Lavenda tossed in her bed, her hair plastered against the rough woolen case of her pallet. The wooden rooms in the Gaidar quarters were cool at night, but her room was hot. Her eyes were scrunched up, her mouth moving silently.
Lavenda ran quickly over the broken, cracked ground, her cloth-covered feet pounded silently into the earth. Covered in her Cadin'sor, she barely felt warm despite the blazing sun, her face free of perspiration. Her spears and knives thumping on her back with every stride, she relished the fresh air, and the freedom.
Smiling broadly, she spotted something on the ground in the distance, and she hurried towards it, feeling carefree. She got closer and closer, each stride eating hundreds, until the mountains were in view. Out of the waste, she was almost upon the shapes she now recognized as humans lying on the ground, in Cadin'sor as well.
Frowning slightly, she ran into Janghai Pass, just out of the Waste, where the rains began. Coming over a damp hill, she was on top of the bodies.
Bodies they were. Wide-eyed faces stared back at her, their mouths frozen screaming. Blood pooled around them, ugly gaping holes carved into their torsos, their faces unearthly lifelike and untouched. They were her parents.
Lavenda sat up suddenly, her now damp face cool in the night air. Breathing heavily, she laid slowly back down, trying to push the images from her mind. It had been the same dream she had had almost every night that she could remember. The only real images she had of her parents.
Just a dream, she comforted herself unconvincingly. Nevertheless, she slowly drifted off to sleep, as she had done every night, for many years.