Who To Call At The Edge Of Night?

[Sjira]

(Posted: Sat May 30, 2015 12:06 pm)

"Don't let it go.. you're held.. within this beating heart. Don't. Let. Go!"

The voice was unfamiliar to those ears but the warning was heard at a certain, loud level of earnest.

She felt the ground give way. There had been music, there had been song as well as dance. Then she was slipping. S'jira threw her hand upwards. Had there not been a hand there earlier? Now there was ash-gray bough above, barren of any hope to ever leaves on it. In the instant she saw it, it reminded her of a large arm without flesh, but merely bone...long-dead. It was too broad across to grab a hold of. She flailed to get a grip on and she fell completely.

No ground was beneath her anymore. Somewhere along the edge of a perpetual night, she heard her horse scream. For an animal to be driven to fear enough to scream was truly a horrible sound to shaken most to the very core of their being.

Her own voice caught in her throat, strangled there and unable to yell its release. A slipstream of hastened a tangling of thoughts that jumped about and disallowed her to think clearly. One fractured moment to the next, she was falling and then..found herself in ..puddle? Something not like that, something worse.

In the half-light of night that was trying to climb to dawn..one of her arms was grabbed at the bicep to be pulled back as she leaned forward. It seemed made of tar, but lacked the heat as it oozed and moved. It had moved to grab her! Terror her own, the blackness seeped around her waist to slide about her back and lift an arm-like thing from its depth to take her about the shoulder and finally grip about her throat.

The next brittle moment was one of her tearing awake and screaming. Sound had found its voice. In the bed in the rooms at the Red Dragon was where she woke with such a start. Twice in the same week of nightmare like she had never had before.

Hand her own flew from her naked chest above the swell of her breasts to her throat to find nothing there. "Augh!" Fear, frustration and relief were hers all at once. The bed was not where she wanted to be, amongst all of its bedding and emptiness.

The small one pushed, then pushed against the layers of covers and a pillow that had lost its way from the head of the bed to somewhere along its middle. Bare feet met the flooring nearby with a ginger tip of a big toe, then from toes to heels of her feet. Pulse rushed from a pounding heart, though her veins.

"Carry me close... I give you memories..."

She halted in the middle of the bedroom, quiet close to the posted foot of the bed. Hands pressed in against the side of her head. Knees bent and she fell to them. Naked form ease forward until her forehead kissed the flooring with any hint of passion. She mewed out a sound of torture the nightmare could still be heard.

Glad for the darkness of the room, posture failed and she felt to her side. A knee drew up against her stomach and chest and strove to breathe. It took quite a while before she thought that the dark dream's residue had finally slipped away.

In a pathetic curl of flesh and bone, the light of dawn was finally seeping in through the windows belonging to the rooms. In softly borne agony, she wept and pushed self up onto all fours, a little further to her feet and leaned in against a bed post.

Strained expression, weary and tremulous, she moved off towards the bathing room that was part of the area; adjoined. Muscle and bone ached. Steaming heat of a bath was something she was suddenly desperate for and kept that within her thinking, in her doing. There was no going back to sleep.

Visions were so dark that she did not dare. She blinked at the tears, light the candles throughout the bathing room while the hot water flowed into the bathing tub. Steam fogged the area pleasantly. To its heated depths, she poured scented oils. The little bottle was corked and put to one of the shelve. Lengths of her hair were pulled back and out of the way to drape over the side of the tub, keeping it from the sweet, oily hot water.

Better it was to scrub them from self, dress and see to starting work and help at the docks. There was work aplenty to distract the small one.

In leaning back.. eyes did not shut...but watched one of the candles. Thoughts turned to the dance of the night before...of how it had soothed her, how it had centered her in a way that gave her peace. A heart was glad that Althrae had insisted. It gave 'jra something to think of...something to grasp and keep a hold on when the world at times seemed more than a little off-kilter.

Half-lidded gaze upon the candle, the swell of her cheek met with the edge of the bathing tub.. and blinked away tears that insisted on welling up there in her eyes..proving to blur the dance of that flame..