Exhaustion

Looking up at the sky I try to deduce the time. I squint up into the sun until my eyes feel dry and I imagine I can feel my optic nerves cooking inside my skull, but I'm no wiser when I finally look away than I was a moment ago. I blink furiously, trying to wash away the ghostly blue dots that fill my vision now. Too many ghosts now, I can't imagine why I'd want to summon up more.

It's afternoon anyway. I can't remember how long it's been since I slept last but it's getting difficult to concentrate and I'm starting to feel cold. Not cold, really, but I'm getting the shivers, which is crazy since I can feel waves of heat rising out of the waist-deep grass all around me. It must be at least fourty degrees Celsius out here, probably closer to fourty-five, but my mind has somehow turned this into penetrating cold. I want to laugh but I'm afraid of where that might lead, after all, that couldn't be more than three or four steps away from total insanity, could it? Hard to say, but I don't want to take the chance.

I feel rain in the air, though -- or I imagine I do -- and all I can think is that when the night comes I hope I'm not out in it. I'm not even sure why, I guess so I don't freeze to death, but even that doesn't seem like such a terrible thing. I spend a moment thinking about this and turn to look behind me. The tree-line, several kilometers away now, stands silent and unbroken and implacable.

RUN!

I don't know where the command comes from, I'm almost certain I didn't hear it so it must be in my head, but it cuts through the layers of cotton wrapping my mind and goes directly to my legs. I run.

How much time passes then? I don't know. The rhussh-rhussh of the grass trying to trip me fills my world with a sonic wallpaper while wet, sobbing gasps underscore the futility of my attempted escape. My vision narrows, spectral forms close in on all sides. I close my eyes hard, summon up my strength for one final push. If I can just make it across the field and into the opposite forest I'm sure I can find a place to rest and regain my strength.

Then I'm floating; hovering in the air; weightless and utterly free. Then sharp stones are cutting into my cheek, electricity rips through my right eye and I convulse wildly, squealing and crying in pain and frustration and then I skid to a halt. The spectres have left but now I'm staring up at the clear blue sky through a pool of water.

Slowly my exhausted mind grasps what has happened. My perspective seems wrong because my left eye is filling up with tears and I'm lying on my back. My right eye, by contrast, has stopped sending any information my brain can interpret as visual data, only wave after wave of static that feels like -- but isn't quite -- like the feeling you get when you press too hard against your closed eyelid. I have a feeling I won't be making much use of that eye for a while.

The spectres return again, apparently having decided they had nothing better to do with their time, and this time they don't content themselves with lurking around the edges of my vision. They loom over me and the last thing I remember before the block out the sky entirely is the smell of rich earth and wild rye grass filling my nostrils.

* * *

My face is caked with something I hope is dirt when consciousness returns. My right eye is nothing but a dull ache now but my cheek has seen fit to take up the banner. It feels raw and cold and I almost reach up to touch it before deciding that I don't really want to know just yet. I try to sit up but a hard, sharp lump just below my sternum makes me think that lying on the ground a bit longer isn't such a bad idea. My left eye has cleared now, at least, and I can see the blue sky has turned pink. So much for resting in the forest, but I've been here for ... how long? Hours at least, and nothing has found me yet. Maybe I should just stay here for the night.

* * *

I'm freezing. I wake up in agony as my teeth chatter, my right eye growls angrily and I feel insects crawling over my bloody cheek. The sky is filled with cold, distant lights arranged in patterns I could never see but I've always been assured are there. I look for something, anything that will tell me what time it is, but like my attempt earlier today -- I now think of it as this morning despite having been sure before that it was afternoon -- I fail miserably.

I sniffle and I realize that the tip of my nose feels like it's been dipped in ice-water. Frigid snot collects in the back of my throat and I cough as I try to clear it. Pain lances my chest through my breast-bone and I let out a gurgling cry of frustration.

Then I hear them. Voices, calling to each other in the strange, clipped tones I don't understand but know to be a language. I thought it was Spanish at first, but I've listened carefully to them for the last few months and I'm almost certain it is something different now.

I lie still, holding my breath, hoping they won't be able to find me in the darkness with only my single cough to direct them. I'm about to allow myself to believe I may yet escape when I hear the barking of dogs coming from somewhere much too close for my comfort. I don't remember which way I came from but I hope I didn't get turned around when I fell. Summoning strength I didn't know I had I roll over, ignoring the starburst of agony this brings to my chest, and scramble to my feet. Shouts of anger and triumph erupt from the field around me, but I barely notice them or the dancing lanterns as I somehow find the strength to break into a sprint.

The first dog is on me before I get anywhere near the trees. Powerful jaws tear into the meat of my left calf and instantly I collapse into a heap as the last of my strength leaves me. The second dog goes for my face but I get my right arm up just in time to protect myself. Breath reeking of rotting meat fills my face as my arm is jerked violently away. Perhaps the third dog would have gone for my throat had the handler not jerked it back at the last instant. The other two were also pulled away and I curled up into a ball, sobbing and begging for my life. An impossibly large shadow loomed over me and breath that smelled sickeningly of corn and blood assaulted me.

Nee caelia gyanna, otmya.

