Poison and Bane

7. Nightmares awaken.

August, 26.

07:43 AM

Gwendoline Bane.

There are nightmares.

Then there are dreams that scare the shit out of you.

Not because you remember every single thing you saw in it, when you wake up. Or that they feel closer to life, than reality ever did.

But only because they make you wish you'd never wake up again.

I've been so used to preparing myself for the nightmares, which usually creep along with me into my slumber, that I never see the dreams coming.

I lie to myself every night about staying awake to prevent the nightmares. But I fear my dreams even more so.

The dreams.

They were more memories rather than dreams. A morphed version of the reality that once was. I've never been able to tell them apart. The ones that had happened for real, and what my imagination had conjured up to fill the bleak holes left behind in the place of missing images.

A large part of my life was that way. The whole of my childhood was. When Vangard found me, I only remembered my name. 'My real name', which was what I kept saying. As if to remind myself that I was real and there, when nothing else in my life was. The rest of my past was an intricate painting that was watered down. Blurry edges and disturbing splatters of paint that, frightened me so much, I refused to inspect it closer.

Most hunters would have jumped at the oppurtunity of the amnesiac child with unexplainable supernaturality, and turned me into a slave of their bidding. Or they would have killed me. But Van didn't. He found use for me, with less mention of servitude and more in a consented manner.

In fact he had ventured enough to escort me to an insider Magik, a few months after he'd taken me in, in an attempt to restore my memories.

The result was a concussion and a headache that split my head front through sideways for an entire week.

But it wasn't the only one.

Apparently, while the Magik was digging about for memories, he rattled something else that was lying hidden in my subconscious.

Caster spells.

It wasn't unrelated to the Magi but it was similar to magic of a less lethal kind. Someone had taught me caster spells as a child, and then put them away. But not well enough, and obviously this person meant for it to be unveiled some day. Because the memories were a different story. Entirely inaccessible. Like they weren't even there.

As if in compensation, along with the spells, there were a few shredded pieces of flashbacks. Like bits of paper, frayed and intentionally scattered about, for me to find. None of them fit together.

The things I remembered were my name. The ones that I was unlucky enough to recall afterwards were that I had had parents. But I was also the reason they were dead.

The Magik couldn't help further and Vangard could care less, now that he had a mediocre caster with supernatural abilities at his beck and call.

So my mind turned to a method of its own to help me cope by and live a half life.

The dreams.

And today I dreamt.

*Of bees and meadows. Of sunlight that glistened off of morning dew that clung to the looming sunflower stalks. Of the air that smelled like happiness, summer and what could have been home.