These gods are owned by the Greeks, plots mine though

Dreams

I had seen one full moon since meeting with the goddess Artemis and I still couldn't decide whether not I had imagined it. The only thing that made me see it as a reality was the sword that was hidden under my bed, wrapped in a blanket. On numerous occasions I had decided to sell the weapon and be rid of it forever, but I lost my nerve before actually going through with it. I spent hours at night just holding it in my hands and staring at my reflection in the blade. I didn't know what to do, this blade was useless in my hands because I had never had any kind of training and besides I was bound to be a simple farmer all of my life. Even had I wanted to, I could not leave my mother behind. Finally, I got disgusted and wrapped my blanket around the sword and stashed it in its place under my bed again. I lay myself down and curled up to fall asleep, praying for nothing more than to forget about the gods and the sword and my life.

The answer to my prayers was a dream that found me amidst a battlefield with bodies strewn everywhere. The carnage was enough to make me close my eyes and pray to wake up, when I opened them again a soldier was charging towards me in full battle armor. His helm had been knocked off and he had a small gash over his right eye, he held his shield in his left arm and in his right arm he wielded a sword that was being aimed directly at me. When the soldier was a mere 5 meters away from me he slowed his charge and began to circle me like a predator. Why didn't he run me through? I present no challenge to him. That was when I noticed the extra weight on my right arm. Looking at my hand I saw the last thing in the world that I had wanted to see, the sword shimmered in the moonlight. It was as if I could feel its presence and it thirsted for blood.

The soldier had taken advantage of my lapse in concentration and almost too late I saw the arc of his sword as he tried to drive it into my collar bone. Just in time I spun out of the way by instinct but I would not escape unscathed, his blade bit deep into my forearm. It felt like my arm was on fire, the pain was so intense. What's going on? This is a dream, why am I hurting? My opponent apparently wanted to give me no time to consider my options because he quickly thrust his sword straight towards my chest. Weakly, I parried the blow with the sword in my hand and backed away. He advanced on me once again, this time he came at me hard sending blow after blow at me. I was amazed that I had blocked a few of his attempts but it was only a matter of time, I was sustaining small cuts and injuries that hurt much more than they should have.

And then it happened, the soldier sent yet another thrust towards my chest which I swung at to parry. But he had only feinted his sword pulling it back quickly, I didn't have enough strength to stop my swing. As the weight of the sword dragged my right arm across my body I felt a sharp burning pain where sword slid between my ribs. The air went out of my lungs and I immediately dropped the sword and fell to my knees. Everything seemed so far away, it was like watching life in a blur. The sound of the soldier yanking his sword from my body as I fell was nauseating, and with that I felt a warm liquid rise up into my throat and mouth. The taste wasn't what I had expected, it had a coppery tinge to it. Things started to fade to black and spots started to form in my field of vision. The soldier was gone, probably off to find another victim. I closed my eyes. How did this happen? Am I really going to die here?

"The answer to that is no." Answered a voice to a question that I had asked in my head.

I struggled to force my eyes open but even then everything was dark and blurry. I think I saw a man on horseback standing over my body, but I couldn't see clearly enoughto be sure.

"But let us hope that you learned some lessons." Said a voice from the direction of the mounted soldier.

I wanted to ask so many questions but I could no longer keep my eyes open. Within moments everything was black.

I woke with a start, gasping for breath and covered in sweat. I looked outside my window and the sun was cresting the horizon already for a new day. It WAS just a dream, but it felt so real. My heart was trying to beat its way out of my chest and I was still struggling to catch my breath, but I was alive. Dream or not, when I got out of my bed I realized that my entire body was sore and that my ribcage was very tender, it was going to be a very long day.

I got dressed and dragged myself out of my room into the kitchen where my mother had prepared some eggs for breakfast. I sat at the table with her and dug into my meal silently. Breakfast moved by as my mother ran down a list of things that needed to be done around the farm, I nodded and agreed in all the right places and was finally able to escape to the outside after finishing my meal.

As I walked towards the stables I tried to clear my mind but I could not stop thinking about the events of the evening. I carried out my chores just like I did every other day. My last chore for the day was the hardest for me to get through, I needed to chop wood for the fire because we were running low on stock. As I hefted the axe the first time my whole body was wracked with such pain that I stumbled and fell to my knees. I caught my breath and forced myself back to my feet. We needed this wood, I would have to deal with this pain. After a few hours of chopping my body was numb. I focused so hard on blocking out the pain that I didn't realize that the sun had gone down until I could no longer see the wood that I swung at. I gathered up the days' work and stacked it next to the house and leaned the axe on the wood stack. Heading back inside I wondered where the entire day had gone, but even that was a fleeting thought because I was still fixated on the night before.

