Lapsus Memoriae [Rávamë's Bane: Book 1]

Part III : Chapter 25 ~ Rávamë

I fell through the darkness, my dream-self's hair and clothes flying up around me as cool air gusted upwards. I'd been fully prepared for utter exhausted unconsciousness, so it was a bit of a surprise to find I still had enough presents of mind to see the ground of my subconscious rushing up towards me.

I didn't scream, but I did brace myself for the impact of hitting the earth. Instead of a hard crash and a painful landing though, I fell lightly straight down onto a bed of grass as soft as an etherial feather pillow.

Admittedly, I landed face down, but you can't have everything I suppose.

I stayed there for what seemed to me like a long while before rolling myself onto my back, my mind surprisingly calm despite everything I knew to be going on outside. I felt like my thoughts should either be running at full speed still, or too exhausted to even be aware of my surroundings. Instead I was somewhere in between, staring up at the impossibly beautiful star covered sky my mind had created as a safe haven wondering whether I'd managed to save Boromir, and what on earth it was I'd seen through his mind's eye while preforming the antacuilë...

I'd never imagined when all the medical texts talked about risking yourself as well as your patient they'd meant potentially getting lost in your subjects memories as you attempted to save them. I still wasn't entire sure what it was I'd been seeing through him, but as much as I wanted to puzzle it over, I couldn't right now. There was something more, something bigger that was preying on my mind now, and it was gaining momentum fast as I lay there.

As if she'd sensed my train of thought drifting in her direction, I blinked and Tink was there.

She stood over my head looking down, a perfect upside down mirror image of myself with liquid gold eyes and better kept hair. She didn't speak, and I couldn't read her expression clearly as I looked up at her lying flat on my back — it was lost somewhere between awed, impassive, and maybe a little worried.

Without a word she smiled tiredly, and offered me her hand. I took it, letting her pull me easily back to my feet.

As I straightened, I realised with a spark of recognition that were standing in the same plane where I'd first encountered her over two years ago. Rolling hills surrounded us in ever direction, blanketed with soft grass and shifting yellow flowers, spread beneath an inky night sky scattered with billions of far off stars and a full moon as bright as a floating lantern.

"I think I could grow to like this plane the best," I murmured softly, unsure of what else to say as we stared up at the rolling nebula and far off galaxies. Tink's weary expression shifted into the shadow of a smile, brushing a hand over the head of the yellow flowers around us.

"Me too," she answered in the same quiet tone.

"Though the method of entrance could be improved upon," I chuckled airily, trying to inject some humour I couldn't bring myself to feel.

I needed have bothered, Tink clearly knew what I was feeling, probably better than I did. Her expression didn't chance, though her eyes glinted with repressed words. I bit my lip, looking away from her unsettlingly searching stare. Silence drifted between us before I worked up the nerve to ask the first on my list of questions — a list that was growing steadily in the wake of what had just happened outside the safe haven of my head.

"Did it work?" I asked, almost inaudibly though I know she heard me clear as day. "Did he survive?"

Tink took a moment before answering with the same reverent solemnity I had.

"I don't know."

I nodded, accepting the response, endlessly frustrating as it was.

"What about us? We're still alive, right?"