Sunkissed

Breakfast

My fingers trembled as I kept fighting for breath under the suffocating waves of visions washing over me. Spasms shot down my spine and my legs twitched, shook, and kicked. It was like this for most nights when the visions came to me in my sleep. They started after my manhood ceremony when I was 12. At first, it would start every other month, then once a month and then they began to become more frequent from every week to every night.

The priests insist that they were messages from the gods, and I was blessed.

I never knew blessings hurt so much.

I often woke up screaming because the visions I was sent were things of nightmares. They were hardly ever of a bright future or pleasant message. As much as my father and the priests saw them as blessings from the gods, I saw them as warnings and threats.

They were violent messages and things that I felt like my mind would rip apart from.

Unfortunately, they were never painful enough to kill me in my sleep.

I clawed into my arms as I withered in my bedsheets. My father imported the finest materials for my comfort. A luxurious mattress, beautiful sheets of silk and the softest pillows – but none of them mattered. I still felt the scratching of roots and dirt as I tumbled down my pit of dreams and no matter how much I tried to scrape back up to the surface, the darkness swallowed me like a pill.

Tonight, I withered in the folds of my blanket as I dreamt of fields.

They stretched all throughout the horizons, with grass that sparkled with morning dew and flowered blooming in various bright colors. I heard the songs of birds and felt the buzzing of bees and fluttering of butterflies. It was all so beautiful, but I knew better than to expect anything peaceful. I felt a vein in my temple start to twitch with anticipation and my attention drew towards the sunrise in the distance. Its glorious hues of yellow and orange turned dark with red and purple. I held myself as I began backing away from the dark smoke cascading over the lands.

"War..." I heard a voice whisper, "they asked for war..."

The clouds of smoke began to strike with lightning and when the dust settled, I stood in front of a line of soldiers, all ready for battle. When I looked down at myself, I saw I dressed for battle as well. I turned around and saw our enemy.

It was the Rodange.

I thought my body would freeze with fright and I would turn back and run, but instead, I climbed onto my chariot and held the hilt of my khopesh in one hand and the reins with the other. Confidence puffed out my chest and I began saying commands to hold the lines of my army with authority. I never heard my voice sound like that before; it sounded so mature.

Though I could tell this was a vision of the future, a possible future, when my eyes studied the enemy in front of us, I felt fear starting to churn in my stomach and start to build up to my throat. That emotion – that was familiar. I shut my eyes and felt myself about to get sick.

Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

I looked and saw the face of Chinjul. He was darker than I remembered and wore a headband around his head, and I noticed his hair was cut short. It barely made it past jawline and I wanted to reach out and touch it. Instead, I touched his wrist, giving it a squeeze, and pressed my cheek against his knuckles.

It was such an instinctive gesture, I wondered why or when it would become such a casual thing for me to do. It seemed so affectionate and foreign to me.

Yet, a warm sensation spread through me, a comfort. My sickness was gone.

He nodded, giving me a serious expression, and then I noticed he was wearing our military uniform. The linen fabric wrapped around his upper body with bronze armor to cover over his shoulders and chest. I noticed the naginata strapped on his back. His katana sheathed and fastened to the cloth tunic wrapped around his waist.