My Last Breath (Book one of The Portal Series)

Dreaming In The 1700's. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Dinner came and went slower than it ever could've gone, but that's how it goes when you don't want to be somewhere. At least we had a good meal that filled us up, yet I was too exhausted to be curious about what I was eating.

Instead, I had the butterflies on my mind. As they fluttered around us and landed on our skin I was told they were special creatures, carnivores who eat other bugs. They protect the plants by eating the pests, and in return the plants give them a protective space to go through their life cycle.

I enjoyed their presence, knowing they don't like to come out for many people. What a lovely way to welcome us to their home, showing me not all creatures are destructive here in Dibbley.

Suprisingly the butterflies can live up to a few years which, is longer than the average Earthen butterfly that lives around a month or so.

I also learned the butterflies swarm like bees and can be set free from the greenhouse to pollinate the spring flowers, which they did in early April and will each month until fall. They always return home to the safety of the greenhouse, to spend the rest of the summer and fall before reproducing and hibernating.

Zoned out, we finished dinner and I found myself endlessly wandering the castle to find my bedroom. Perry of course led the way very confidently, but I couldn't remember how many halls we passed through.

My bedroom, a massive room fit for a princess with extravagant furniture and a fireplace, already had my belongings brought inside. Pajamas were placed strategically upon the bed, my pillows were fluffed and the bedsheets were folded open for me to enter.

I didn't look around much before leaving to find Perry's room, insisting I needed to know where it was for emergency purposes.

Now we stand on the outside of his bedroom door, my eyes staring at a plaque on the wall beside the door. It reads:

Perry Donnan of Dibbley, Prince of Vampires.

As we enter my first impression is that his room is even larger than mine, while he's in tears after finding his belongings exactly the way he left them. Books still organized on shelves as he placed them, hosting a personal library that he must've been collecting centuries ago.

His clothes are still hung in the closet, looking so fresh I almost forget they are older than my own grandparents. Shoes drill laid on the floor, one turned over as if it was kicked off casually without care.

"They must have had my room dusted every day," He states.

The hope his parents must have had that he'd come back some day, with his banishment lifted. I feel strange, but not out of place. The room looks like I've walked into the eighteenth century.

He walks over to his beside table, still having an open book laid out. He finds a piece of parchment, ripped carelessly with a crooked edge, "What's this?"

I join him, finding scribbled handwriting. It's a page that was torn out of a journal. I let him read it, then suddenly he looks at me, his mouth falling open.

My eyes divert from his, "What's wrong?"

"I wrote down a dream...why don't I remember this?" He hands me the page, "It's describing a woman."

I scan over the heading, dated in the seventeen hundreds but I quickly go to the meat of the writing. Quick scribbles and smeared ink writing describes a non physical moment between a woman and Perry. Something quite intimate, and personal. He was confused, not recognizing her in the dream but noted he's dreamed of her before and this was the clearest memory he has of her face to face. He wrote down her features: