2 - The Recurring Nightmare (2)
Ilari blushed furiously when his cat familiar mentioned *that guy*.
Alair eyed his human and rolled his eyes in a way only felines could – demonstrating annoyance, exasperation and elegance at the same time. Then he huffed again and suggested in a completely matter of fact tone of voice - "Why don't you write to him about your weakening water element, Ilari? That guy may actually be able to answer a few questions for you, don't you think? And even if he doesn't know much, at least you will feel better after speaking to him about this. So, pray tell me, why are you so determined that you wouldn't write to him at all?"
Alair's tone turned rather accusing by the end of his dialogue.
'Why wouldn't he? What was stopping him?' Ilari considered, biting his lip with mild nervousness. He fought off the urge to fall back flat onto the bed and stay like this, with the reassuring weight of Alair on his chest and looking at the ceiling for answers that clearly weren't there, and would never be. Instead, he turned on the night-lamp, placed his disgruntled cat familiar who was currently moonlighting as a hugging companion onto the pillow, and slipped out of the bed.
His thoughts wandered to the recurring nightmare that had plagued him for many, many years now – for most of his young life, in fact. And it was always unsettling, leaving him feeling raw and wound up and anxious.
Tonight was no different.
The images from that day fifteen years ago were all jumbled up in his head, even now unable to create a full picture. It was very frustrating for Ilari – who, by his own admittance, suffered from mild obsessive compulsive disorder and needed to organize anything and everything around him in neat piles. Perhaps he ought to look at the data he had collected over the years once again, Ilari thought, making his way towards his large study desk.
Sitting down at the desk, Ilari tied his long hair into a ponytail before reaching out to the top drawer where, under piles of his curriculum material, a worn-out notebook lay hidden - full of his nervous handwriting, pictures, and meticulously clipped out articles. He flipped through the pages at random, stopping finally at the crude sketch of a woman next to a printed photo he had managed to dig up some time ago in the school library while looking for official reports from his late grandmother's research. It was all a coincidence like this.
The woman in the picture looked kind but tired as if she didn't remember the last time she slept properly. She smiled into the camera, though, leaning on the shoulder of a taller man with similarly tired eyes and a wolf sitting by his feet. There was a snake curled around her neck. A snake that was very much missing in both Ilari's memories and nightmares.
His deceased grandmother was in the photo, too, alongside a bunch of other people in lab coats. Finding the picture didn't help him much. Not with the nightmares and not with looking for the boy he met back then. After their home burnt down, it wasn't hard to find the names of the family who lived there, as they were all suspected to die in flames (it was easier to think of them as "the family" and of her as "the woman", still). The surprising fact was that there was no information about the boy that was also, supposedly, the 'son' for the sake of whose 'success' Ilari was kidnapped in the first place.
Ilari took a deep breath before opening the notebook on one of the last empty pages and quickly scribbling down the outline of his newest nightmare. Next, he highlighted the parts that were the most recurring in blue, and ones that he saw only sporadically in green. He crossed out with a thin line all the details about the fire that he knew were just a manifestation of his long-lasting regret for not bringing the boy he met home with him and instead letting him go back alone to face his mother…and the fire, maybe, probably. Ilari himself never saw the flames.
He took a controlled breath. By now, he knew the boy was alive and even if the incident left scars, he didn't seem bothered by them but years of build-up worry and guilt were not so easy to dispel. Writing everything down and separating it meticulously, putting every part of the nightmare in the right drawer inside his head was helping Ilari calm down. Additionally, over the years of dreaming it over and over, he realized there were a few things that his nightmares got right where his memory failed initially. First and foremost, the woman's blood had really smelled different - it was something he confirmed years later, after he was taken to a crime scene during his short internship at the local police station. Secondly, the symbols painted on the other boy's face were similar to ones he found in a very old, unpopular research about the magic lanes and something that was called the shadow gallery. The researcher was unable to provide any evidence for the existence of the latter and died in an accident during his own experiment. The afterworld said something about him using dangerous substitutes because his research was underfunded. It was a lead Ilari still tried to follow, albeit unsuccessfully as of yet.
With a sigh, he put a fat exclamation mark beside the last bit of his nightmare, where the shadow returned to devour him. He bit at the pen absent-mindedly. When exactly had the shadow started closing in on him in his dreams? He noticed it for the first time around a month ago, after a hellish final exam in his magic warrior class. He got his license straight away and after going home, he dreamt of the shadow that left a scar over his heart that was visible only in the mirror. And thank all the elements, it was only in the mirror and not too clear at that, as his reflection tended to look a little run-down no matter how spotless the mirror was. If he had a real scar, there would be no way of ever hiding it from his family.