How y'all liking the frequent uploads this week? :)
I'm back at my 40 hrs this week for work so ya girls been having time to actually do shit after work. Here is the product of that <3
I also updated the playlist, so check that out if you'd like!
Enjoy, lovelies!!

Caspian

I could heard the rustling of the ground below me as I followed closely behind my mother. She had kept us in a straight line as we walked, my brother following my steps while she trailed behind my father, and him behind the woman in a cloak.

We had been walking for some time now, I could feel the soreness in my legs with each step... but I had no memory before this moment. I did not know how I made it here into this forest. All I knew was that this woman had been leading us somewhere.

"Just a bit further." I heard the woman whisper, her voice hoarse and cold with the current of the wind. My parents had said nothing to acknowledge that voice as we continued walking. I didn't know what she looked like, but I could tell she was shorter than my mother, and she was leading us deeper into the forest, not out of it. I knew by the roughness of the path we took, if you could call it a path.

Once we had finally reached a small clearing, all I felt was confusion, especially when my mother ordered Hodrus and I to take a seat on the forest floor, right above a scattered layer of dry leaves.

I watched as Hodrus first complied, then I followed, not questioning my mother and father as the shorter woman took a seat in front of us.

She was eye level to me now, and for the first time this evening, I could see her. My gaze focused in on her eyes.

I could feel my body still completely at how they burned. Pure emerald green... an unnatural color.

Some of her hair was visible through the cloak, yet it was difficult to see its color with such minimal light. the only thing lighting our path was the torch she carried, before she passed that off to my mother to hold when she took a seat across from me and my brother.

My mother and father kept their distance near the edge of the clearing, only watching as this woman's eyes bore straight through my own. I didn't know what this feeling was, but I had suddenly felt something, a handprint on a place inside of me. Something no human should be able to touch. A feeling that felt somehow familiar though I knew I had never experienced it before.

I was so distracted by the color of her eyes, by this awfully hallowing sensation, I didn't notice the darkening of her veins until a bony hand reached out through the crisp night air towards me, her stone cold fingers lightly grazing my forehead. Those black thin streams were mirroring the pattern of her veins, slowly spread up her arms, but I only caught a glimpse of it before my vision completely darkened, matching the color of the night sky.

At first I thought I had awoken from this dream, yet that wasn't the case. I could hear whispers now, whispers from those who had long past. Whispers from my mother and father, coming somewhere from the clearing in this forest. I could still feel the brittle twigs and branches below me. I was definitely still on this forest floor.

"What do you see?" I heard my mother ask, to which my father told her to remain quiet.

The woman heard my mother's ask however, and was willing to answer her. "This one..." her voice was quiet, almost indistinguishable as she spoke. "This one's soul... it's been touched before."

I couldn't see anything besides the darkness of this abyss my sight had fallen into. I wasn't able to see my parents face... or those vibrant green eyes from this unnatural woman.

"That's impossible." I heard my father whisper, to which the fingers that were placed light against my forehead, intensified some with pressure.

"Someone, or something else has linked his fate. They've set him on a different path. One I cannot fully see." This was the shorter woman's response, to which both my father and mother responded with murmurs. Murmurs I couldn't decipher. Murmurs not meant for my ears. When the oracle spoke next, those murmurs ceased entirely. "Whatever path he's been set on, its reach will be great. He's destined to take path only one before him has, shapen by nothing but challenges."

I could hear more murmurs, and yet the words weren't clear. None of this was. The noise first quieted before I regained any vision, looking back now into the eyes of the woman who sat across from me, the hood of the thick woolen cloak had fallen back against her shoulders, revealing long black hair with some strands long enough to pass through the blades of tall grass as the wind directed it...

That was the very last thing I remembered before my body stirred awake, reminding me of where this useless vessel had laid itself to rest when I almost found myself tumbling off the bed.

My feet found their footing before I crashed to the floor, but I held my tongue on the curse that had threatened to spill. It took everything in me to gather these surprisingly well rested bones, to remember exactly where I was now before I fell into that dream.

Memory, I corrected myself. That was no dream. That had been a memory of the night I thought I once remembered well, but something wasn't right with it. What I initially remembered from that night was distorted by something, and it felt like that something had woken me up before the memory could continue.

The sun beaming through the window to the left of me gave me a more accurate understanding of how long it had been since sleep found me. The man snoring obnoxiously to my right was what pulled me from the rest of that dream entirely.

I forced myself to blink once. Then twice. Then thrice, before I could willingly accept the fact that Alistair was actually asleep on the floor.

The rum, I immediately nodded to myself. It was the only explanation. Maybe the only thing to win in a fight against Alistair and live to tell the tale, for there was quite simply no other reason for this man to accept the floor as his final place of rest for the remainder of the night.

As in, I was sure he would choose death first if he were sober.

I hadn't meant to fall asleep on the bed, but the night had consumed all of my energy. I didn't understand how Alistair and his men could take drink after drink and stay awake like it was nothing, while my eyelids barely kept themselves open on nothing but water and tea.

The tea was actually quite nice, a more soothing choice offered by Gaia whilst Alistair kept the rum flowing. As I slowly made my way over to where he now slept, I found myself hesitating a moment. He had drunkenly told me over supper, to make sure he was up before his men were once the sun rose, but I wondered if he himself even remembered that... and if he'd take kindly to me upholding those orders.

Nevertheless, I slowly crouched down besides the man who was now laying on his stomach, his face buried deep into the pillow which muffled those snores. His hair was untied, keeping his long thick black strands scattered wildly across the pillow and his clothes. My hand hesitantly reached out to Alistair's back to give it a slight shake. I approached it like one would when approaching a venomous snake.

