I lay panting in bed for several moments trying to clear my head and slow my racing heart when I heard footsteps on the landing. "Mira are you alright up there?" her grandmother's voice rang out in concern from the landing. I knew it must have taken a while for grandmother to get as far as the little landing halfway up the stairs. I grimaced, maybe I had screamed at some point in the dream and not realized it. That seemed possible, I checked my breathing and called down to Gran that I was alright, just had fallen asleep and had had a nightmare.
Continuing to breath slowly, I laid my head back and closed my eyes. I could hear faintly as Gran made her way back downstairs muttering to herself. I hadn't meant to worry her first thing off. Usually I made it a few days before I said something that Gran managed to take offense at. A tinkling sound coming from my bedside made me peel one of my eyes open and glance at the bedside table that currently held only my alarm clock and a glass of water that Gran must have brought up.
Nothing at all unusual about that, except for the tiny woman sitting on the rim of the glass giggling at me. This was not the first time I had hallucinated I used to do it all the time when I was a kid but my dad had sent me to a child psychologist who diagnosed me with ADD and prescribed some drugs. After that all of the little people I had been seeing went away. Apparently they had decided not to stay away.
"I'm not really seeing you, I have an overactive imagination. I'm probably reaching out subconsciously for someone who understands me because my mother abandoned me as a child and I feel neglected." I spoke the words aloud as a mantra but the little woman in the glass laughed harder at me. "Alright fine." I gave up and threw my legs over the side of the bed to face the little woman in my glass of drinking water. "What do you want?"
"I felt your power, cousin and was curious." Her voice was oddly lilting and her eyes transfixed me. "You will be strong, but not yet." And she vanished.
I growled at myself and threw myself back in bed. After a moment I realized I was still dressed in the school uniform I had never bothered to take off. I got up and snapped the light on and got ready for bed. Just at that moment I hated the world, I guess all burgeoning teenagers feel the same way at some point or another. But it still took me an awful long time to fall asleep that night.
The next morning seemed to banish all of the nightmares and I shrugged off both the dream and the hallucination as end of year jitters. I dressed in a pair of my favorite cut-off shorts that Gran thought were just a little too short and maybe that added a little to their appeal. A green t-shirt and I was slipping down the banister to Gran's hot breakfast. I smiled and kissed her on the cheek while she glared disapprovingly at me.
"How did you sleep Gran?" I asked as I helped myself to some of the bacon and eggs. Gran felt it necessary to cook a lot of food, just in case I wanted to eat more than usual. I loved her for it.
"Better than you," she replied gruffly and kissed me on the cheek before I could duck out of the way into the breakfast nook. "Who's gonna see?" She asked rhetorically at seeing my embarrassment. But I saw the smile on her face as she turned away from me back to the stove tucked in the corner.
"Sorry if I woke you, I didn't think I had screamed." I mumbled around my eggs. Gran got a funny look around her eye and she smiled and shook her head.
"No problem ducky. Eat your eggs." I nodded and went back to the delicious farm-fresh scrambled egg breakfast that had become the tradition for my first day back with Gran every summer. It seemed a little odd that Gran wouldn't say whether or not I had screamed but I shook it off. I must have made some noise for her to want to brave the stairs to come check on me. Gran hated stairs, more than spiders even.
After breakfast Gran gave me some money and sent me to town on the bicycle that had resided in the small shack beside the cottage longer than Gran herself. She said she needed some spices or something for dinner and had provided me with a list and which store to go to get each item. It wasn't that odd when I was living with her Gran rarely stirred farther than the garden gate around the cottage relying on me to run her errands for her. The ride down to the sea-side village was ideallic and post-card inducing. I stopped on a rise before I entered the town to watch it sitting on its little hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I smiled to feel the feeling of home coming back to me once again. Who cared about silly dreams and sillier hallucinations?
The shopping list only took me about twenty minutes to finish, it took that long because I had to stop and talk to all of the shop owners. Most who had known not only me my whole life but my dad too. They always asked about him and I always answered that he was doing fine but sometimes I wondered if he could really be happy with all of his money and no time to enjoy it. I shrugged off the melancholy as I walked back out into the sunlight with the next to last purchase, some butter from the Havishome's store.
I knocked on the front door of Mrs. Jones who sold fresh strawberries through the summer months for the last thing on Gran's list but it wasn't answered. After a moment of cooling my heels in the heat of the sun I was about to leave when I heard Mrs. Jones' voice raised in anger coming from the backyard. I smiled, she always argued with the weeds when she was gardening but everyone loved her anyway.
I pushed through the garden gate after leaning my bike on the fence only to see that Mrs. Jones wasn't arguing with the weeds but a small gnomish like creature. "See here I expect out of you to keep out of my garden! And this is the last time I'm going to tell you!" The horrible little thing ignored poor little old Mrs. Jones completely and looked at me while I watched a drop of blood drip from one of his hands. I screamed and threw my hands up in front of me, and fainted.
"Overreaction that's the youth of today's folly don't you think so Hephaestus?" Words seeming to come from out of the darkness invaded into the black place that was so restful. I tried to push it away but something sharper poked me back in the other direction. I opened my eyes slowly to see the form of Mrs. Jones take shape. "I tell you what I didn't scream the first time I saw a kobold. And I certainly didn't faint." She was shaking her head but I felt alright once my eyes were open. "Hello dear, its alright now." Mrs. Jones, dear Mrs. Jones who I had known my whole life lifted my head up a little higher on the pink cushions of her couch and gave me a nice pat on the arm.
"You mustn't scream when you see a dark elemental sweeting, even if you've never seen one before. You must stand firm and tell them what's what." She winked at me and left the room for a moment. It was a bit far-fetched to hope that I was dreaming again or even hallucinating. Not even my subconscious could come up with something as Mrs. Jones having an argument with a blood thirsty troll.
Just then a somewhat large cat jumped up onto the couch and touched his head to my hand. This was Hephaestus, Mrs. Jones cat for an indeterminate amount of time. Most people in town agreed that she had gotten him out of grief for her husband who died young in some accident. I smiled at the cat and rubbed his head. Did you ever consider that perhaps the cat obtained her and not the other way around.
Hearing voices in my head was quite possibly the last straw of a horrible day. I pushed with my feet and ended up on the arm of the couch staring in horror at the cat who could speak words into my mind. Prudently the cat backed off to the other arm of the couch and this was how Mrs. Jones found us. "Oh dear, I told him not to talk to you yet." She glared at the cat and I thought for a second I could hear a whispered conversation but the moment passed and with one more look at me the cat left the room with his tail held high.
"Come here sweet heart." Mrs. Jones sat on the couch and opened her arms and I sort of fell into them. "How long have you been seeing things now? Things like that nasty little kobold in my garden." She was pushing her fingers softly through my hair and it was so hard not to fall apart in her matronly arms. I had never thought of the retired school teacher as a warrior but I was beginning to realize that I had only been looking at one half of things.