Fire Realm

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

The group walked for several hours, fumbling our way through the darkness. Only some of the people had been smart enough to bring torches from the hall; the rest of us did without and walked in the light of those around us. My father and mother led the way with Rowan, trusting the two of us to take care of ourselves, and no doubt planning our next move. Although I still had my title as 'princess,' that all seemed to be forgotten in the journey to the other Realm. I was given nothing special, and nothing special was expected of me. As far as everyone else was concerned, I was just another person. I liked it that way.

After it became apparent to those in the lead that the group was tiring quickly and very cold, they called a halt to our journey for the night. They spread out the dragons in a very large circle to sleep, and the rest of us on the inside of the circle. We would not be allowed to have any fires tonight and the dragons would keep us both warmer and safe. It reminded me of the way ordinary people would circle wagons at night for the same reasons. I chuckled at this; it had been a long time since I had lived an ordinary life.

Mekka took the blanket from around his shoulders and flattened it out on the ground.  It wouldn’t be much, but it would keep away the chill of the earth underneath.  As he took the blanket from around my shoulders and spread it out for a top layer, he spoke.

“What happened back there in the hall?” he asked,

“Nothing,” I answered shortly.  

“I know it wasn’t nothing.  You stood there for almost two minutes without moving.  You’re not usually one to sit still for even half that time.  I know you better than you would admit.”

I looked at the ground around my feet, not wanting to answer his question.  He watched me closely for a moment, and then sighed.

“You’ve got to stop blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong.  Believe it or not, you are not the center of the universe, and you are not the cause and effect of everything,” he said.

His comment stung, which only went further to prove that I had been acting like that.  I refused to make eye contact with him, knowing that he was right.  I adjusted a wrinkle in the blanket in my shame.  

“You’re right.  I didn’t cause this all to happen,” I trailed off.  I wasn’t entirely sure that I believed my own words, but if it made him happier that was all that mattered.  He lay down on the blanket and I crawled in beside him.  At first I turned away from him, my head on the cold ground staring off into the ring of people setting up their own beds for the night.  He gently pulled my head onto his shoulder and wrapped an arm around me.  

A coyote howled in the distance and another one across the plain called back, sounding distant and lost.  I wondered if that was how we were, Mekka trying to find me and bring me back to him, while I just fell further and further away.  

My dreams were haunted by the skeletal face of the creature in my nightmare. I constantly morphed into things, changing from the shape of a man, to eerily the shape of a dragon. But its mysteries didn't stop there; the enigma multiplied by ten, by a hundred, and so on until my field of vision was swarming with these wraith-like beings. Why was I seeing this? I finally asked myself. I had seen it before, and this time the only thing really frightening about it was the sheer multitude of these things.  My logical thinking began to draw me out of the dream, and I forced myself to think, wanting to escape this place as soon as possible. It worked, beginning like a breeze and becoming a gale that blew these wispy things away. But one of them still remained. I sighed and waited for it to do something crazy. My expectations were met, and even though the wind blew them away from me, this one blew upwind and flew at me with its bloodied yellow jaws opening wider and wider until it swallowed me whole.