4

Beginnings

               Our ingenious disguises weren't needed that day; we didn't meet anyone on the road. Still, it was sort of comforting to know that we wouldn't be recognized by all the people who weren't there. That's how Dyln put it, so don't blame me.

               When we settled down to sleep, I closed my eyes before I was on the ground and rolled so that my back was to the fire the second I touched. Anything to avoid watching Dyln and Skye's up-close study of each other's lips. I could still hear them, but no system is perfect.

               When I finally did fall asleep, it was to a startling revelation. Apparently, Hitomi had lost her gift, and I found it. That isn't going to make any sense, so here's the details. (Oh, and the whole thing was major space lemons)

               I dreamt I was standing in the middle of a wasteland. There were occasional signs of previous human habitation: the burnt shell of a house, a patch of ground that had once been carefully cultivated, bits of recognizable furniture strewn about, and, right by my feet, a doll. I shivered. It was a lot like the one my mother had made for me when I was little.

               That was bad enough. It was made considerably worse by the fact that it had obviously been a battlefield. The mangled remains of suits of mechanized armor littered the place. Most was a ghastly green color, the losing side. Once in a long while a pale gray one would appear. Massacre. Blood spattered the ground around the destroyed suits. As I picked my way through I added a little of my own. What was left of a sword ripped across my leg with a pain sharper and realer than one expected to find in a dream. Space- well, you know.

               I was wandering around, trying to wake up and leave this horrific nightmare, when I recognized the landscape, if not the scenery. Home. I turned and ran towards the hilltop where my house… Had been? Would be?

               To my surprise, there was a building there, though it was smaller than the cabin I lived in. Roughly half of the hut, however, had been crushed by one of the suits. It was red, unlike most of the rest of them (which, I assumed, pinpointed some sort of officer), and in very slightly better shape.

               A girl about my age or possibly a little younger crawled out of the house. She was filthy, bruised, and bloody, but even with her ragged gray shift, belted with a frayed piece of rope, this didn't hide the fact that she was extremely pretty. She was lean and sinuous. Her thick, chestnut hair, though horribly tangled, fell past her waist to frame a figure that went neither to my extreme or Dyln's.  She had a shapely face, and her big blue eyes were sorrowful and haunted. They also carried a distinctly familiar glint.

               "Mother!"

I shrieked pretty loudly, but she didn't glance at me. It stood to reason that I'd be nonexistent to anyone in a past I was only a spectator in.

               There were streaks down her face where tears had fallen, but at present, well, at past, her eyes were dry. She sighed deeply, gazing across the destruction. I wondered how long the battle had gone on and for how much of it she had hidden in that hovel.

               Suddenly, she whirled towards the suit that had crashed into the hut. She had always bragged to me about her spectacular hearing, but I couldn't see what sound other that a gasp of dying machinery could come from the thing. It wasn't as totally decimated as some of the others, but it still didn't seem possible that there could be someone alive in there.

               Mother seemed to think differently. She rushed over to where the cockpit had been, now a horrendously bloody, mutilated mass of charred, twisted metal. Either a bolt of energy had ripped through, or one of the gray dudes had thrust his sword though the middle of the suit. Either way, the odds of survival were about a zillion to one.

               Mother breathed in sharply, a sure sign that she was in a desperate hurry. Her arms and hands were practically shredded as she forced the melded remains of the suit away from wherever she was aiming, and when she kicked the stronger pieces with her bare feet I sensed that she was biting back a scream of pain.

               Suddenly, she seemed to reach her goal. Her arms darted between the sheet metal she had peeled back. I had been standing back a little ways, heaven knows why. I rushed forward at this point.

               Clinging to her strong arm was a limp figure, soaked in gore but obviously alive. Assisting the unidentifiable casualty, she stepped away from the remains of the suit. They moved with agonizing slowness, in both senses of the word. I heard tiny whimpering noises from her charge. Though I knew it would do no good, I linked my own arm with this unfortunate's.

