Disorienting.
What year was it? What day?
She knew the touch of the moss beneath her cheek. The melodic tumbling of water that trickled from the stream beyond her hideaway. Crickets chirred and sang lustily in the darkness outside. Just another late-summer night.
But which summer was this?
The dream felt so real that it couldn't have only been a dream. It wasn't now. She wasn't now. The past several years felt as if they'd never happened. As if they were the dream. The memory was real. Present. Clamoring through her mind. Through her heart.
No, this was another summer. Time had somehow flown backwards and reset itself. She was younger. Freer, and yet...not free. Ensnared by midnight-dark locks and tortured eyes that were the same color as Nen Harn under a summer sky. Such need. So much need.
She hadn't heard his voice in ages, yet it spoke now, just beside her ear. Low and gentle and familiar, like music from a childhood lullaby. She felt the rough-yet-tender fingers brush against her knuckles. And she reached out for them.
There was nothing but air.
Panic flared, and she jolted violently. The spasm jarring her awake.
Disorienting.
For a few seconds, she looked wildly about the camp. He was here. He was just here...just here...
Then, as waking slowly seeped through, and in its unrelenting way, swept aside the bittersweet dream, she continued to look. Clinging to the shadows in her sleep-addled head. Willing them to stay.
But they wouldn't listen.
At length, her head dropped back onto the soft earth, and she flung her arm over her sweat-damp brow.
"...feckin' dreams..."
