Okay, this is story is timed a little before the Gang - Raistlin, Caramon, Tas, Sturm, Kitara, Tanis, and Flint - split up for about 5 years after swearing an oath to return to the Inn of the Lost Home. At the beginning of the first few chapters we will be watching my OC, Terra - or Beryl as she likes to be called - as she goes along her life in the not-so-quiet city of Las Vegas, Nevada and all the while she is wishing for a way out. This is the beginning of how Beryl finds her way...
Disclaimer: I do not own Dragonlance but Beryl/Terra is all mine, honey-buns.
"Okay, where the fuzz am I?" I growled out through my chattering teeth. I folded my arms across my chest and gripped my sides, trying to create some kind of shield between my body and the freezing, biting wind. Seriously! It felt as if it was literally slicing through my skin like the sharpest of knives! My shirt may have been long-sleeved and black, and my pajama bottoms covering all of my legs, but that still didn't stop it from causing me much discomfort.
Not only did the horrible temperature of a hundred below zero make me feel uncomfortable, but so did the feel of the forest around me. Yes, I said forest. One minute you're asleep and then you find yourself standing smack-dab in the middle of nowhere! Funny how these kind of things turn out, right? I am now standing in a forest, which not only did the trees scream horror-movie-death-scene but the air...it didn't feel right. Like it was evil and corrupt. Maybe I was reading into it a bit much...
"Or not." My eyes widened at what I saw, floating just feet in front of me...yes, I said floating! A horribly twisted, and ghastly looking creature that had no mouth to speak of - ha, I made a funny - but its eyes were definitely there. They seemed to ooze darkness; a blackness that made my skin crawl like...raw evil. I couldn't move. I could barely breathe. How could this be happening? This wasn't right! I sank to my knees and huddled into myself, trying to close the sight out. I clenched my eyes shut and tried to block it all out - the whistling and howling of the wind, the creaking of the forest around me, and most terrifying of all was the shrieking noise that the creature was making. Even without a mouth, it still could scream! But nothing, not even my will-power, could block out what my soul told me - I should run.
Only when I snuck a peak out from my self-proclaimed stronghold of defense, just to see if it was all a dream and the wasn't some disgusting and horrifying thing near me, and when I came face to face with it did I realize I should have listened to my instincts. In that moment, when my scream hit the air, did I run.
I scrambled to my feet, still shrieking in pure, un-adulterated terror and crashed through the undergrowth. Well, there wasn't much undergrowth to speak of - mostly just a few weeds and ferns here and there - but there sure as hell were a lot of spider-webs, spindly vines that hung off of trees, tree branches, and many other annoying things that seemed to only have one purpose at that very, life-threatening moment: to hinder my escape from my nightmare.
I didn't stop, I didn't look, nor did I even think of where I was going. I just wanted to get out of there! No, I had to get out of there! My very life depended on it. Although my mind kept on telling me it wasn't real, it was a nightmare and that it couldn't hurt me, my heart, soul, and very being told me that it was very real. It was like my mind was this tiny whisper while the others parts of me were screaming - just like I was right now.
I don't know how long I ran, or how long I screamed, but I sure as hell know that at the minute my voice gave out, and I finally tripped on a betraying root, that I was dead. I was to die right here. My life, at age seventeen, was going to be destroyed by something from my deepest of fears, from my deepest of horrors and nightmares.
Then, as if Fate had decided it had had its fun with toying with my failing heart, someone caught me as I came crashing to the ground. Or, should I say, they tried to catch me. Like sand on the beach, I trickled through their fingers - and through their very clothes and flesh. I heard gasps and cries of shock, but nothing could have surprised me more than the face I saw up there. the face from my most beautiful of dreams, no, the face of my most beautiful nightmare: Raistlin Majere, the Master of Past and Present, Hero of the Lance, and over-all wonderful person, had tried to catch me when I fell.
As soon as I realized this, I hit the forest floor. When my body hit, it felt as if someone had just bleepin' peeled away the first, second, and third layers of my skin, seared my nerve-endings, then taken them and split them in half, straight down the middle, and all under half a second. Like any normal person - although, I'm truly not - I screamed. In the other half of that second - other than screaming uncontrollably - I disappeared, vanishing in a billowing cloud of golden, ruby-red, glittering mist.
To say the least, I was freaking out when I shot out of my bed, bathed in cold sweat, and breathing hard...not to mention to find that I was alive. After all of that, I was alive, and well, and unharmed. After all of my worrying, and all of my screaming - which I soon found I really had been crying out - I'd been doing it all for nothing, I came out to find it had been just a dream. An unpleasantly sick and twisted nightmare, but a result of my inner-most fears, hopes, and wishes - not to mention ugly truths - nonetheless.
I lay there, motionless - barely breathing - and thought. Yes, I thought, but not about my dream. Not about what the creature had been, or what in the hell had happened, but I thought about my life. About what I really hoped for and what I dreaded. About what I really treasure and what I abhorred. And what I truly wanted, more than anything else: I wanted to live.
Not to live, like the pop-culture way of living - all of the fame, fortune, and stupid parties. Not the attention or the wealth. I wanted to life - to be free and to appreciate life. But how could I do it at home? How could I live, truly live the way I wanted to, in Nevada, Vegas? Where everyone's crazy, and usually stupid. Where people go to do stupid things and to forget about their lives - or to 'live', how they call it. Not to mention where people gambled away their hard-earned savings on craps and prostitutes? Where my mother was a prostitute herself? How could I? The answer: I couldn't. I had to find a way out.
And I knew I would, because my beautiful nightmare had shown me the way...
I know, it probably sucked, right? Anyway, please review so that I know what you thought. I'm a little edgy when it comes to Dragonlance - seeing as I am reading the series over for the 5th time for reference - and my character is a little...strange.
-LDE/Emma
