Zennia smiled at Adelio as he sat next to her on the bench in the back garden of their mother’s house.
“You look tired,” he commented, leaning back against the bench’s splats.
“I had a couple of nightmares last night,” she admitted, putting her elbows on her knees and resting her head in her hands. They sat for a moment watching the fish swim around in the pond.
“How bad were they on the scale?” He asked, trailing a particularly blue fish with his gaze. It was one of his favorite, just as hers was the orange fish that tended to circle all of them.
“The first one wasn’t anything worse than a three, I’ve actually had it before. The one with the bus stop?” she reminded him.
“Where you got on and flashbacked to that old house?” he tried to recall.
“Yes, that one,” she confirmed. “But after I woke up from that one, I had another one that was closer to an eight.” He looked at her with concern.
“It was that high?” he questioned, sitting up slowly.
“Yes,” she said shortly.
“Will you tell me about it?” he reached out to touch her shoulder gently. She lifted her head out of her hands, only to fold them together and tighten her hold until her knuckles turned white.
“I don’t know if I can,” she admitted.
“Do you want to try?” he tapped her hands to pull them out of their death grip and hold them in his.
“I…,” she trailed off. She took a fortifying breath and let it out slowly, carefully as if her very breath might break the air around her.
“I was in a castle or a fort of some sort,” she began with a clear voice. “I was being escorted by a couple of guards to a room. We stopped outside one of those olden time doors, you know the wooden ones with the metal hinges and rings for doorknobs? Those.” She paused as she remembered them. “One of the guards opened the door for me and shoved me inside. At first, I was shocked and turned around. I tried to get out but they had locked the door. I banged on it with my fists for a couple of moments before I heard someone say my name,
‘Zennia’. I turned to see who it was and…” she trailed off again, gripping his hands hard. Adelio waited, knowing she would eventually tell him what she had seen.
“It was Dad,” she whispered. “He was in chains. They were tied to the ceiling and pulled his arms back from his shoulders, almost wrenching them out of their sockets. He was dirty and pale. His clothes were little more than rags. I rushed to him.
‘Daddy,’ I said to him. ‘Daddy, don’t worry, I’ll get us out. I just have to see the prince.’ I was certain that this prince, whoever he was, was going to help us. That he would be the one who would help us escape.
‘They have your mother,’ he said with a face that I can’t forget. He looked…” she paused staring at their hands, trying to find the courage to say the next words. She closed her eyes as she fully immersed herself in the nightmare.
“He was broken, Adelio. Daddy was completely broken. He looked as though he couldn’t stand to take another breath. He was so hopeless…I hugged him with everything I was worth. Then the scene changed,” her voiced changed along with it. The sound was hard, almost cruel in its obsidian quality.
“I was in a chamber. A glass tube, floating in some kind of mixture that I’m sure wasn’t water. A group of men was gathered around a small boy.
