Part Two

I fall into another dream, a darker sleep.

I dream that I lean over the dank stones, peering over the moss covered ledge into the depths of a dark well. I am looking for something. I am waiting for someone.

I hear a rustle of grass behind me, the unmistakable snapping of a twig underfoot. I whirl around to confront my trespasser, who dares intrude on my solitude.

It is but a child, a precious elvin child. His laughter comes to my ears, light and sweet, like the faint tinkle of bells. "That is not how you find your future," the child says, laughing darkly – tones of derision and mirth.

My future? Is that what I am looking for? I ignore the graceless child's rude manner and ask, "Are you a seer? Can you see the future and tell it to me?"

The child giggles like a bemused baby, his dark curls tumbling over his forehead. "No, silly elf. The well is the seer. You must bend over backwards and look into the well with a mirror, and over your left shoulder, you shall see your future."

I glare at my hands, irrationally angered that I have no mirror to hold over my head as I look down into the deep black waters of my fate. The child tsks, and a golden mirror magically appears in his hands. I scowl at him in envy.

"That," I point out scornfully, looking down my nose at the mischievous elf child, "is a primitive human belief."

He laughs with irreverent pleasure. "It is a human well." He grins, and where there should be teeth there are fangs. No elvin child at all.

Spinning on his heel, he tosses the golden mirror with the flick of his wrist. I jump with glee and snatch the golden mirror out of the air before it can fall to pieces upon hard packed ground.

I leap to the side of the well, eagerly leaning over backwards to read my fortune in the murky waters beneath my mirror.

Just as I lean further in for the best view over my left shoulder, the child grasps my right leg and flips me over, sending me head over heels down the well.

I plunge down the well, falling and falling and falling, the air becoming heavier and more putrid the farther I fall. Above me the child's eyes glow gold as he fades away far above me. No elvin child at all, but a werecat! I hear his laughter fall down on me as further and further I sink into the darkness of the well.

I land, hitting hard into the ground. I spread my hands beneath me, looking for support, but there is no ground! With no light to guide me, no earth or sky to show me the way, I am lost in a black sea of nothingness.

Is this the future? Does this mean I am done for?

You always told me I had such strange dreams, didn't you? If only I could remember who you are, to whom it is that I speak.

Perhaps it is you, those golden eyes peering down at me in the darkness of the bottomless well. Perhaps you are the golden mirror, desperately trying to reveal to me a better view of my future. Perhaps you are the werecat boy. But no, that cannot be, for somehow I know that you are quite large, and he was so delicately small.

Yet, somehow, when I think of gold, I think of you.

Who are you, these magnificent golden eyes burning in my mind?

When I think of you each time I dream, I wake. Such a tragedy is waking, when the waking is to the nightmare.

And in my waking nightmare, I see ghoulish creatures hovering before me, their drool dripping onto the blood splattered stone floor as my eyes burn and sting from the salt of my sweat.

Cold iron clamps hold my hands over head, and I am suspended in the air, dangling two feet above the ground. The rough iron cuts into my wrists, my weight gouging my own flesh. My own blood drips from my hands onto my forehead. I struggle to move my body, but my feet are bound by rope. It is a useless endeavor to try and free myself.

I am constrained in a living hell and wish that I could awake.

Only, this is the waking world, isn't it?

I hear the tinkling of metal against metal. I smell the putrid scent of my torturers as they prepare their next torment. A barbed metal hook is thrust into my view. Words that I do not comprehend are uttered by the monsters standing over me. This time, I remember what they want, why I am being tortured—but this brings no relief, for I can give them no answer. When I do not answer, the barbed hook is shoved into the tender muscles next to my spine. I gasp and whimper in pain. The barb is yanked out of my flesh, tearing and mutilating my once flawless back. The hook is plunged into my back again, and I scream the cry of unadulterated misery.

I wail a lament of the dead—for hopefully soon, that is what I will be. And in the end, I moan in agony, for my strength is depleted. I twitch my wrists against my iron braces, trying to reach for you, only I do not know where you are.

I do not even remember who you are.

Why am I, in the haze of my great pain, reaching for you?

And why are you not here?

As I gasp in misery, I wish you were by my side. As I moan in pain, I wish you would tear these monsters to shreds. As flesh is torn from my body, I cry out for you to just come and save me.

But when the torture is finished, when I begin to fade and whimper for your coming, I hear you—from somewhere far away, yet not so far away as before.

Breathe, I hear you whimper. Just breathe.

Because you command it, I take a ragged breath, and keep on breathing.