Chrysalis (Book 1.5 in the Wolfen Brethren Series)

Family Bonding

20 Years Old
Octobe

It was dark and wings were fluttering over my skin, my white dress was billowing in the wind as my hair cascaded around my shoulders. The short strands whipping into my face and clinging to my cool skin. The floor shifted beneath me and from the ground came butterflies, it was an oddity that they were out at night, against the laws of nature but here they were. Their wings of splendour spread wide as they soared high into the sky, pretty wings of rainbows glimmering in the moonlight. Shards of golden light shimmering over my skin and basking me in light.

They fluttered in joy, their bodies reaching to the sky, beating, flapping, strumming. My heart thudded in time to their wings until I too felt like I was flying. The wind in my hair, I was liberated. The gods shined on.

A crashing clash of thunder shook the earth beneath my feet, soil shifting again as grass twisted around my feet, pulling me back down to nature. My nails scored at the ground as I tried to drag my body from this pit, the deep black pit that tried to swallow me whole. Maggots and larva squirming beneath my feet, their slime sticking to my skin as they clung to my legs. My fingers were gushing blood, the red making splatters against natures green canvas.

Tree roots raised from the ground, winding around my body and tearing at my dress, the bark biting into my skin and ripping me open as nature tried to take me back.

Lightning scored across the sky, angry strokes of the gods bolts shattering the calm night, the blinding white light revealed a black cloaked shadow. Its head cocked back in a laugh of glee, eyes shining red in the pale moonlight. Then it was gone. The silver lightning bolts created carnage, striking the butterflies one by one until they perished. Sizzling on the floor like hot lava until they cooled and turned to stone.

I screamed, my body ripping away from the black pit. I crawled and grappled along the sinking earth, water turning the ground before me wet as I squelched through the mud. It clung to my body, weighing me down but I trudged through the gunk until I reached solid ground. My chest laying flat along damp grass as I lay beside the dying butterflies, my cheeks wet as I watched them perish to the ground. Steam rising around them as they disintegrated before my eyes.

Wings poked through the body of a deceased butterfly. Dark brown wings, with angry strokes of red. it grew bigger and bigger until there was a swarm of them ascending into the sky. Moths hitting and striking at each other until they clumped together before my very eyes. Gathering and gathering until they became one dark ominous force.

Their black wings spread wide as they ascended across the sky. Body rising up and up until there was nothing but darkness.

The moon was not in my eye.

I gasped awake, eyes shooting open as the pale moonlight glared through the curtain of my room, shining so brightly until it too disappeared as a cloud of black descended across it. The aquamarine stone shone a magnificent blue, winking at me.

Closing my eyes, I tried to trick myself into believing that it had only been a dream, just a dream fuelled by my deepest thoughts but I knew deep down that it wasn't.

For some reason the gods had reached out to me and I was petrified, so petrified because my dream had been of nothing but darkness.

//--//

When I woke the next morning my eyes were gritty and raw from a sleepless night but I refused to dawdle in bed any longer, I had to find Manal and reveal my dream to her. She was leaving for good in a few days and sometimes her revelations took hours even days to decipher.