Bigger Army Diplomacy

V

        I panted as I ran through the never ending maze of my dreams. I had dreamed about it before, but I never thought I would see it in real life.

A horse shaped animal lunged at me but fell short. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling I was trapped in the maze, doomed to keep running for eternity. I kept running, past the miles and miles of stone brick walls and past my past, present, and future.

A cold sweat along with chills ran through my blue arm, though my right arm and frankly my whole body was feeling as if it was on fire.

Wrapped up in these thoughts, my mind wandered and I could feel the nocebo effect kicking in on my left leg. I tried to stop thinking about it, because maybe then it would stop, but it didn't. I thought so much about my leg that I didn't notice the gaping hole standing right in front of me.

People say that when you are falling from a cliff, your life flashes through your eyes. Incorrect. The only thing I was thinking about was 'AHHHHHHHHHHHHH' as I fell to my death. The bottom of the hole seemed so close, as I was begging gravity to 'just get on with it,'

It was so close. Would it hurt? Was it like a big nap?

I clenched myself into a ball, hoping it would help the impact.

3

2

1

France woke up with a cold sweat, breathing heavily from all the running that she didn't do.

She tried calming herself down, which didn't help at all in her current state of mind. 5:33, the wooden clock in her room read. But she couldn't go back to sleep after that.

Walking down the stairs to the sitting room, she thought she heard a creak but figured it must be a thing of her imagination. But when she heard it again, she went down to investigate the source of the noise. It seemed to be coming from the exact place she wanted to go, the sitting room, so she bunched up her nightgown and swiftly made her way down.

"Can't sleep?" A chair said. Or a person sitting on the chair may have said it.

"No." The person in the chair spun around. Her betrothal was sitting in a spinning rocking chair, sipping on something that looked suspiciously like tea.

"Bad dream then?" He questioned.

She nodded her head and flicked in her skirt so she could sit on the loveseat, in which no love would be happening that night. They sat in silence for a moment before France piped up.

"There was a maze." She whispered.

"I was running for some reason. Something might've been chasing me."

Kingdom suddenly looked intrigued.

"I fell into a hole. I dreamed that I was about to die, but then I woke up." She finished. It didn't explain half the terror she felt but it was close enough.

"That's very similar to my dream." He remarked.

"Really?" France responded. Then yawned.

"You should get some sleep."

"Yeah, that might be a good idea." She replied.

"Thanks for listening, UK," she walked up the stairs.

"France!" He called.

She looked at him.

"Call me Jack."

Jack watched the blue-white-and-and-red-headed girl make her way to the stairwell then disappear as if it was magic.

As she walked away without a trace, he thought of the dream he had just about two hours ago. He tried to shift away from that thought. Nestled up in his father's favorite chair and a cup of tea with his favorite book always seemed to calm him down. Not tonight. The uncanny resemblance between his and his soon to be wife was... strange, to say the least. Unsettling.

Nevermind that. It was simply a coincidence, he kept assuring himself. But something about that wouldn't leave him.

He buried himself in a book he was reading, about a princess and a disguised prince. It was childish, sure, but it was part of his history, and he couldn't just let it go. The funny thing was, it was in France's own language, which he learnt enough as a child to read simple books like La Belle et la Bête.

He fell asleep in the comfort of the sound of the fire cackling on his left side and his childhood story he used to read to himself.