She knew she was dreaming. She could only be this happy, this safe in a dream.
His hands were busy, exploring her skin, running down her belly to the softness of her thighs. A soft puff of air leaves her lips in response and her eyes roll closed in pleasure. He pulls her tighter towards him, tracing a soft trail of kisses across her neck. She twists her head over her shoulder to meet his gaze, to drink in the expression on his face right as she draws him into a kiss…
Then the warmth and comfort of that moment is abruptly gone and she sees him again, this time his eyes are wide and he is screaming slow words she cannot understand. The very earth seems to be raining chaos around them. Boulders and chunks of stone shatter at her feet. He seems to be raising his hand to her, reaching out. She does as well, willing her hand to move faster, to grab him and hold him tight against the onslaught. Their fingers were just about to touch.
Elriel gasped like a drowning woman as she convulsed awake. The bed was empty next to her, although the sheets were crumpled frantically from her dreaming. Slowly, she righted herself and sat on the edge of her bed, breathing hard and shaking as she tried to wipe the clamminess from her forehead. It was the third night this week she had been shaken awake by her dreams. And she could feel the effects of her sleeplessness even more keenly now that the spirit-eater curse had been lifted from her. The hunger had eaten at her soul, preventing her from resting, from consuming normal food. Yet without its supernatural drive to feed, her mortality had crept up on her in all its weakness – the monster no longer gave her the strength to face her worst fears.
She rose unsteadily to her feet, swaying awkwardly with the added weight bearing down in her belly. She was several months along now, although she had no idea how long her term would be. Were elvish pregnancies longer than human ones, since their lifespans are so generous when compared to those of their human companions? Elriel shook her head bitterly. If only she could trade all her future centuries if things could have turned out differently.
Having reached the washbasin, she dipped her smallish hands into the water and wiped them slowly down her face. The mirror on the wall seemed to beckon to her in the half-light of early morning and, though she tried to avert her eyes, she found herself staring at a stranger. Her olive skin was unusually pale. There were deep greenish rings under her eyes now, and her black irises gazed back at her as hollowly as she felt.
There was no use trying to sleep anymore, that much was clear. She slipped off the plain nightgown and pulled on an undershirt and a simple brown robe. There was no need for special enchantments or armor here. The Academy of Shapers and Binders was the safest place she could ever – or probably would ever – be.
Her bare feet made no sound on the hallway carpet as she made her way to Safiya's laboratory. Her friend wouldn't mind if she ambled by the walls of bookshelves and quietly observed her many magical devices until the sun rose. She went there often when she had a need to pass the time, and oddly enough, it was usually empty since Safiya was busy with her new role as headmistress, as well as her continuing duties as a professor.
The room was not comfortingly empty, and Elriel knew immediately as her hand touched the doorknob. She was almost nauseated by the wave of anger, hurt and jealousy that hit her more like a physical blow than an emotional one. She suppressed the urge to back away and find her comfort in another bare room, but she knew these feelings would not leave her now no matter where she hid.
He was leaning bare-chested on the window sill, seeming to be more of shadow in sharp contrast to the growing morning light behind him. As she met his gaze the area around him seemed to glow sharper and more colorful despite the grayness. The resonance between them was thick with his emotions, finding expression more in physical feelings than in words.
Her heart began to beat faster and she halting reached out to him before snatching up her shaking hands and hiding them behind her back. It was no better than when she would stand before Daeghun as a child. Back then she would have covered one foot with the other and hung her head, understanding whatever wrongdoing she had done and promising not to do it again. They didn't need to speak any words. Daeghun's look of disappointment would have made things clear enough.
The waking dream swirled around her and as she met Gann's gaze, his emotions burst out again, knocking the air from her lungs. She weathered it, terrified, although her stomach began to churn, not so much with anxiety, but with anger.
"I've told you," she snapped. "I loved him. Is it no longer possible to have a dream without you in it?!"
