The Five Realms

Chapter 14 - Curses

I woke up screaming. I thought this would happen. I had been expecting it; but it still didn't stop it from being any less terrifying and horrible. I had terrible dreams that I was strapped back on the stone slab being tortured by Raum again. Only there was no Harper to look to for comfort and no Oren to be strong for. Only me and the Demon King.

"Jenny! Jenny wake up! It's just a dream!"

I opened my eyes, gasping and panting, and then I started crying as I realized my surroundings. I was in a beautiful green forest. I could see the stars. I felt Harper's arms tight around me. I could hear Thalion and Oren close by whispering their assurances that I was safe. The dream had seemed so real. I couldn't even tell it wasn't reality.

Harper wrapped his arms tightly around me and whispered oaths in my ear that I was safe. After about fifteen minutes I felt Harper nodding off. His head would fall down and then he would jerk it back up. The three times I had tried to close my eyes I had been hit with sights of that stupid cracked and scorched rock covered in my blood.

I sighed heavily. "Go to sleep Harper. I'm not going to be closing my eyes anytime soon."

I felt Harper's lips touch the top of my head and then he laid his head back against the boulder.

"I'm sorry Jenny. I'm just . . . so tired."

And he was out. Slowly I disentangled myself from him letting him sleep in peace. It was warm enough outside that he wouldn't need my body heat to be comfortable. I listened to the birds chirping their peculiar songs to greet the morning and thought that maybe a little walk in the woods would help me clear my head of menacing thoughts.

Dawn was just breaking over the skies lighting the clouds in pale pinks and oranges, and I was surprised to find that I had slept for quite a while. I was sure this would be a rare occasion though. I couldn't imagine my dreams would let up any time soon. I heard a twig snap behind me and I whipped around quickly gasping in surprise, only to let out a big breath when I found it was Oren. He looked better and worse. Better because the gaunt haunted look had gone from his face and eyes, but worse because he still had dark purple bruises under his eyes and he still held himself in a slumped manner.

"I have frightened you, I apologize." Oren's voice was rough and cracked.

He had barely spoken since he had been back, and every time I looked over at him his eyes had been trained on me; almost like he was desperate to reassure himself that I was really here, in these circumstances, and not back in that dirt and stone room with the smell of my burning flesh and blood filling the air.

"It's alright Oren. I'm glad for the company."

I went over and looped my arm through his, eager to reassure him as well as to be reassured myself.

Oren and I walked silently for a ways. I didn't realize it but I was unconsciously leading us toward the roar of the waterfall, feeling comforted with the sounds of nature, and

needing as much of it as loud as I could get.

We came to the foot of a beautiful flowing waterfall its white foam rising up as it pounded onto the glistening rocks and the waves fighting over each other in the rapids below. It was enchanting watching them fight against each other so violently but then looking more generally and seeing the grand picture, and seeing them all flowing in the same way - seeing the turbulence eventually evening out into the steady flow of the slow moving river. The waterfall must have been at least forty feet tall, but it flowed down in a slanted manner so it wasn't a vertical fall.

"Beautiful," Oren muttered.

I got the insight that seeing this one aspect of nature in his home realm had done more to help him than any amount of therapy by a well-educated and over-paid, stuffy psychiatrist would have done him back in my Earth realm.