Finding Winter

Chapter 2

Cold sweat beaded along the sides of my forehead while I tossed and turned in my twisted sheets.

Similar to before but not quite feeling like I was being burnt alive, my body was flashed with an insufferable amount of heat, paired along with an ungodly combination of chills, which only seemed to trickle up and down my spine. As if that was not torture enough, the chills would periodically nick a nerve, causing my whole body to constrict and be imprisoned by momentary paralysis.

For a few moments, I would just have to lie there- my spirit thrashing wildly inside my body for release, but soon after I would be freed and the pent up movement would explode in a frenzy of kicking and banging my fists against the head rest.

I thought I could sleep it off and ignore it, but even when I tried waking myself up I couldn't. I was trapped in darkness, being closed in by shadows I couldn't see and bombarded by words I couldn't understand.

An ocean of black roared relentlessly beneath me, it's presence only detectable when it's waves thundered against the jagged rocks- white foam leaping out into the air like fangs snapping at my hovering feet. Everything my eye could see was dense and potent like black ink, which made it difficult to decipher how high up in the air I was, but I was able to spot a wall of mist crawl out from the horizon and stretch it's tendrils over the towering waves.

A warm gust of wind from the ocean whipped past my face and tussled my hovering body, the wind's humid touch expanding my lungs with dense, musty air and layering my body with salty spray.

The taste of the ocean lingered on my tongue and overwhelmed my senses with an overpowering amount of salt, and on top of the deafening harmony of the wild sea and wind there were multitudes of strange voices yelling at me in a different tongue and time.

This was all too much. 

Rolling my head and feeling my right eye twitch, I threw my hands up to my ears in the nightmare, which I similarly did in real life. 

"Stop it!" I yelled to the voices in fury. "I don't understand you, stop it!'

Instead, their chanting only grew louder and more uniform, forming their random, incoherent chatter into one steady stream of words.

"Osh keem Kalum. Yamor rem Othor, rem attahm Oströn."

Kalum. I heard that word before- the word I heard the wind roar each time I seemed to undergo a different phase.

"Kalum!" I exclaimed hopefully, praying that if I was able to communicate and appease the voices they would stop. "Yes, Kalum! Tell me what that means."

After demanding for an answer, I couldn't have felt more mentally challenged. I wasn't going to get an answer from the voices- one that I understood. They spoke a language entirely different from any language I have ever heard. Their words were so alien, but at the same time they held so much power and was probably one of the most beautiful sounds I listened to- so gentle and fluid. 

To my surprise, there was a deep, masculine chuckle.

"Kalum is you, my boy."

Startled by hearing a reply but also hearing the voices finally speak to me in English, I tore myself out from my nightmare and out from my bed, falling over the side like a klutz and lying on the floor amidst the shattered shards of my pride.

What the hell was that?

Fully alert and springing up to my feet, I rushed over to my dresser and snatched my phone off its charger.

The screen was cracked and shards of glass pricked my finger once I slid my thumb across it, but it did not falter me from viewing the photos I took from yesterday. The blue orb was still there and so was that face.