               They (I could hardly count myself as a companion here) finally made their way to the hut. The intact part had luckily been where she slept. She spread out what was little more than a pile of rags on the dirt floor and helped the figure lie down on them. She pulled a larger rag from under what was left of a table. It had probably served as a towel during happier times.

               She tenderly wiped the blood off, revealing, as I had guessed, my father. The dream melted away, and my eyes flicked open. It was still dark, and I could hear Dyln's gentle and Skye's uproarious snoring.

               I glanced over, went cherry red, and turned away. I hope they'd been counting on waking up before I did. It was a long time until I could be justified in rousing them, even if certain things hadn't been stuck together. As it was, I was willing to let them snooze as long and as late as they liked. Space lemons! I doubted I could get back to sleep after the dream, and decided to go for a walk.

               As I stood, I felt a sharp pain in my leg. When I looked down, I saw a long, deep scratch. It didn't hurt much, but was obviously new and bleeding profusely. It was also exactly where I had stumbled against the sword in my dream. Creepy.

               Now that I'd found out I was psychic, things jumped at me from everywhere. Just by looking I could tell something's history. One of the tallest trees I could see had been given a chance to grow when it was a sapling when a nearby elm that had been shading it had been cut down for a battering ram. In another month or so a traveling merchant's wife would die in childbirth, and she and her baby would be hastily buried exactly where I was standing. A young bird flying overhead would soon be eaten by a fox. Centuries back the land had belonged to a cruel nobleman, and a woman and her several children had been executed for poaching deer to keep themselves from starving. Random events from the past and future threw themselves at me. Momentous moments (say that three times fast!) and inconsequential occurrences raced through my head. Space lemons! It was confusing and distinctly frightening, and I spent hours getting it under control. Finally I could choose whether or not to see things.

               Eventually, I found my way to a river. I was pretty tired, and sat down on a half-rotted log. For fun, I tried to project my ability. It sounded hard, but I found it perfectly effortless. Somehow I found my way into Dyln's head. Her dreams were pretty nasty and utterly unprintable, so I steered clear and into her memory. It seemed like a nice favor. She was always complaining about not knowing a thing about her own past, and if I could dig into her subconscious I might be able to find out who her mother had been or something.

               Bad idea. She knew perfectly well who she was (and her name really was Dylnia Kumachre), and certainly wasn't to blame for not wanting to talk about it. I don't either, but here's a clue: sex and violence. No wonder she was so tough and devoid of moral conscience; a life rated NC-17 will do that.

               I moved on to Skye's head. His dreams were no different outside of his viewpoint, but his recollections were much better. His mother had always wanted him to be a soldier, but an understanding father had secretly sent him off to study the music and stories he loved. After leaving apprenticeship to a master bard from a famous acting troupe, he had wandered Gaea to spread his beautiful songs and talent. Normally, I'd have found it sickly-sweet and boring, but after Dyln's horrors I was glad to have something to calm me down.

               When I finished with him, I guess I dozed off. I slept fitfully, dreaming that I was in a ship that was flying on a night when both moons were full. It started moving like a rollercoster. I was screaming and I smelled blood. Several people I couldn't see clearly were similarly panicking.

               My eyes snapped open. I was still wobbly, and the horrible metallic smell of blood clung to my nostrils. To shake the panic, I splashed some cold water from the river onto my face. After that I felt better and forced myself to forget the dream. Space lemons, I wish I hadn't.

               I also wish I'd been paying attention right about then. I was spaced out, scared, and determined to get back to camp no matter how gross Dyln and Skye were. Thus, I didn't hear anyone sneak up behind me and didn't realize anything was wrong until my arms were in a death grip and I was knocked upside the head with something large, blunt, and heavy. Sound familiar? Well, my last conscious thought was a string of curses at myself. Ambushed twice in as many weeks! Space lemons.