Stormchild: Emeline and the Forest Mage

3 First Dream

Träumenil

Twisted, severed fingers tangled in Emeline's hair: rotten bruised appendages, frostbitten and decomposing. Putrid skin clung to the bone, their decrepit nails jagged. A cold touch on her scalp sent goose bumps down her arms. Over the shoulder her hair hung to her waist, wriggling with fingers as though filled with giant maggots. Why did she accept this?

Other peculiarities in the dream stole her attention. A haze swathed the horizon in layers of yellow, orange, white. A mist, particles dancing in the air. She trailed a finger through it, moist, thick, swirling.

Someone had shaped this odd dream, but not her. Though she walked Träumenil often, she couldn't write her own dreams. Few could, a dangerous few. Abnormal acceptance, which often came with journeys through Träumenil, kept her from panic. Looking down she noted her body; curvaceous, sensual, stark nude-the shape nothing like her true physique. Unabashed, her unattired state felt natural, she might have found it stranger in other circumstances.

An obscure light in the distance, might've been the sun, drew her feet forward. The orb's diffused glow floated in the air, a ball of pallor flung into the distance, tempting her curiousity. Calling to her, a mystery, a message, maybe an answer to the oddity of the dream.

Sometimes the Fathers, the God Northerners worshipped, sent messages to their people in the dreamland. Sometimes a dream meant nothing, one's subconscious mind the culprit. Hope fluttered in her heart that this one might be from the Fathers. It would explain the strangeness, and the only thing she had to go on was that glowing orb.

Silky grass cushioned her soft footfalls and she padded towards the hazy light. A short while later her steps turned sluggish. A bog grew at her feet. Its murky mud turned to sticky green liquid. Olive coloured, festering water bubbled over her toes, gurgled and glugged against her ankles, slid over her feet. The pasty sensation sent shivers up her spine. She walked faster.

Squinting into the haze, she spotted movement in the distance. A person maybe? Someone who could explain? The fingers tugged at her hair, hurting her scalp. She wanted to swat at them, but the idea of getting answers compelled her forward instead.

The figure in the distance was a man or something close to a man. His dark cape billowed in the haze even though there looked to be no wind. The sharp green glow of his eyes pierced her from afar. The bog deepened and she followed the gradual downward slope of the terrain into it. Her naked thighs felt sticky in the muck. Disgusting! She had to escape this quagmire.

Panic clawed at the edges of her mind. She waded further reluctantly, compelled by an inert desire she did not understand but hesitant to risk injury. The density of the liquid hampered her movements, and the obscurity made it seem that dark and dangerous things lurked just out of view. Though her legs burned with effort, she barely moved at all.

She was stuck but refused to dunk her arms into the murk and wade. Taking deep breaths, she forced calm, quenched her building frustration and anxiety. She would not die here today. Once her heart had calmed, she tried again and found it easier to move forward.

Her attentions turned to the man in the distance. An older man by the looks of it, wrinkled skin, white hair, a bony frame. A shaper, maybe? Had he created this dream? And if he had, why?

Green mud floated against her bare breasts, cold shivered through her. She spread her hands to wade with diffidence. The fingers in her hair started falling out one by one like dead birds plopping into the goop. 'Thank the Fathers!' Each bubbled and fizzed as it sank, a stench rising in its wake that polluted the crisp air with its foulness.

The haze was dissipating. She was so relieved it bordered on light-headedness. The setting sun warmed her skin, easily discerned where it hung in the sky above a rich forest of a myriad greens. Mystery solved...but she had never seen a forest like this before. Mouth agape, she stole a moment to peruse its glorious beauty. Tiers of shades of green, flowers specks of colour, vines, ferns, colossal oaks, sprouts, and a thousand trees she couldn't name.