Thirty-eight – 03

[This post is from Thom’s point of view.]

He woke, sucking in a soft breath as sleep fled and consciousness flooded in, though not quickly enough to erase the memory of the vision of another lifetime that had haunted his dreams. Thunder growled above his head and Thom stared up at the rafters of their roof, stared at the small lantern Marin had hung days ago, the candle within burning low. She never left him alone in the dark, not anymore. It was if the candle’s flame was some sort of talisman, a bane against the darkness and perhaps something more, something unspoken that frightened her. Whatever that was, he didn’t want to ask her. There was enough fear in their lives already.

He winced slightly as he shifted in the bed. His head pounded in a dull cadence that didn’t quite match up to the beating of his heart, nor the sound of the wind or the pulse of thunder in the distance, thunder he could sense more than hear. Something nibbled at the edges of his consciousness, just near enough to perceive but not close enough to fully grasp.

Thom closed his eyes, exhaling.

Another one. What the hell does it mean? Does it mean anything? He tugged the blankets closer. It was the middle of summer, and yet it seemed more like the depths of October, November. He wasn’t sure if that was a side effect of the wound that didn’t seem to want to fully heal or something else.

He was terrified of the prospect of it being something else.

Slowly, he rolled onto his side, the covers bunching around him. “It means something,” he murmured to the candle flickering above him, to the empty room. “But what the hell is it?”

They never came without a reason, not the dreams, not in his limited experience. There was always a reason, but he usually knew more, had more context to piece together the meaning.

As thunder rattled the world around him, he struggled to figure out what the vision of a coming storm thousands of years before might mean in the context of the storm that seemed to be beginning right above their heads.

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