I sat down at the table with my mother and started to devour some stale bread and goat cheese. As the minutes passed I did everything possible to snap myself out of my haze. I counted the knots in the wood that made up the floor, I studied the seat that my mother sat in to sew and noticed that one of the legs was starting to rot through. That'll need to be fixed. Then I looked over to the fireplace where my mother had started a small fire to warm he house for the evening, I fixated on the fire and the way it danced on the log. So beautiful and so full of destruction.

"You're father would get that same look in his eyes when something was on his mind."

Finally something had jerked me out of my stupor. I looked straight at my mother into her eyes, she had been a beautiful woman once but now she sat hunched and her hair was disheveled and graying. But the worst of it was the bags under her eyes and the way she had to fight just to maintain control over her own body. She's sick again, and I was too focused on myself to notice.

"Are you feeling okay ma? Can I get you a cup of tea?" I asked, feeling guilty.

To my surprise she ignored me. "We loved each other very deeply you know? We would spend hours just talking and kissing. And laughing, always we were laughing."

I was frozen in my seat, this was the most she had ever talked about him in my life. Why now?

"He loved you too you know? He was so excited when he learned that I was carrying you, he couldn't stop talking about how strong you were going to be and that you were going to be someone very important in the world. And then he would cry. He knew Jarem, he knew that he could not be involved in your life and so did I. From the moment we learned of your existence we both knew that I would be left alone to take care of you, and I took that burden with pride. You will understand some day that it was not his choice to leave you behind."

She had stopped and now she was looking at the table as if she were afraid to meet my eyes. She looked so fragile, a lifetime of carrying too heavy a burden could break even the strongest of souls. Her words kept ringing through my head and they created a firestorm inside of my chest.

"After all this time, you actually believe all of that? I don't care who he is or what his excuses are, he has left us to fend for ourselves and you still hold him in such high regard. I will never understand that, mother, no matter what you may say." I wanted to explode, but she looked so sick and I had no desire to make things any worse.

"You are wrong son." She said without hesitation. "He is around more than you know, he was in my dreams last night. He came to me and he apologized, he wanted me to know how sorry he was but I didn't care I was so happy to see him again." With that, she smiled a smile I had never seen on her face before. It was youthful and beautiful.

"If he is around so much why hasn't he shown himself, maybe helped out a little bit? Ma look at you, you've been so sick for so long now. If he's around and he truly cares, why is he letting you go through this alone?" I was on the verge of yelling now.

"I am not alone, I have you and I have my memories with him. And Jarem if there is one thing that you absolutely must learn it is that we all must accept our fates. This has been mine, and I have enjoyed every moment of it. Sure there have been some hard times but I wouldn't trade my life for the life of anyone in the world. I've had the love of a good man and I was blessed by the gods with a son like you." Her voice was so calm that it forced me to calm down a little bit.

"I still think it's a little too late for apologies, at this point the least he could do is help out." I said feeling deflated.

Her eyes caught mine and instead of being thick with fog like they got when she was sick, they were filled with a youthful vigor unlike I had ever seen before from her.

"The apologies were not for the past my son, but for the future and they were not for me." With that a tear rolled down her cheek. and she stood up to head to her bed.

"Remember Jarem, my love for you is deeper than the deepest depths of Hades and higher than the highest peak of Mount Olympus and nothing could ever change that. I am proud of who you are, you carry much of your father and a lot of me inside you. But despite all of that you have managed to become a personality that is all your own. I will always have faith in you for you are an incredible man, only your father has the same esteem in my mind."

She said that as she walked into her bedroom and shut the door, leaving me to think about what she meant. What is going on? As if that dream last night wasn't bad enough but now my mother was actually speaking about my father. It's all too much to handle.

I thought about everything she had said as I walked into my room and got undressed for bed. I hesitated only a little bit before taking the sword out from its' hiding spot. It took me a little longer than that to gather the courage to unwrap the blanket. When it was fully unwrapped I put it into my right hand just like I had carried it in my dream. Maybe it was just my imagination but I could still feel the presence of this sword and its' desire for battle, this sword had a bloodlust that I had not felt before last night.

I carefully re-wrapped the sword in my blanket and stashed it away. After making sure that it was safely hidden I curled myself onto my bed and prayed for a full nights rest. I had thought that it would take me forever to fall asleep because of how anxious I was, but as soon as I settled into my bed I was out.

I heard the sounds before I even opened my eyes. Men screaming battle cries, cries of mercy and cries of pain. The thud of sword meeting shield and the clash of two swords opposing each other. I felt a familiar weight on my right arm. I slowly opened my eyes to find myself standing in the middle of the same field that I had been in last night, watching the same battle wage on. I scanned the field and sure enough, the same soldier with the same small cut above his right eye was charging. His eyes were fixated directly on me again. I don't know why but I was not surprised at all, this time I would not be caught off guard.

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