Casting Shadows

The gunmetal sky rarely let the small town of Hope Springs feel like it ever aspired to more than twilight, but compared to the gloom of The Reagent's interior, it was nearly blinding as Mayor emerged. He squinted his eyes and did his best to ignore the dull spikes of pain the adjustment sent through his temples. She was inside and somehow just seeing her in there had left him feeling like he was dealing with one of the worst hangovers of his life. What had she been doing there? Sarah had said she was looking for him, but that could mean anything. He hadn't seen Her in months -- had allowed himself, in fact, to begin to believe the whole affair had been the onset of some age-related dementia. The idea wasn't all that difficult to believe, after all, when he stopped to consider how few people had ever actually seen the shadowy woman with no name. Was it really that much of a stretch to believe that he had imagined all of it? Including the few brief exchanges he'd had with others about her?

Then again, if he had, maybe he was imagining this much too. Maybe he was actually sitting in his office on Redemption Row, the door closed and the blinds drawn, having another bad dream. Or perhaps some sort of seizure. That would be something of a relief, really.

"I'll bet you thought I'd forgotten about you," her dulcet voice set all the hair on the back of his neck standing at attention. It was at once the most accomplished of performers singing a beautiful aria and the sound of a spider walking across a sheet of paper.

Struggling to keep his voice calm, Mayor could do nothing more than mutter a single-syllable response, "No."

Her soft laughter was somehow worse and more pleasing than her non-greeting. "Now is that any way to welcome me back after so long?" He hadn't yet turned to look at her, didn't really trust himself to, but he knew what he would see if he did. Her long black hair would be covering half of her face, her full lips pulled back in a smile that could almost be mistaken for friendly, and her one visible eye would be an almost luminescent green, glittering with the ominous joy of a child with a magnifying glass and an ant hill.

"I can't help you anymore," he croaked. A speech of epic proportions, all things considered. His greatest fear just then was that she might simply let that statement hang in the air, expecting him to expand on it or provide some justification. Instead she giggled almost girlishly and brushed a fingertip along the back of Mayor's neck.

"Oh, that's okay," she purred. "We -- I won't be asking you for any. More. Favours," she let her finger trail along his neck as she slowly circled him. She was wearing a padded leather jacket and pants, matching boots that were all buckles and snaps and came up to her knees, and a wide belt with a large buckle made out of some gleaming blue metal. Her hair was indeed falling over her face, this time her right side was concealed, and that threatening, ebullient light shone from the green depths of her left eye.

"Why--" he might have managed more than this, at least, so great was his surprise at this turn of events, but he was silenced by the feather touch of her finger on his lips.

"You can feel it, can't you?" She paused, looked up at the leaden clouds, then back at him. "You can feel it in the air, can't you? The turning? The falling? The passing of the old into the new? It's already begun," this last was a breathy whisper that might have set a younger man's heart racing but only served to pour an extra measure of dread into his soul.

"What are you--" he tried again but again she silenced him with her finger pressed ever so lightly on his lips.

"You can," she said, this time a statement rather than a question, and she was right. That sense of weight, the coming storm, the foreboding he had been unable to name; it hadn't been just today he'd felt it, though it was more acute than ever since he had seen the signs in the sky of an actual storm heading this way, it had been weeks now, perhaps months.

It had been a familiar feeling, though until she had drawn it out into the open, he hadn't recognized it for what it was. When he had been a boy, living in Arier Inlet, he had been standing on the beach watching a naval battle far out in the water. It had been the final days of the Cacyanscen War and by then the fighting had often been small skirmishes in unexpected, and largely strategically insignificant, places.

A Cacyanscen dreadnaught had been caught by three Seurbine destroyers somewhere far out on the water. Far enough away that he could see the flashes of gunfire and count to ten before the dull booms of the explosions crashed over his chest. The fight seemed to last a long time but eventually he saw a flare on the dreadnaught that expanded into a proper conflagration. One of the three destroyers broke off but the other two continued the fight. The dreadnaught, for it's part, was wounded, clearly dying, but still perfectly capable of sending it's killers to the ocean floor first.

It wasn't until the first destroyer started to sink that the young boy who would one day be mayor of Hope Springs, started to think he might be too close to this fight after all. The waves seemed to be getting more and more pronounced and the explosions were taking on a sharper, more threatening edge. The fire on the dreadnaught was completely out of control now and he could see the shapes of men backlit by it scrambling around the decks. Then, almost in slow motion, the entire ship was engulfed in flames.

The roar was deafening, the next day his ears were still ringing, and the force of the sound knocked him to the sandy beach just as a particularly large wave crashed over him and started to drag him out into the surf. He panicked, clawing wildly at the sand beneath him and screaming. A warmth around his legs told him that his bladder had released, but at this moment he didn't care, as long as he didn't pay the ultimate price for his inattention while watching the giants do battle.

He had that feeling now, too. The one he'd had while watching the tiny figures moving along the decks of the doomed dreadnaught, standing safely, or so he thought, on the beach. That sense of things having gone terribly wrong, a path set upon with no turns, and a powerlessness to do anything save watch the inevitable conclusion.

"You can," she repeated softly, clearly pleased with herself. "I can see it in your eyes."

His throat felt like it was covered with the dust that covered the road. As he tried to speak his voice first refused to work, then came out in a hoarse whisper, "What are you doing here?"

"I've come here to save you from what's to come." Unexpected honesty in both her voice and in her one visible eye. He had never seen her look so completely open in all the time he had known her.

"Why?"

Her smile shifted again, still pleased, still open, but now showing just a hint of her top teeth. "A thank you. For everything you've done for us. All you have to do is ask."