I was having that dream again.
***
“You wanted to be a bigger part of this story, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did,” I answer, wiping a final fleck of spilled grey matter from my chin. It had taken a while to cobble myself back together, after the ordeal I’d been through. I still felt that pieces of myself were missing, shattered and scattered somewhere out there in the dark. “But that was never really the plan, you know.”
“It could have been, if you’d taken the chance. If you’d made time.”
“That would have been a mistake.” I smile wryly. “I wanted to make a mark, to play a part, and so I did. But it was never my story. I came far too late for that. I was a Herald, not a Hero or Soulmate or Shadow. Not a role I’m suited for, it’s true, but that’s the role I was made to fill.
“No,” I tell myself again, slipping away quietly from the scene unfolding beyond the breached wall. “It wasn’t my story; it’s theirs, so long in the making.”
“What will happen to you now? What will you become?”
I don’t have an easy answer to that.
“Well,” I say, at last. My eyes gleam under the soft glow of the screen as I play with the edge of a broken sword. “That’s another story entirely, isn’t it?”
***
Something was touching me. Large, spider-like fingers, crawling and creeping across my face, my throat, over and under the stiff collar of my jacket…
With a primal and caterwauling hiss, I lashed out, nails elongating and slashing at the first purchase they met. My whole body was suddenly wriggling and fighting, every inch of me rebelling at having been invaded, before my eyes had even fully opened and come to focus. I don’t like being touched.
When my mind did override the adrenaline enough to give me names for what I was seeing, my alarm was no less for it. The man in the white bird mask was my aggressor, the one who had been looking at me- at my stitches- when I’d been found in the back of the inn. I didn’t like being looked at, either, and I bared my teeth at him now, kicking as I squirmed away and casting furtive looks at my surroundings. I was still in the same place I’d been, at my best guess; the last thing I recalled had been waking up in this place, and asking a strange girl about… someone…
I inhaled sharply, scrabbling at my sides for the man’s coat. Where was it? Was it still here? I didn’t understand why it was so important to me that I find it, but it was. I nearly sighed with relief when my hand met familiar-smelling leather, and I instantly pulled it tight to my chest, abruptly woozy.
How long had it been since I got some calcium?
My eyes focused again on Doctor Surgeon, a low growl in my throat. I couldn’t let him know how tired and disoriented I was.
One should never show a predator weakness.
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