A Garden of Flowers and Bones [Lloyd Garmadon x Reader]

Chapter 7: Chime of the Bluebells

TW: Animal death, implied/referenced animal abuse (second hand storytelling), blood/blood-letting, gore (from field dressing)

To skip the whole hunting scene, avoid from "It was a small creek, about half a mile away from the house" to "The body was still too heavy for her to carry"

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There's something here.

She was lying, half awake. The dark, too dark. The quiet, too quiet. When the thought rammed into her all at once. And suddenly, that dozing daze she'd allowed herself to sink into became the slick scales of a boa constrictor slowly wrapping around her vulnerable form.

Her hand shoved under her pillow and then shot out in the pitch blackness that swallowed her room whole. The dagger didn't even glint- there was no light to catch it. Y/N became acutely aware of the fact she couldn't even see her own hand as it moved in a hissing arc, slicing apart the pall that had drenched her room. It came apart at the seams like fabric, tearing wherever the iron touched, and then skittering away with a low howl that could hardly be anything from a true animal.

Her heart was pounding, her left foot flaring in pain as she tripped over it, hitting the end on the ground painfully. She took a knee, breathing through her mouth as she waited for the pain to fade. The sudden awakening made her erratic, her hands were jilting and jittering as she kneeled in her night gown, hand gripping the dagger at her side. Despite not doing a lot of exercise, she was breathing heavy with panic and her heart was pounding with unease.

The room was visible now. The kind of darkness she could see through, like stained glass. Carefully, she stood, her feet sparking with phantom pains- but she remained squat, eyes darting around to all the crevices and dark corners. 

With a deep breath, she spent the next few moments catching her bearings, familiarising herself with the world of the awake, because- yes, she was awake now. She was awake, she was in her room, in her house. The one she'd been in for most of her life.

After a tense while longer, her strained muscles relaxed from the fighting stance she'd been frozen in. The magic around the house had finally weakened enough to let weak Fey slip through the cracks undetected. The stronger ones would be locked outside still, but if a Nightmare had managed to slip through then that wouldn't be the case for long. It was time to revive the barrier.

Nightmares weren't powerful creatures. In fact, they were entirely limited to haunting individuals and draining them of their energy. She had probably become a target simply for the fact she wasn't sleeping well. It was hard to track when they attached themselves to their victims, mainly because it happened suddenly and to people who were already tiring themselves out. They were hard to detect creatures with no physical form and moved on quickly from one target to the next. 

Hauntings usually only lasted for about five days. Better than the clap, she supposed. Nightmares were flighty creatures that would usually vacate an area when found out. They were typically found around populated areas so she must've picked this one up from someone else earlier that week. And since she had, well, pulled a knife on it, it would've fled.

Some Fey could plague individuals with nightmares, but Nightmares, contrary to the name, could not. They were very weak things, mainly just taking refuge in people's shadows- literally. The reason it had got so big must've been because it had already absorbed a lot of energy from the last few people it had latched onto. 

Since she'd been sleep deprived already, she was the perfect person to move onto. How was she supposed to tell the difference between her own natural discomfort and the discomfort caused by the Nightmare?