Horrible Terrible Things

Chapter Ten

I awoke that night to two hands grasping my throat. My initial reaction was that it was a terrible dream as I had so often become accustomed to nightmares of death and loneliness and more often than not falling and reaching for someone.

I jerked upright and the grip tightened around my throat. Though there were no curtains in the lighthouse bedroom, the dark of night outside still shadowed the person before me. I tried to scream but it came out as a strangled sound and I was pushed deeper into my pillow. My stomach lurched and I could hardly swallow down the bile rising in my constricted throat.

My legs flailed and I swatted at the person before me, the man with all his strength but I only hit muscle. I could not breathe and felt myself being dragged into unconsciousness. I was going to die.

The sky fluttered in an array of white and then burning orange light. Was I dead or was it morning? Was this a dream?

The hands around my throat loosened as the man before me groaned and fell atop of me. I screamed but it came out as nothing. My throat felt raw and already bruised as I scrambled up on my bed, arms and legs kicking at the man to get off of me, my chest heavy. I had to run.

The man landed on the floor unconscious or dead. I didn't stop to look as another figure came toward me and this time when I did scream it was piercing. Hands grabbed me and I could not decipher the deep and calming voice. There was more than one person wanting to hurt me.

I continued to scream until I heard my name, uttered multiple times in the dark room. But my mind ran wild with twisted thoughts that whoever that person was, they would kill me.

I fled out of the room and down the stairs, almost close to breaking a few bones on the way down. I flung the door of the lighthouse open and was relieved to find no one awaiting me on the other side. My name was called from behind me but as I turned it was the sight on the beach which had me freezing.

At first it looked to be a large bonfire upon the sand, but it stretched almost the length of the beach from where I was at the lighthouse all the way to the pier and beyond where a larger fire curled up against the base of the palace.

'No.' I breathed and ran toward the beach. Though though the flames burned bright and hot, they were well enough scattered upon the sand in smaller fires that I could wander through.

I should have felt relieved in my short nightgown and bare feet but instead I felt exposed and an idiot for not having gone through the town but even upon the edge of the beach several groups of townsfolk in their own nightclothes looked at the scene.

As I kept my mouth covered with my hand, eyes peering into the curls of smoke in the sky. What burned was pieces of metal amongst other things. It was a wreck. A shipwreck.

'Thor?!' I screamed and began to scout the beach but there was only pieces of a ship. Things I had no idea of. It was all so broken up and scattered that I had no idea what I was looking for, what was the front or back or wings or engines.

The fire began to die and other people began to venture out to discover what or who remained. I had only thoughts of Thor as I called his name and I was desperate to believe that this was not his ship. A crash wouldn't kill him. He was a god.

Tendrils of dark and horrid thoughts weaved through my mind and began to paralyse me until all I could do was glance around me and then my eyes settled properly upon the palace.

It still burned. I was closer to the palace and the fire looked worse up close. Was it more than a shipwreck, was this an attack on New Asgard, on earth?

I hadn't realised I had sunken to my knees until I felt someone's arms around me. I flinched and pushed away and it was Kit who looked down upon me. His face was pulled into a deep frown and his hair was mussed.