The Master of Wind

-Choices-

(Ahh, I accidentally published Presence before this chapter! God damn it, I'm so sorry for the inconvenience. Please read this chapter before Presence if you want to read  he chapters in the proper order!!)

Aia's P.O.V:

A young child was sat hunched over what seemed to be a broken lantern. His long hair was a messy mob of black, it would almost have been lion-like had he not been so skinny. His worn out t-shirt seemed to be a size small but on him, it was clinging and hanging loose where it shouldn't.

In this poor light the roof-tops spread in every direction like great grey serpents with rectangular scales. Only the yellow thatched roofs ruined the illusion, but in this light they were just as monochromatic as everything else, the slate, the swirling smog, the streets that were never deserted, the unfriendly sky with it's dense cloud robbing the young boy of the sunrise.

The roof seemed to be wet and cold but he sat on it like it was a warm mattress. The frigid water was seeping into his pants, surely he must've felt it? His arms were wrapped tightly around his knees that jutted up sharply. I took in his face for as long as I dared to look, it was skeletal really. No-one's cheekbones should stick out so far. His face had no trace of life other than not being blue. It was like he was breathing without really being alive.

My breath caught in my throat when his previously closed eyes had been replaced by a pair of piercing gray orbs. They were as gray as the ash of a dying fire, completely drained of warmth. Such desperation and hopelessness didn't belong in the eyes of a child, yet they reminded me of my own.

I held out my hand to pat him on the shoulder in sympathy but froze when his face turned ashen, only to be replaced with that of Lloyd's, screaming in agony.

-

I gasped, body jerking abruptly into a sitting position. My head pounded and my vision obscured momentarily from the too-sudden movement. I brought a hand to my forehead and waited with eyes squeezed shut for the blood rush to subside. The room around me was pitch black, which only seemed to illuminate the hopelessly empty space. As the lingering traces of haze evaporated from my mind, I remembered. I'd left dinner early to try and get some rest, even though I was aware that I probably wouldn't get to sleep for more than a few hours.

Throughout my lifetime of broken limbs and the passing of close relatives, I had never had a recurring nightmare. I'd had dreams attach themselves to my subconscious like glue to children's fingers – trivial dreams of failed missions and naked wanderings through public areas...

And I'd had nightmares. Oh, I'd had nightmares. Visions of unrelenting ferocity wrenching me from sleep to sweat-drenched hair and icy blood. But those nights many, many years ago, when I'd trudge to my parents' room to wake my mother had been few and far between, and the images that flashed before my eyes had never even remotely resembled one another. So to have had not two, but three nearly identical nightmares within the course of a few weeks was very new to me.

I slowly felt the muscles of my chin tremble like a small child and I looked towards the wall, but was only met with darkness. There was static in my head once more, the side effect of this constant fear, this constant stress I lived with. I heard my own sounds, like a distressed child, raw from the inside. The beads of water started falling down one after another, without a sign of stopping and I was once again grateful to have my own room. Zane's death had taken something out of me I didn't know I had left to give.

It had only been three weeks since he died- I hated to think about such a thing- and everyone was still weighed down with grief. After the memorial, I'd subconsciously pulled away from the others in order to get some time to think.