The rain was just beginning to fall when Galand awoke with a deep dread. The same feeling that awakened his mind from nightmares the past two mornings. Something was threatening his father's rule of Westrel but Galand couldn't quite wrap his mind around the danger. The thought kept nagging in the back of his mind ever since returning from a hunting excursion that didn't quite go as smoothly as planned. When he returned to the palace with his tutor, Master Teshlon, the air of uneasiness began to settle in all around the ornamented walls. Something dangerous was brewing, Galand could sense that much from the hurried glances and the hushed conversations behind locked doors. He just couldn't surmise the extent.
All these thoughts started through his conscious mind in this nearly dream-like awakening he found himself experiencing this morning. Galand slowly cleared the cobwebs woven by another night filled with the same nightmare. Not a distinct set of actions in that terror unfolding for the past nights but a distinct set of glaring eyes turned his daily easiness into dread.
Those two glowing sparks that pierced into his heart with a cold fear that chilled his usually burning nerves. A pair of scimitars that cut so easily into his subconscious fears and reduced his adolescent will to a lump of clay. As Galand pulled on his velvet robe, he couldn't quite shake the thought of those two eyes watching him from a distance still. Watching him as he washed his face and gazed at his own eyes reflecting back at him in the mirror. His face that was beginning to crease with lines from the past nights of restless fits. His face that was just beginning to sprout its first beard looking haggard and worn. Washing his face and hair and trying to forget, again, the darkness that loomed in his sleep.
