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When the first one was struck down, I saw his Brothers cry out. Now I knew who belonged to which family. It was a mercy kill to end the lives of his Brothers quickly.
The second family ran when the first family fell. We would catch them before they hid their trail. Kein was an excellent tracker, they would not escape in the forest as they planned to do.
We walked into the woods with confidence, Kein and Evan leading. The forest changed as I watched. The trees shifted and became rock walls. Instead of a forest we were tracking in the mountains.
I felt dread. I hated the mountains. Women could hide in the craggy pits and drop upon us without warning. I heard the beating of wings, but my vision was narrowed and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
Christof screamed and I tried to find him. My feet wouldn’t move fast enough, I seemed to be running in thick mud. No one was with me now, I was alone in the mountains, divided from my Brothers.
I woke up a little and pushed at the walls of the box I was in. The panic of being trapped in here started to mount, spurred on by my strange nightmare. To calm myself I thought of Master Damien and his Brothers. I concentrated hard on them and felt myself almost leave the box.
I was in the mountains again, running with all my might. The women were coming, their wings were everywhere; I just could not see them. If I could just find my Brothers, I would feel better, for now I was all alone.
Enough of this, I thought to myself as I woke up sweating and nervous again.
I took deep controlled breaths. There was no need to fear. I wasn’t in the mountains, no one was chasing me. Instead, I thought about the day Master Damien and his Brothers took me to the canal.
We were all there again. The men seemed confused to find themselves on the bobbing wooden platform. I looked up at them and for some reason, I’d left them dressed and with their weapons on. This was a dream, I thought to myself, I’d prefer them naked.
The men’s clothing dissolved and they sat down watching me.
“Swim with me, Masters?” I asked the men in my dream. “Show me fun things like you did before.”NôvelDrama.Org: text © owner.
Master Damien bounded into the water and I followed him in. I loved to be in the ocean.
They took me deeper than I had gone that day. Master Kein showed me the bottom of the canal and the things that lived there. He spoke underwater and told me they could swim much deeper than I could. They had wanted to show me this the day we came, but they knew I wouldn’t be able to swim so far down.
I loved the water, the quiet gurgle in my ears as I swam. We stayed under water forever. This was a dream, so I didn’t have to surface for breath. We just swam and played in the canal.
The dream seemed so real. I watched with awe as the men zipped through the water. They moved like some strange sort of eel, undulating up and down. It fascinated me, just as it had the first day I saw it.
The men found the worms and ate them underwater. They were so good. I caught and ate the worms with them. Marvelous, wonderful, sticky creatures that bled on my tongue. I couldn’t get enough of them.
How had I ever thought the worms were gross?
We continued to swim and my mind drifted to Earth. I thought of the rocky coast I swam on before I was enslaved. The cold water and sea air called me home.
“Ciara, where are we?” Master Damien asked standing naked on the beach.
“Rocky Point Beach,” I told him, “I used to come here to play in the water.”
The men looked around. They picked up the rocks and watched the sea birds that fluttered in the strong breeze. Master Christof picked up the book bag I always brought and went through it. He found the money I would use to pay my way home.
“Don’t lose that,” I warned him. “I use it to pay the bus driver to take me home from here.”
Instead Christof picked out the sandwich I had made and looked at it. I explained I brought food with me when I came here and he tasted it, as did his Brothers. They also tasted the applesauce and pudding cups I’d brought. They found the flavor not very interesting, but the texture of the applesauce was disgusting to them.
“Come into the water,” I ordered laughing. “That’s where all the fun is!”
I dove into the churning ocean and went down deep. The men followed and I pointed out the fish in my memories to them. They wanted to go in the caves deeper down, but I couldn’t show them that.
“I never went that deep,” I told Master Christof underwater, “and if I got stuck in the caves I wouldn’t have a way to breath.”
We crawled onto shore and I looked down at myself. I was dressed like I always was when I came to the beach. A faded grey t-shirt soaked and stuck to my skin and an old pair of cut off jeans.
“What is this?” Master Damien asked touching the torn denim fabric.
“Jeans,” I said luxuriating in the sun, “I used to wear clothes all the time. No one on my world walks around naked.”
“We ornament your naked body, becuase you don’t need clothes,” Master Evan said crouching in front of me. “My Brothers and I protect you, you do not need such thick fabric. We ornament you to show you in our colors. That is how we wish to see you.”
Looking down, my outfit was changed. I was in my collar and cuffs. My torso was wrapped with a gauzy piece of blue fabric. This was much better, I agreed.
“Still,” I told them, “this outfit would not have been good to wear at the place I lived and worked.”
They didn’t understand, so in the dream we were there.
It was midday at the motel. The sign that permanently read “Vacancy” flashed along the roadside. The men understood the sign through me.
As we walked through the squalor that had been my life, I felt the men judging it. Albert, the motel’s most senior resident drunk, was sitting outside his door in a lawn chair asleep and drooling. The place was dingy and they sensed my discomfort at walking here with no clothes on to shield me.
In my memories they saw the pointless violence I had witnessed in this place. They saw the bloody beer bottles I had cleaned up. As we passed room thirty two we all remembered the body of the overdosed heroin addict I had found one morning.
I took them the long way around to my room. There was a short cut through the building down a dark hall, but a woman had been brutally raped there one afternoon. After that happened I never walked that way again. Even in the dream, I feared that dark secluded hall. The men felt my unease, but said nothing.
In my small room at the hotel, I showed them the things I was proud of. The money I had scrimped and saved was hidden in a plastic bag in the toilet tank. Damien asked why I put it there. He understood it was an odd place for something I considered of value.