Frostfire

Reality

As I've said in the description, this is horrible and unedited and written five years ago, so please understand. It is also discontinued, but you can read what's here even if it's not much. Check out Into the Void, a shared project on a shared account @StarCatching. It's one of the best and longest things I've written so far, approaching fifty thousand words! The length of a novel!

I woke with a start, cold sweat running down my back. It was just a dream, I reminded myself.
Yup, a dream where I was in someone else's body, feeling what they felt, doing what they did, thinking what they thought, experiencing everything... secondhand.
Basically, it had been like watching a movie.
I'd been having these dreams for awhile now, but this on was the most recent, and lately they'd been becoming a lot longer, yet more concise.
That girl and I, we had some kind of bond, a tie, a link. I wondered how.
A sharp rap at the door interrupted my thoughts, and I leapt up to answer it, glad to have something else to occupy my mind. At this time of morning, a caller seemed unusual, but I wasn't thinking about that.
When I reached the door, a cold draft swept in, freezing my toes. Why did I always get so cold? My heart stopped as I looked up into a familiar face - one I'd only seen in my dreams.
It was the kidnapper.



He opened his mouth, as though he were about to say something, then snapped it shut abruptly without a sound, gawking for a second before a panicked expression appeared on his face.
"I just escaped her, didn't I just escape? Please don't get me again, I was just trying to..."
His voice trailed off as he realized that he sounded pretty hysterical, and he had good reason to - his dark hair was straight, thick with blood and tousled by the wind. A deep gash in his neck was sticky with blood, and his brow was beaded with sweat. Sure enough, when I reached out tentatively to touch a hand to his skin, it was scalding against mine.
Suddenly, a flash of knowledge. The girl who had hit him ad carried him off - she looked a good deal like me! With her long, raven black hair pulled back in a neat braid, a slim form, and a thin face with huge round eyes, the only difference was their colour; hers were a silver-blue like the first frost, cold and clouded, like crackling ice, while mine were a deep amber-red that seemed to shine with warmth and mirth. That must have been what turned this boy off.
He stumbled, wearily and wounded, into the house, and despite my wild instincts, I let him come inside. He wandered into the kitchen, and when he suddenly stiffened and pitched over sideways, I caught him reluctantly, filled with a sense of guilt. I lay him out on the enormous oak wood table and immediately patches of red began to seep through his clothing. His eyes weren't closed, but closing, but the telltale rise and fall of his chest told me at least that he was alive.
When my mother was alive, she might have known exactly what to do with a dying patient. But she had only taught me a few things; she used to be a healer. I hastily made my way over to the pantry, the only side of the pantry that we have never used since her death. Because it holds all I her healing tools.
She used to tell me stories about when she was a girl. Stories about the time she was captured by a wizard, who sensed her powers and sent her off to train with a healing witch.
The witch came painfully close to killing my mother, because she was possessed, but my mother stole out of the house and into the forest, and when she left, she took some little tools with her. Magical tools.
Then there were the stories about my father. I don't really want to remember him.
With a shaking hand, I reached out, grasped the handle, slick with dust, and pulled. I couldn't believe my eyes.