prologue: firelight
In the night, the air waifs in from the window, making my dreams colder than the last. I shiver as I fall into strange settings, where my mind has been before. I remember it all.
'I see shapes that move in the dark, swift figures of fur and teeth, eyes that glow green, shots of yellow and drops of red. I am lost within the chaos and searching for an opening when I catch a glimpse of white teeth flashing. I cry out as I hear snarls and yelps and flesh being torn apart. Then I hear nothing but the soft sounds of night. " What horrible dream have I been sucked into now ", I wonder to myself. I see myself, as a child ; and how this astounds me, for I have no memory of my innocent childhood that has NOT been warped by my now chaotic mind. I am in a farmhouse, frightened by the noises in my room. All of a sudden, there are loud shouts and commotions in the barn. I rush toward the sounds, hearing my mother's voice and seeking comfort.
" This has gotten out of hand, Isaac." I slowly walk toward my mother's voice, but stop when I hear two others.
" You and I both know that the sake of the Council is at the edge of exposure." This one's voice was male.
" I can't help but agree with him, Nicolette." Also male. " He has been seen trading secrets with the city. We cannot let this go unhandled."
I stepped forward slightly to see a man crotched cowardly into a corner of the barn, his cloths scratched and torn. My mother stood next to a tall burly man with hair that shown gold in the lamp light and a thinner man on her right, with eyes of a forest green and menacing. Mother looked uneasily at him, then at the poor man.
" Ripping him to shreds might be punishment for him sneaking around like a weasel ", replied the one called Isaac.
" What good will that do ", my mother, outraged , responded, " but make us even more suspicious than we already are?"
All of a sudden, a wolf appeared jumping out toward the now terrified man.
" Mommy!" , I cried out.
Then there was a flash of flesh, blood and bone, scattered on the barn floor. The smell sickened and entranced me all at once and then black.
The result of the dreams' end was always the same. I'd find myself in a cold sweat, on the floor. But the worst of the outcome was that I'd find my hands bloody from my nails each morning. Bandage after bandage would not stop the nightmare from coming. Sometimes I'd wonder it would ever stop. Highly unlikely. Sometimes I'd sit awake in bed frightened by my own dreams and not knowing what to do or who to turn to. Certainly not my nurse, for she would leek out to my father and the other servents. I cannot even speak to my mother, who had the answer to every single problem there was or one you simply created for she was- is deceased. She died when I was 10. My mother was my connection to the living world and now that she is gone, I fear that I myself am drifting. Father has already sold most of her things or that is what he wants me to believe. Then I start to think that my father did not care if she was alive or not for I always see him in such a serious and absent minded state that makes me think that I never had a mother to begin with. But I know she exsited. The only things that she left me were an opened letter with a crescent moon on it and a red lacey cape that I've wore forever. The entricate lace patterns remind me of her life and how it ended so suddenly. Oh how I wish the cape could go on and on forever. Even forever has to end.