Wayward Son

Chapter 6

I'm running.

So fast. Feels like I could fly. But I can't. I don't want to. I want to keep running. Keep moving. I have to keep moving. Don't know why. I just have to.

I hear someone, somewhere. Calling my name. Screaming it out again and again. I look, but I don't see her.

Her.

It's a woman. Older than me. I can tell just by her voice. But I've never heard it before.

Have I?

I must have. Somewhere. She sounds familiar. Calling for me. She's frightened. I have to find her. I have to help her somehow!

"Where are you going?"

Another voice. Never heard this one before. Eerie. Echoing. Resonating inside my head. Sounds like more than one person talking, even though I know it couldn't be.

"The one you seek is beyond your help," the stranger says, "or so it would seem to the unknowledgeable."

An eye opens up before me. Big. Sharp. Steely. Piercing.

"Are you not curious? Do you not wish to bring her back?"

What's happening? What is this?

"Aerrow!"

I hear someone else. Closer. Younger. Saying my name.

Where?

I see someone up ahead. A woman. Perhaps the one who was calling for me. I run towards her, shouting, trying to get her attention, tell her to move away from the eye because it isn't safe. It can't be safe.

"Aerrow, wake up!"

Small, thin, tendril-like hands reach out for her and she opens her arms to accept them as they grasp her arms and legs and waist and lift her slowly into the air, and her clothes begin to smoke and her body starts to fade away as she turns to look at my face-

"Aerrow!"

-as the shaking of his shoulder finally brought the Sky Knight back to the land of the living and he managed to crack his eyes open.

Piper sighed with relief.

"Thank goodness," she muttered. "You really should learn how to sleep more lightly."

"Piper?" Aerrow whispered, his voice quietened by exhaustion, the psychedelic dream already beginning to fade from his mind. "What's going on? Don't tell me we're under attack again."

"Ssh!" Piper hissed, and snapped a finger to her lips.

Concerned and now far more sober, Aerrow shifted his weight onto his elbow, careful not to disturb the still-sleeping Radarr.

"Okay, seriously," he said as quietly as he could without being completely silent, "what's wrong? What's the problem?"

"I'm not too sure," Piper admitted. "I was just going back after using the bathroom and I felt like I was being watched, and when I tried to look around I thought I saw something moving in the shadows!"

Aerrow thought this over (which was hard, as his mind was still a little fuzzy due to sleep).

"You sure it wasn't Stork?" he asked. "You know how he likes to go 'round making sure there aren't any animals on the ship that are smaller than Radarr. It's practically what keeps him going."