AN ENCHANTER'S FORETELLING. [NARNIA]

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE | COMFORT

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
COMFORT

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She couldn't sleep that night, or the night prior. And not even the past fortnight. Her mind was plagued with the contemplations of what she had dreamed of many, many nights ago; a dream that seemed entirely too real to be merely inside her head. Much too realistic. But she knew it was just a mere figment of her rather visionary imagination. Her mother had always told her that whenever she would come into her room at night, only to tell her all about the newest dream she would add to her vast collection later on.

A mere dream. It's not real. Go back to sleep, Ro; it's late, her mother would tell her.

But somehow, this one felt much different that ones she's had before. She could feel everything. From the prickly leaves, and the stones that would stab at her pristine, bare skin, to the sound of water running in the distance. As though it had happened before, or perhaps, something that would happen.

She could clearly remember a shadowy figure trudging through the thick, dark woods; the ominous full moon following every step she took, haunting her every move. The prickly, pointy branches stabbing at her exposed skin as she ran still lingered in her touch, and the fierce ache on her lower abdomen still made her body throb.

It was entirely too realistic to be just a dream, she felt as though she was really there. She'd thought it was a mere memory, but no, she seemed different there. She recognized herself when she saw her reflection flickering on the ripples of the pond she'd run past, but she looked older. Much more mature. Her features looked tired, with dark semicircles hanging under her familiar hazel eyes – but they seemed distant, so full of hurt; something that closely reminded her of heartbreak (though she had never experienced such thing before).

She'd been crying, that's for sure. And the heavy horse hooves echoing in the distance only made the aching in her temples intensify. 

That dream still swirled about in her mind, figuring out what every detail meant. The markings in the nearby trees, the rhythmic horse hooves in the distance, the stinging and wet feeling in her lower abdomen. What did it all mean? Had this happened before? Well, of course not, she looked older! And still, she could not shake away the feeling that it wasn't just a dream where she appeared older, but something that could potentially occur. Perhaps this was one of those times where your gut feeling was wrong, but... was it? Though she hoped it was, for it was too scary, uncertain; she couldn't really see much anything into it. And the overwhelming feeling was only tiring her out.

So, that was where Rose found herself; recalling that dream that only seemed to have happened a million years ago. So distant, much too painful to remember. But she could not help but think of it again, and again, about what it'd meant. Precisely why she had been staring at the colossal ceiling of her bedroom for the past hour. She didn't blink nor did she speak. She simply stared at the ceiling as the distant, blurry pictures flickered through her memory. Her chest slowly rising and falling on its own.