Daydreams And Nightshade (DaN #1)

Chapter 11: Gooseberries and obese sheep (pt. 1)

Luna had no idea how long she'd stared through the tavern window at the thing in the sky. She tried processing what it all meant. Noah's visions most likely not being his imagination for one, not to mention learning of this being's existence in general.

She glanced down at her bare wrists and bandaged hands with a frown, trying to block out Lucius and Damien still fighting in the background.

"It doesn't matter if that thing is up there or not, it was always there," Damien argued and Lucius scoffed as he packed the last of their things together.

"There's a blight in the sky, Damien. We came here to try and fix things but really, we can't do much about a thing like that and we've already been in enough danger as it is."

"Exactly. So we march over to the town hall, grab Frey and leave."

"We can't stay here," Lucius said through clenched teeth, narrowed eyes daring Damien to argue with him further.

Luna sighed, shoulders slouching as she finally decided to come to terms with reality, even if it meant sucking up her pride.

"So..." She turned to Noah, who refreshingly looked no more pale and upset with life than he usually did. "... I think you've got some explain—"

"Are you fucking serious!?" Noah blurted out before he could correct his language, and Luna would have none of it.

"Well you didn't have proof before! Now we have proof! We have a sky full of proof, so there you go! You win! Let's hear what you know!"

"I don't know about blights," Noah mumbled. "I rarely see traces of them and certainly don't try speaking to them."

"You spoke to the small one."

"I don't know what was happening back there." Noah squeezed his eyes together. "Something was wrong. I've never felt that kind of thing before."

"It's gotta be about the dream though, right?" Luna pressed on. "The whole 'hungry' thing and all. But why just the two of us?"

Noah only shook his head, so Luna turned back to the adults.

"What's the plan, anyway? Abandon Frey and hope the toll guards won't shoot us? Shouldn't we try to help people instead? Maybe actually try to solve this whole thing?"

"All anyone can do is evacuate and hope it doesn't spread," Lucius said, folding shirts at an alarming pace. "What do you suppose we do about that?"

"I mean... I don't know, but someone's gotta do something."

"We're only five, or maybe four people." Lucius shot Damien a glare. "Whatever we could do to help wouldn't amount to much, so I'm prioritizing your safety."

Luna defiantly ignored the relief she felt by the option to leave the town and instead forced her mind and eyes back to the thing in the sky, summoning all her curiosity and determination instead while thinking back to recent events.

It proved difficult.

They'd managed to beat the dangers in the house rather easily, and the dream had ended as soon as the woman in it woke up. It was good news, proving the blight was not invincible inside dreams, but humans could still be injured inside it as well and Luna was not fond of the idea of risking that again. Yet the woman they'd rescued was, after some struggle from a roughed up Vincent and Lucius, resting upstairs in the tavern, and what stopped that horrid blight from invading her dreams a second time?

"I want to stay," Luna ended up saying, almost without thinking, tearing her eyes away from the mara. Lucius opened his mouth to obviously object to it but she continued before he got a chance. "I want to solve this. That thing up there has to have a—a weakness or something and if this continues maybe it'll spread further so... we need to stop it."