Dreams of Destiny
//-Wesley ran from the house, the screaming of his parents both beginning to resonate with one another, like a hellish cacophany of noise. Each one seemed to pick up when the other ended, and before too long he could feel his ears bleed. Lifting a hand up to the side of his head, he pulled it away to see blood there, staining his hand. Jay stood a short distance away, his brother on all fours, his hands over his ears as he too screamed.
All of the sounds continued to build, until silence reigned. For a moment Wesley simply felt that there was so much noise that his brain couldn't process it. But soon he realized that there was nothing. Jay was frozen on the ground, his face a veritable mask of terror. Wes looked down at his own hands, the blood still there, but beginning to fade away as he looked. No, not fade.
It was losing its color, fading to an off-white, almost grey looking fluid. As he looked beneath him, he could see the ground beginning to lose its color as well. It was as if he were watching the ripples from a drop of water in a still pond. Except the only ripple was a rapidly expanding field of grey that emanated away from him. There was no sound. Things were just steadily losing their color, their identity until everything was a monochrome haze.
He looked back, seeing that his brother, too, was now among the grey. He tried to open his mouth, to speak, but nothing came out. Or rather, he was certain that he was saying something, but it was as if his words were stolen away from him. The world shuddered once, and the buildings in the distance began to turn to dust.
The circle of grey that had rapidly expanded outward away from him now was retracting just as fast, and as it did so, everything in that circle began to simply fade away to dust. His eyes wide, he turned to look at his brother, still frozen in that grey substance. He tried to call out, but his voice was still not working, and so instead he pushed his way forward, coming closer to his brother in some valiant attempt to save him.
He stumbled inward, attempting to throw his arms around Jay, to protect him from what was coming. He held onto his older brother even as the circle contracted, rushing toward them both with oppressive speed, until it was nearly touchi-//
"Hey!"
The voice of Evie cut through his mind and his sleep both, the young man not entirely sure why she had shouted directly into his ear to wake him up. That had been his first thought. His second was why he felt another person's body so close to his own. The third, lagging thought, was that the dream had caused him to take action, and due to that...
"Wesley! I am your friend but you need to let go! We gotta get up!" the girl called again, and once more WEs realized just how close she was. He blinked, his mind racing as the memories of the dream started to fade... before he realized that he was actively still clutching onto Evie.
He paused, before steadily unfurling his arms from around her, sinking back onto the bed. "Sorry," he spoke quietly, his face white as a sheet from the nightmare he'd been forced into. His body was covered in a sheen of sweat, and as he sat down, he simply stared straight ahead, not looking at anything.
"You're fine! Well, you're not really. You were shouting in your sleep and so I came to wake you up!" she spoke cheerily, as if she weren't tired at all. "But now you're awake and not screaming, so you must be better!" she confirmed, giving him a swift punch to the shoulder to punctuate her statement.
Wes frowned as he lifted his hand to his face, rubbing at it for several moments. "Yeah. Sorry," he apologized again, not really able to make eye contact. The dream was worse, tonight. He had it last night and he had expected it to be from stress, but this was twice in a row. Sure, he was still stressed about everything that had happened, from him learning that he wasn't normal as far as his Framework meant, and having to orchestrate some way for him to still participate, and then the run in with Andrew and his crew...
Okay, so there were a lot of things. Still, he hadn't expected to reveal his hand to his allies like that. Jay knew, and Sasha had been privy to a few of these, but he'd just met Evie and Ted yesterday, and yet Evie was the one who had come to wake him up? "Jay still asleep?" he asked, glancing to her.
"Maybe? He was shouting too, so Sasha went to wake him up. I know that Ted needs his sleep so I figured I should come and be the one to make you stop yelling." The girl shrugged. "But now you're not shouting anymore, so I'm going to go back to bed. Good night!" she called, and waved enthusiastically (which Wes only barely managed a return wave) before he lowered his hand after she'd left, his hand moving up to his face once more.
That was... something. That dream had been distressing in a way that he hadn't expected. It was like the old one that he had, but worse, somehow. He looked at his hands, feeling the energy from his Devour Elements Skill roiling through him for a moment before it went away as he let the energy stop flooding through him. "Damn it," he swore before he stood up, beginning to make his way outside.
He couldn't sleep, not right after that. Of course, he also couldn't just go out and do what he wanted. There were dozens of other camps around him. So doing something dangerous was out of the question, which left him with no other option but to walk.
His footsteps carried him up out of the slight hill to the main area where he saw others mostly setup in tents, with a few having combined the tents into a major, larger one, and yet still others had an Earthshaper like they had, (only they seemed to be significantly better at construction than Ted was). There were a few that had a fire going and he wondered what they might've burned for fuel, but realized that there were objects from the ruined parts of Haven they probably could have gone out and looted. It wasn't like many people lived there anymore.
"Can't sleep?"
A sudden, cheerful voice spoke up a short distance away, and he noted it was from one of the camps he was passing by. A girl with bright, almost pastel green hair and a skin tone that wasn't too different from coffee with a fair bit of creamer in it stood, watching him. She had an ethereal, almost ghost-like quality to her, and the contrast of her bright hair against her darker skin in the firelight was a bit more entrancing than he'd expected.
"Are you sleepwalking?" she asked after a moment, and Wes realized that he was staring.
"Huh? No, no, sorry. Just not really fully awake, I guess." He shook his head again, rubbing at his eyes. "But yeah, couldn't sleep. Worried about what tomorrow will bring."
She beamed a smile at him. It wasn't manic excitement like Evie, nor was it a quiet indifference like Sasha. It felt warm, and he felt a smile of his own creeping onto his features from it. "Well don't worry about it. Tomorrow's going to be rough on everyone, not just you."
"Yeah, thanks," he spoke, rolling his eyes.
At that, a grin lit up her features, before she glanced over her shoulder at her camp. "Hope to see you tomorrow. Good luck on the sleep!" she called, before beginning to move back toward her tent.
"Yeah, you too," he responded, having to take his gaze away from her for a moment before he shook his head, beginning to make his way back toward their own place. He paused mid-step, realizing that he didn't know her name. He wasn't about to go back and ask her for it, but she was sticking in his mind.
He closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing at his features. If nothing else, the short chat with her had calmed his nerves somewhat, and he felt that he could probably fall back asleep, if nothing else. She'd said that she hoped to see him tomorrow. Did that mean she wanted to see him again?
Heat rose to his own cheeks, but he pushed the thoughts away. She had just been someone that he'd met when he was feeling vulnerable. That was the only reason she was sticking out in his mind. Wes' mind seemed to accept this reasoning, and as he stepped back into the earthen 'hut' that was his home, he could feel fatigue starting to hit again.
With a sigh, he lay down, covering himself with the tent scraps before sleep once more overtook him... this time into a peaceful, dreamless slumber.