Lost Without You

~12~

Following Lia's advice I made my way home fast, walking under the cold drizzle along the well lit streets of the village, rather than its poorly lit back lanes.

"Mum?" I called, as I entered our dim house, illuminated only by the street lights reaching inside through the windows facing the road.

I let the door shut behind me on its own, sending the soft rattle of its stained glass panes ricocheting around the empty silence of the house.

Lily jumped at me from the darkness, startling me, before I could turn on the lights. Apparently Mum was still out and the dog was bored; the poor thing had been left all alone the whole evening.

"Fine, come on then," I pitied her, seeing how happy even my presence made her.

She skipped up the stairs behind me and settled on my bed even before I collected all the necessary things for my shower.

When I was finally ready to go to sleep, feeling exhausted despite my long afternoon nap, Lily was sleeping so deeply, or pretending to be sleeping deeply so well, that she didn't even stir when I joined her in the bed.

Once my book was safely under my pillow, I checked my phone. There was a message from Mum, asking me not to wait for her, as she would stay out late. I thought for a moment, not sure what to reply, and opted, in the end, for a simple 'Have fun'. It seemed to be the best piece of advice. She hasn't had it easy with Dad for a long time now, and if he could be having fun every night somewhere, then she could do it, too.

There was a text from William as well, informing me that he missed me. Right. I still have to deal with him. As if I didn't have enough troubles even without my strangely behaving ex-boyfriend.

"Just leave me alone," I mumbled, ignoring the message and switching the phone and the lights off.

Then I was asleep, the moment my head touched the pillow.

I woke up at the break of dawn, shaking with fear and cold, my heart beating wildly, its rhythm pulsing in my ears.

The dream...

It had been awful, and so real as if I had been inside of it, watching the scary scene unfold from a hiding place somewhere behind snow covered trees and bushes of a forest...

What was it all about... I struggled to remember, grabbing at the confused images which started to vanish already, slowly, gradually, like the darkness of the previous night still filling my room, in the first shy light of today breaking in through my window.

It was an early, misty morning in a forest, in my dream, I recalled. A fresh layer of snow was covering the grass as far as I could see in the insufficient light of the oncoming day.

Clara was there, I recognized her by her long, wavy, bright cinnamon hair, worn untypically loose. I saw...
a masked man on horseback snatching her as she walked across a small clearing, and watched them disappear into the fog under the trees.

And when I looked back to the clearing, clasping my throat in shock as for some reason I was unable to make a sound, to scream to alert someone, anyone about what was happening, I saw Ioan.

Ioan, lying lifeless on the snow, a patch of blood growing, spreading around his chest like a huge red flower.

Soon there were more bodies on the ground, and there was Vlad... Vlad, fighting two men at once, his cloak flying around him in shreds as one of his opponents fell to his knees while the other kept fighting.

A sudden sound of hoof beats muffled by the layer of snow drew my eyes to the misty undergrowth at the edge of the clearing, where the first few of many men were dismounting their horses.