Chapter 24
He was watching me again, I know he was watching me. I could feel his eyes on me, his silent gaze filled with a mix of curiosity and sadness. I understand why, remembering the gentleness he had wiped my tears with not so long ago. Just as I understood the curiosity he must feel, even if he couldn't speak his questions aloud to me. It had been like this ever since I had awoken from the fever, my mind filled with flashes of images and half-remembered feelings. Things that looked and felt alien yet familiar at the same time, frightening me with its familiarity.
I wondered just how long he could hold back before he went and grabbed Michael to ask the questions for him. I had a feeling I knew what he wanted to ask, but no matter how much I hated not telling him what he wanted to know, I had no clue how to even begin to explain the bits and pieces of what I could remember of the dream I'd had that day.
Just thinking about a few of the images and feelings I could recall would cause my face to heat up or pangs of longing to form. One more reason to continue to ignore everything to do with the dream, although it was getting harder as seemingly random things would suddenly cause something to rise to the surface unexpectedly, often leaving me standing there in a daze for a moment.
It had been rather embarrassing when I had frozen during Winter training with Lucas this morning, arrow tightly held and ready to fly one moment and dangling from loosened fingers the next as a softly whispered voice had echoed quietly in my head, the feeling of fingers ghosting over my skin following closely behind the words "Steady, you can do this." I had nearly run all the way back to my room after thrusting the bow into Lucas' hands after ignoring his worried questions.
If I couldn't even face him, how was I supposed to face Daniel, the person who mattered most to me in this place? How was I supposed to explain to him that dreams and phantom feelings were wreaking havoc with my mind and there was seemingly nothing I could do to stop them?
Sighing softly, I slowly began walking further down the pathway, trying to ignore the guilt I felt as Daniel watched me leave.
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I could only hang my head as I listened to the words Michael spoke, his coffee brown eyes holding a hint of disappointment that I seemed to be hiding something from them all. I know I should feel comfortable by now with telling the men in this room anything that troubled me, Michael having already proven himself a reliable leader, just as Daniel had proven himself as both friend and confident in the things I had told him thus far.
Although I felt bad for hiding it, I couldn't help the feeling I had that this dream would bring changes that I didn't want to see happen. How was I supposed to explain that to them, to get them to understand? How was I to explain the feeling that if I delved into the images and thoughts that the dream had brought, that I would slowly lose myself, forget who I was now as I became someone or something different? Whether that actually would happen or not I didn't know, but I couldn't shed the fear that it could happen.
And how was I supposed to explain to the people that I had come to care for that I might go to sleep again and some point and wake up someone who might not recognize them? Because that was my greatest fear right now, almost overwhelming me during the moments I was alone, the long nights when almost everyone else was asleep and I sat there in the dark wondering when I might start losing the parts of myself that made me who I was.
I had no idea who the original me was and part of my fear was that she might end up hurting someone I had come to care about.
Seeing the frustration slowly building as Michael's often seemingly unending patience began to grow thin, I finally took a deep breath and opened my mouth. At first, the words came haltingly, but soon it felt as if a dam inside me broke and the words began spilling out in a flood of anxious words.
Slowly, their eyes started flashing with different emotions than they had held earlier, concern and understanding beginning to appear alongside confusion as they watched me begin pacing the room, my hands waving one moment and held against my chest the next. I'm not sure how long this went on for, but by the end, I was standing once more with my head bowed, eyes staring unseeing at the bookshelf before me, waiting for their response.
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I wrote another line on the sheet of paper, my new 'dream journal' ever so slowly filling with words as I described something I remembered from the flashes of the dream that lurked deep inside my mind. Michael had said keeping the notes might help, as well as the notes I kept in the other journal he'd given me, where I wrote about the me who I was now, in hopes that if something happened, I could read it and remind myself of who I was now if it came to it.
The first time Michael tried to read the notes on my dream and the following flashes of visions, asking me for permission first, he had stared at the page intently before finally turning to me and asking me what it said. It seems that although I could read the local language just fine, when I was writing I used a different language, one he was unfamiliar with even if some of the words seemed to remind him of something he'd seen long ago.
After that day, he'd spent time searching his books in hopes of finding a clue to what the language was, thus far without any luck. Meanwhile, Daniel has once more become my constant companion when he did not have his own tasks to work on. Although it would take time for me to stop feeling guilty every time I met his eyes, at least I finally felt that I could talk to him about this, even if sometimes I could see the worry my words caused him.
Sometimes I caught him looking at me like he was looking for any signs of change, the relief when he seemed to find none making me afraid that if I did indeed change, would he still stay by my side?
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