Missed Chances || Dreamnotfound

16

George enters the carriage, head spinning. His lips tingle. He can vaguely hear his mother and father talking.

He looks out his carriage window, locking eyes with Dream, who stands at the top of the stairs. Prince Fundy stands beside him, watching impassively.

George swallows the lump in his throat, leaning back when the carriage starts to move. The clip-clop of horses feet on stone is reminiscent of when George arrived all those months ago.

He arrived with hatred burning in his gut, and now he leaves with guilt consuming his heart.

How ironic that it's Dream who makes him feel this way. The one person he's spent his entire life hating.

As Takenshire becomes all but a mere speck in the back window of the carriage, George stares out his window, not putting in the effort to memorize the scenery.

It's a week of travelling. A week of terrain that divides the two kingdoms. Foundington is northwest, where the climate is colder and less desirable.

Maybe it'll freeze off whatever George is feeling.

~

Newsflash, it doesn't.

After a week of traveling, George spends several days sick in his bed. His mother says it must be the motion sickness of traveling for so long. His father dismisses it as a simple cold.

His illness is a result of heartbreak, though, unbeknownst to George. It would've been easy to avoid had he done what his heart secretly longed for.

He wakes up in cold sweat, haunted by Dream's eyes. Flashes of Fundy's foxlike stare prod his conscious and subconscious. George hates it.

After a month of fevers and nausea, his mother has gotten beyond worried. Kind Adrian tries his best to help her; it's not good for the baby if the mother is so fretful that she becomes sick herself.

A healer visits George, gives him a diagnosis as well as treatment. She says it's the flu. George doesn't believe her, but he takes the medicine anyway.

The medicine given to him sets in after about a week. He starts to get better, though, he can hardly recognize himself in the mirror.

A pale, haunted eyed stranger stares back at him. George tries and fails to eat. This nagging feeling won't leave him.

Regret.

Suddenly, his mother's words echo in his ears, Regret is one of the strongest emotions.

George feels sick.

~

Out of desperation, he visits a second healer. The healer is a calm, kind-hearted man who helps George with no questions asked.

"What's wrong with me?" George asks, voice hoarse, aching for an answer he already knows.

"I've looked over the past healer's records," the healer says, hands folded in his lap. "I have but one question for you."

"Anything," George says instantly. "What do you need to know?"

"Did you form any sort of attachment in Takenshire?" the healer asks, eyes soft.

"Attachment?" George echoes, heart dropping. "Of what sort?"

"Any sort really." The healer's voice is gentle, easing George to relax. "Any attachment that may have ended badly, or unexpectedly."

George chokes on his words, repeating, "Attachment..."

"Anything you tell me is confidential between us," the healer says softly.