Another wave of Gann's conflicted emotions hit her, just as hard, and she felt immediately guilty. But he rose to his feet, nonetheless, and gently slipped his arms around her middle. "I'm sorry, my love. It is difficult to remember to… pull back from more private dreams, especially when little else between us is private." He drew her closer until her protruding belly was the only thing separating them. His hands worked their way gently upwards until they reached her face, which he cupped tenderly, and leaned his forehead on hers.
Elriel felt her anger ebb away, replaced with a wash of relief that subsided as quickly as it came and left her feeling drained. But the corners of her mouth twitched upwards in the beginning of a smile. Her black eyes narrowed slightly, then closed as her lips searched for his. Through their kiss she could feel the dream weaving around them, momentarily buoying up her aching body in a delicious reprieve. His hands left her face, finding solace in her neck, the small of her back, and other places… until one came to rest gently on the bump between them.
Gann broke the kiss, and she could feel his sudden shyness and awe at the creature growing inside of her. His dark gray eyes met her own and crackled with intensity. "I want to spend every moment of my life with you – both of you – in waking and in dreaming," he said. She began to smile, but then her mouth twisted darkly as a stray thought crossed her mind. Gann flinched as he felt it through the dreamscape they had wrapped around themselves, and the weave of the dream fell into waking as if it were water suspended, then left to splash upon the floor. She pursed her lips together and clasped her hands behind her back again. I don't know who this baby belongs to. Some things were better left unsaid.
"I can't stay here," she said quietly, her voice cracked and small. Gann took a step back, quickly recovering his half-smirk despite the turmoil she could feel rolling off him. "Why ever not, my love? Have not the spirits and… the scenery of Rashemen enticed you to stay?" He was a few steps away from her now, free to let her eyes rove over him as the room had brightened to true morning light. Again, the corners of her mouth twitched upwards as she allowed him to take control of their waking dream.
They were no longer in Safiya's laboratory, but in a glade near the Wells of Lurue. Telthor spirits peacefully glowed dimmer and brighter as their consciousness would carry them to another place. They no longer feared her as her curse was long-gone and they looked to Gann with a newly-found respect as the man who had tamed the spirit-eater and taken her as his mate. Never mind their interpretation of events.
They were making love on the soft forest floor with little regard for anything around them. Elriel could smell the freshness of the leaves and the gurgling water. She was at peace here. It was the best paradise a wild elf druid could ever dream of.
Even in the dream, she hung her head in shame, only to look up and see a version of herself, naked and cross-legged, looking more like a wild elf than she ever had along the Sword Coast. In her arms was a small bundle wrapped in furs, drinking her milk hungrily. Her mate sat behind her with his head on her shoulder and his arms curled around her waist as he watched his son, their son…
Elriel closed her eyes and shook her head, teasing apart the dream at the corners until it unraveled. This life that Gann could give her was a good one. In a way, it worked so perfectly with her nature and her strange heritage. But there was only one reason why she could not happily take Gann's hand and begin this life with him in the wilds of Rashemen.
She reached out to him again, this time smoothing the hair from his eyes and resting her hand on his cheek. "If you had lost me, however long it had been, and you did not know whether I lived or died, would you ever stop searching for me?" Gann in turn hung his head, although he wrapped his fingers around her palm and turned his head slightly to kiss it.
Banishing his thoughts further, he straightened as if a spell had been lifted from him. "I shall go purchase some supplies, although the spirits know what Red Wizards try to pass as food, so maybe we would be better just setting off and living off the land." A smirk crossed his face as Elriel was still wordless and wide-eyed, though he continued on. "We had best make an appointment with the headmistress, as her time is so much more valuable these days. Perhaps she will be able to squeeze us in between all that research and expelling murderous students."
"Gann…" she said, but she knew the response before it left her mouth. The smirk on his face was gone, replaced with the eyes of a ravenous wolf. He crashed against her in one fluid, ferocious kiss, only a fraction of the love and passion he had for her evident. It left her shaking again, though not with fear as she had been earlier. She let him hold her for a few minutes as she laid her head on his chest, listening to his heart. Then she took a step back, squeezed his hands and stepped out into the hallway to find Safiya.