It's drowning she dreams of—not the impact of the arrow, not even their faces, framed by the orange glow of sunlight. It's the setting of all those shadows on her as the air pushes through her hair and down her body with the rushing force of gravity. The yellows and oranges dim into cold and clammy blues, swallowing her up as her back makes impact with the hard planes of the waves below.
It is so dark down there, engulfed in a tangle of rushing currents that pull her in deeper, swirling her around. It's hard to discern if the clammy flesh that clamps around her chest is a memory or just a fine elaboration of her dream—a nightmare of cold, dead things pulling her further into the suffocation and the searing, white-hot pain.
When she wakes up in the middle of the night she still feels the blanket of water over her, pressing against her mouth and nose, squeezing the air out of her lungs.
There's always cold sweat on her face and limbs after this. The uncontrollable shaking reminds her that she's no longer trapped down beneath the rocks and cliffs and sea, that it's air coursing through her lungs, choking through the tightness of her throat. She has to lie there, letting it shake through her in waves, while her mind tries to catch up with her body.
This nightly ritual makes her chest hurt: the barely healed clavicle twinging with the jerky movements, and the scar across her sternum stretching and protesting with her short, rapid pants.
The pain makes her angry, which is the best part of this whole, awful thing. It is so much easier to be angry. There's fire in it, and fire is warm.
So she clutches onto that tight ball of fury, which builds itself in her chest. She holds it close, forming it, lovingly, as it clears her head for a moment. She can live with anger; build better shells around herself with it, stronger defenses. She thinks about all they will have to regret because of what they did to her. She thinks about all she is going to do.
So she tends Ruben's garden, watching the vines creep so slowly, the flowers bloom and wilt, and she ruminates on how much more preferable the company of plants are to men.
Ruben will linger nearby sometimes, observing her slow work, interjecting a soft comment or praise on occasion.
"Look how this crawler twists itself along the wall," he marvels, tracing the elegant curves of a rich purple vine, whose tendrils cling to the rock in perfect arches, creating an intricate, repeating pattern against the building's side. "It has shaped itself almost in a perfect 'S,' almost as if by design."
"It's not the plant's design," she tells him. "I told it to do that."
He looks at her in surprise, but she pays him no mind. She runs her fingers along the stem of a long flower, watching as its petals twitch.
The next day he asks her if she would like to practice Skilling.
He's having her do noncombat gestures. She notices it right away, detecting how he frames the lesson in terms of gardening. Curve the hand slowly and imagine the fragile tension of the flower's stem bending in unison. Don't do it too quickly; the stem will snap.
She learned this all a long time ago, even before her jaunt out into the world, but the practice is slow and repetitive; there's something peaceful in it when she can stop the swirling of her thoughts.
"It's the wordless, full comprehension of the command that bends nature to your will. I can help you. I can teach you to funnel it, and lock it away."
She jerks back, the memory of his warm, melodic voice shattering the reverie. The flower stem snaps.
A/N: A full view of the artwork,"Wrath," can be found on my deviantart account here: https://asimsluvr.deviantart.com/art/Wrath-193573624.
The italicized quote is part of Ben's dialogue to Allayria in the "Sensory Creatures" chapter of Paragon.
In house-keeping news: somehow I managed to set the Prologue to "private" in my first publishing go-round, so if you're reading this and go: "Prologue?!" then yes, there is a prologue, you just couldn't see it because me no Wattpad gud. Read it! It's talking about someone you might remember... he's got a thing for history and shooting his friends off clifftops. Solid guy, really.