Divided Attention

Chapter 9: Eventual Rest

I had more weird dreams when I finally fell asleep on the water buck.

I was following someone through a forest, and a fairly thick one at that. She was slender, with long, green hair that had streaks of gold running own it. As of current, it was pulled back into a pony tail. I couldn't see much of what she was wearing because of the dense brush and the quiver full of arrows on her back, but every once in a while I would catch a thin skirt brush over the top of plants.

She was stalking through the forest, looking directly in front of her. A twig snapped nearby, and she stopped, frozen for a couple seconds. She turned her head to the side, and I was able to get a glimpse of her face. Not that there was much to see. Most of her face was covered by a bandanna covering her mouth and nose, and her golden eyes narrowed, looking in the direction of the twig snapping. When she didn't hear anything more, she started to sneak around more. Her bow and arrow pointed in a specific direction, though, when there was a loud roar that came from nearby.

Wake up.

Of course, that instantly made me wake up from my dream. It faded away instantly, and my eyes blinked, trying to access where exactly we were.

We were still bounding over boulders and leaping over streams, but we seemed to be in a bigger hurry than we were previously. Wind ripped through my hair, making said hair occasionally slap against my face, making it sting. The vine doe was bounding in equal pace to us, Kitty looking around nervously. All of the other deer were also racing in a similar pace to us, just a tad bit behind us. But they were nervously looking behind us.

The first thing I noticed about the terrain that we were in was that it was bright. The sun was just starting to come up, which amazed me that I could even see the sun. On top of it, golden fields of beautiful grass spread out in front of us. Way in the distance to my left were mountains that were mountains littered with black spots that I realized were holes. I then figured out that they must be the Holes Mountains.

Had we really come all this way? I personally had never been this far away from home before, and if I learned anything from maps, it was that we were both far away and reaching our destination. These deer seemed to know where we were going. But then I noticed in front of us was a series of clouds that rain was pouring down from. It was still a considerable ways away, but I could still very much see it. Otherwise, we were leaping over small streams with a single bound with nothing other than the fields of gold all around us.

Still, something was distressing the deer. They kept giving nervous chirps and looking behind us. When I followed their vision, I saw nothing but dark clouds and a purple dot on the horizon. Kitty was looking all around, and when I caught her eye, she gave me a very confused look. Her knuckles were white as she hung onto one of the vines on her doe's neck.

Then, there was a roar very similar to the one that I had heard in my dream, and the ground behind us exploded. The herd scattered, but still went in the same general direction as a four legged thing growled hungrily as it chased after us. I called it a thing because I really had no clue what it was. It was a ball of shadow and all in all just bad news in general. It had gleaming sharp claws that reflected the upcoming sun and deep red eyes that glared at us. Otherwise, it was completely made of shadow. How it came up from the ground, I didn't know, but I also didn't want to find out.

Kitty drew her knife and I drew my sword, but my buck told me, you won't succeed if you do that.

When I brought my gaze to him, he was already intently looking at me as well as the beast that was following us. He seemed strangely calm in all of this, but I could feel in his waters that he was extremely nervous. If something was able to make a being that was as powerful as the buck I was riding, it had to be something pretty bad. That didn't exactly calm my own nerves.