The Courting of Bryn - Ch 7
It was in the middle of the night when Bryn awaked from her dreams. Her heart was racing and her breath came in gasps as her velvet eyes stared into the darkness.
Again they had haunted her. Nightmares that would poison her sleep and leave her trembling. She's had them ever since she can remember, had them since she the day she found herself trapped on Cayman's isle.
Usually they came to her randomly – sometimes months could pass before she encountered them again and sometimes they struck every night for several days in a row. They differed in their content, too. Some were vague scenarios filled with shadows and the distant feeling of being lost and alone while others showed her a world she never wished to enter.
Tonight she had encountered a particularly bad one.
The screams still echoed in her ears even as she sat wide awake in her bed, her hands clutching her blanket like a lifeline. Women, children and men. Young and old. They were falling to an evil she had not been able to see. She had been part of the crowd and yet had only watched, helpless and petrified.
Bryn's head sank as she fought the tears that welled up in the corners of her eyes. She didn't know what those dreams were supposed to mean for her. Whether they were merely her way of dealing with what they had heard and sometimes seen in those many countries they travelled to, or whether it were images of something she believed lost to her. Whether it were pictures of her past. But she feared them, feared them more than she did anything else and deep inside she prayed for her dreams to be nothing but illusions brought about by slumber and the night.
It was a shuddered sigh that eventually left her throat while she raised a shaking hand to cross her line of vision. She was tired, so very tired. The day had been exhausting – a rough sea had required everyone on deck to help to the best of their ability and the young brunette felt her body demand its rest and the chance for recuperation. But here, alone in this cabin, she would not find sleep again – not with the tremors of her nightmare still lurking at the edge of her consciousness. And so she resolved to do the only thing she could think of in that moment.
oOoOo
When she entered the guys' sleeping quarters she felt herself hesitate for just a second. She had come here barefooted, with her blanket wrapped about her delicate body, her amber nightgown but a shadow in the dim light below deck.
Around her the men slept peacefully as she made no sound. To her right Doubar's cot was situated and she felt herself linger in front of it, unsure of what to do.
Just a couple of days before she had heard him tell their captain how he wanted to show her he would always be there for her, that he cared. She wanted to believe him, she did believe him but still she hesitated. She could not burden him with this, with her dreams and her pain. No, she would return to her cabin and fight her demons herself. It would be the better choice for all of them.
Thus she turned around, soft feet touching the wooden planks cautiously before suddenly behind her a blanket rustled.
"Bryn?"
His voice was sleep-laden and rough, filled with confusion and the attempt to decide whether he was facing dream or rather reality.
For a moment she stiffened, regretting having even come here. Maybe if she would just stand still enough he would dismiss her form to be a guise of the night and return to slumber, but he did no such thing.
Obviously sobering he soon after raised on his bed, peeking through the dark and addressing her worriedly.
"Is everything alright, little one?"
She could feel him reach out to her, his fingers hovering in the air mere inches away from her. Slowly then she turned around to meet his pale blue eyes. Not daring to speak just yet she stared at him from where she stood until, eventually, her head shook almost invisibly.
Instantly his muscles tensed she noticed, his brain sorting out different dangers that could have sent her here in the middle of the night. But she seemed not to have been in battle or in pain, just frightened. And then, as he watched her deep brown gaze, he understood.
"Another nightmare?"
It was but a whisper, a breath on the air, but it reached her clear and loud. Her shoulders tensed at it, confused as to why he knew. She had mentioned them to him once, but she had made sure to not sound troubled by them – to not appear weighed down.
It seemed she could not fool him as easily as she had thought.
Again, she did not reply but with a gesture. A nod passed her features, forlorn and defeated, before her heart made her ask of him what her mind would have never dared to.
"Can I stay here?"
For a heartbeat he just looked at her, surprised and perplexed by her words but just when she started to fear he would send her away he shifted under his covers, making room for her.
His back was now resting against the wall while his bed was half empty. Silently, Bryn settled down next to him, hiding her fragile form in the blanket she had brought from her own cabin.
Face to face they lay in the dark, each of them wrapped in their covers and listening to the quiet murmurs of the waves until Doubar's voice reached her in another whisper.
"You wanna tell me of it?"
His concern was evident in every syllable he spoke and yet Bryn could do nothing but shake her head once more. She did not want to face the images again, to share what her dreams made her see. She couldn't tell him of them.
Not yet.
Instead, she reached out for the hand that lay idly between him and her and cupped it with both her hands. Her velvet eyes glistened slightly in the dark with unshed tears and it had the first mate's heart go out to her. Gently he squeezed the tender fingers that enwrapped his own before he smiled at her encouragingly.
"Whenever you feel ready for it, I will be there."
He really meant it, she knew. Drawing the warm hand closer to her, she breathed in deeply, feeling how for the first time since she had awaken from her dreams, her heart slowed down again. Here, in the presence of the one who had offered her a home right from the start, she finally felt safe.
Bryn clung to the warmth that seemed to radiate from him and she reveled in the safety he was willing to give without asking anything in return.
"I know."
Her voice was low, barely audible even in the quietness of the night. But it travelled the short distance securely, instilling a feeling in Doubar's heart that warmed him from within.
While next to him he heard Bryn's breathing deepen and felt her fingers relax, he smiled into the dark. When in the morning the guys would awake and find them sharing a bed… oh, he would never hear the end of it he knew. But for some reason he cared not about the teasing he was going to have to endure, did not mind his brother paying him back for all the little remarks that the first mate himself had once dealt out for he knew that she was all worth it – and more.
While around them the night was slowly waning he drifted off to sleep again as well, offering Bryn a light in the dark and a refuge when her dreams came haunting her. And she accepted it gratefully, grasping his hand even in her sleep, the two of them lying like this in perfect harmony even when the first light of day touched the sea…