dreams were private.

Thoren...

He had kissed her the other night. She had tried to avoid thinking about it, but in the silence of the tent, it seemed as good a time as any. She had barely known what Thoren was doing until it was too late, and his soft lips had met hers. In the moments that followed the kiss, she had convinced herself that it had been an accident. Maybe she had tripped on a small root and fallen into his arms, or she had been so sleepy that she had simply let Thoren kiss her. But she was beginning to see these for what they were-- excuses. It felt strange to have shared a kiss with someone that she barely knew. Indeed, he had told her about his mother's death and let her read his father's secret stash of letters but she didn't know him. His likes, dislikes and dreams were unbeknownst to her.  It wasn't that Thoren put up walls, if anything this was her doing for trying to discourage him in every possible manner. And at the core of the problem was simply that they hadn't had the time to talk about themselves.