Ame Perdue

Chapter Eleven

I was dreaming. There was no other explanation for what I was seeing. That couldn't be Acilia. She didn't exist. She was just a figment of my imagination. And Arcadia? Arcadia was a dream, a fantasy that my mind had created years ago. It didn't exist outside of my mind. I opened and closed my eyes, but the scene didn't change. Acilia was still standing in front of me, gazing at me with eyes that were like fire.

This was not real. It couldn't be.

Ignoring Acilia, I turned in a slow circle, inhaling deeply. I allowed everything in this world to wash over me. The stinging smell of the burning rumble nearly overpowered the light fragrance of the poisonous flowers, nearly overtook the green of the damp leaves. The smoke was still covering the world its grey version of fog, keeping me from truly seeing anything more than a few feet away. I could feel the heaviness of the air, the higher temperature that should have had my blood boiling in my veins.

There was no wildlife around, they had scattered after the bombs, wisely choosing to not return to an area so close to the destruction. Even so, I could see the homes that they made previously, the places where they used to walk, used to feed, used to live. I could see the life that they had made for themselves as if I had seen them do it. Everything was familiar, just as familiar as the Earth was to me.

My thought from earlier flickered through my mind. I had assumed that I had grown used to this world so quickly because I was a wanderer, that this was supposedly my purpose. I had assumed that there wasn't a culture shock because being a Wanderer was in my genes. I an idiot. I should have known better. Should have freaking recognized this world. I had only been coming here in my dreams for the past decade.

The thought terrified me.

I turned back towards the city that defined the phrase ghost town. We hadn't walked far, perhaps a few miles north of it. It was nothing more than a blackened blur in the distance, the smoke rising off it more visible than the city itself. As I stared, the image of what it once was fell into my mind, much like it had when I was standing in the middle of it. I had briefly been there before, I had seen the children playing, seen the laughs of the people. Many years ago, back when Kam had forgotten something from his home.

Riquoiston.

I knew what it felt like to be dreaming, I knew that haze, knew the feeling of being in a place in mind but not in body. It was something that I was very familiar with, I had had lucid dreams nearly every other day since I was five. I didn't have that feeling, that knowledge that I was awake and asleep at the same moment. Normally I could sense my outside body, sometimes even wake myself up if I realized that I needed to be up at a certain time and that said time was coming.

I couldn't sense that. I didn't feel asleep, didn't remember going to bed, couldn't think of what had happened the day before that would make sense, couldn't think of what I needed to do tomorrow.

I was awake. This was real, I think. A fact that was certainly true when Acilia's palm made contact with my face, the sound echoing out into the forest. My face snapped to the right, the force sending me spinning to the ground. Not because she hit me that hard, but because she was hot. It took everything in me to not scream out at the heat she gave off, but the pain quickly subsided, leaving the left area of my face feeling numb. There were twinges of pain when I blinked, feeling the edges of my skin crinkle painfully, but manageable.

Cursing under my breath, for more than one reason, I pushed myself to my feet, "You're real, aren't you?" I groaned, my voice came out slightly slurred, the left half of my lip pulling taut as I spoke, the muscles refusing to work properly. That was probably a bad sign. I flexed my jaw, feeling the stiffness of the muscle.