1 Awakening
A chilly breeze passed through the vast, open farmland surrounding the walled city of Morohh, filling the countryside with the sound of thousands and thousands of tall stalks of grass rustling against one another. Wave after wave passed through the ocean-like fields as the sound echoed through the quiet Spring night. In one of the many quaint, rustic shacks dotting the farmland, a young girl tossed and turned in her sleep as a vivid dream unfolded in her mind.
Suddenly, she sat straight up! Her eyes opened wide, her breathing erratic. She glanced around the room, or rather around her entire house, glancing at the open window and the moonlight passing through it and onto the desk beneath it, at the small brick fireplace, at her parents laying sound asleep in their bed, and at the familiar door leading outside, finally verify where she was. Without much though, she placed her hand on her face, pinching her nose and trying to breath in, verifying that she is indeed unable to breath through her hand and thus must be truly awake.
'I should write my dream down….'
Groggily, she climbed out of her tiny bed, the floorboards creaking underneath her, and made her way to the desk fumbling for the lantern sitting on its edge, and with a few clicks from a flint spark lighter, she set the candle inside it ablaze. She reached for one of her father's lead pencil sticks and a blank sheet of dull, dirty yellow paper off the top of the stack and got to work diligently inscribing the key points she can remember from her dream, working backwards from the last thing she remembered.
The bright moonlight and the flickering candlelight illuminate page after page as she unraveled the long story of her dream. Hours pass as she struggles to recall each scene that occurred before the last, desperately scribbling down each point as she recalls it before racking her brain for the events that led up to it. When she's finally done, laid out before her on the desk are three pages almost completely filled on both sides with what feels like an entire lifetime of events, jotted down in reverse order.
In English…
Written down so naturally, even though she never learned how to read or write….
But he did… Theodore, the man she had dreamt she was… in the life she relived in her dream….
Her hands shuddered as she clenched her notes, 'T-they'll think I'm possessed by a spirit! Driven mad by a monster or some evil god!! That's right, this isn't Earth, this is Shraah, there's no such thing as English here….'
Quickly putting together a plan, she grabs the three pages along with the lit lantern off the desk and snuck her way past her parents, and outside. Then, one by one, she rolled each page up and stuck them into the lantern, lighting them and setting them onto the dirt before her, watching them slowly curl and crackle as they turn to ash.
Ahrey, this young girl, just a few days from turning six years old, sat huddled, hugging her legs as she frowns and watches the only records of her past life as they're eaten away by the flames. The chilly wind tickling her tan skin and rustling her short and messy light copper hair. The short sleeve sleeping gown did little to keep her warm, but the brisk spring morning air is just enough to wake her up, filling her bright turquoise eyes with clarity. Behind her soft, round face full of youth and innocence, her mind worked at a million miles a minute, and in the light of the breaking dawn, she steeled herself for a life of isolation as she vows never to tell another soul of her newfound, fragmented memories….