"Alistair..." I spoke, my voice rough as I said his name. He was still wearing the clothes he had chosen for supper, a black linen shirt cut short at the sleeves with matching black trousers, all of which his black hair seamlessly blended in with. I also noticed that his eye patch remained perfectly positioned on his face even as his head suddenly turned in my direction.

The next thing he did was completely unexpected. His hand jolted forward, then up, connecting with the front collar of my shirt without even looking, before he bunched up the soft material and yanked it down to the floor next to him.

That of course meant that my body unwillingly followed, hitting the ground next to him far from gracefully. I didn't even mange a word out before Alistair spoke. "Has anyone died?"

His voice was low and hoarse, still riddled with sleep, and his one visible eye didn't even bother opening to register my existence, yet his hand remained attached to the front of my shirt. My eyebrows furrowed immediately when I actually registered what he had asked. "Ah-" I cleared my throat. "Not... not to my knowledge?"

Alistair's grip tightened a bit, keeping me pinned down on my side next to him. The position was uncomfortable at best.

"Is anyone currently in the state of dying?"

I was about to shake my head no, before I realized Alistair still had his eyes closed. I took this moment to study his face a bit more freely than I otherwise could, noticing some stubble coming through across his chin. The short, bold, black hair matched his long flowing locks that looked smooth and rich to the touch. I slowly moved my hand from my side, wondering if he was even cognitive enough to notice-

Whatever thoughts I had just then, were immediately interrupted when Alistair finally looked over at me, causing my hand to snap back to my side immediately. I decided it was safer to assume the texture of his hair, rather than see for myself.

"Is someone dying?" He reiterated, to which I paused yet another moment.

"I don't think so." Hell, I had retired for the night before he had. If anyone was to know the current state of his crew, one would think it to be Alistair.

That was when his grip slowly loosened on the shirt fabric until the material was left to unfold itself. His hand then moved up some, further surprising me when I felt his thumb slowly grazing the edge of my jawline. The callus from his finger had scraped against my own stubble. It was for only a moment, as he pushed back some of the hair that had fallen forward towards my face when he pinned me to the ground. That same hand then retreated back to him, plopping itself back onto the pillow Alistair rested his head on like it had served its purpose for the day or something.

"Then let me rest."

Those were his final words to me as he closed his eyes again, effectively ending this conversation.

Well, I thought, slowly bringing myself to my feet. I... guess that was that. He hadn't even attempted to remove himself from the floor, and once I heard the low vibrations of his snores again, I decided there was no point trying to convince him to.

Instead, I found myself making my way back down to the main floor of the Inn. The winding steps hadn't brought me to the hidden room again like it had the prior day, and I decided this was a good opportunity to ask Gaia more about how it worked, especially considering Alistair clearly had no plans of a productive morning.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Gaia in the Inn's kitchen this morning, with Nalia working on cleaning the dining hall after the long festivity that was supper. I gave her a polite good morning before I joined Gaia in the kitchen.

"Wow," was her first word to me. "You look well rested."

I offered her a small smile, my eyes breaking contact with hers as I remembered how comfortable that bed had been. "I am." I admitted.

"Interesting," she nodded. "So then Alistair invited you to bed with him?

That question just about knocked the air out of my lungs, forcing me to choke as each cough worked to clear the sudden irregularity.

"Uh- no, no... absolutely not, no. More like he invited himself to the floor. I had mistakenly fallen asleep on the bed while making it." That made Gaia laugh so abruptly hard, she paused what it was she was currently doing, which was peeling a bowl of potatoes. I noticed there was a lot of vegetables and fruits scattered across the table positioned in the middle of the room, which led me to believe another large meal would be served soon.

From the looks of Alistair's state alone, I was starting to believe everyone would benefit from something filling.

"Interesting..." Gaia reiterated, more to herself as she continued on with peeling the potatoes.

"I wanted to speak to you about something," I found myself redirecting this conversation. "It's about a dream I had last night, a memory really, about my time on this island... it was the night you spoke of my prophecy."

Gaia's eyes glanced up from the perfect peel she had carved away from the vegetable, to catch my gaze. "I remember it well. What of it?" she asked.

That question made me stop a moment to actually formulate the correct words. It was hard to put into words. "There's an issue with the memory. A blockage of sorts, something preventing me from recalling all events of that night. Was that... was that your doing?"

Gaia's eyebrows furrowed curiously at that question, before she slowly shook her head no. "I thought he told you..." her voice trailed off.

"Who?" I asked almost immediately, but Gaia didn't have the chance to answer. Instead, her eyes quickly darted past me to the entrance of the kitchen directly behind where I stood. The voice that cut through our conversation was deep and familiar.

"Where's Alistair?" Cael asked, causing me to turn sharply on my heel in his direction.

He was, unsurprisingly, the most on alert person I had seen since waking up this morning. Even Gaia seemed to be moving a bit slower after such a long night, and Nalia looked completely overworked by the number of men she had to serve, even with my aide.

His gaze was on Gaia, but it soon pivoted to me when I found myself pointing to the ceiling above us. "Still resting." I explained.

The irritation on Cael's face was the purest emotion I'd seen on him ever. It made me wonder what troubles this morning had already presented itself, that Alistair was currently sleeping through. The speed at which Cael left Gaia and I heightened that curiosity, but made myself more on edge. It was no longer safe to have this conversation with Gaia here, but I found myself asking just one last thing before we let the conversation go entirely.

"Is this block being lifted? Is that why my memories are changing?" My voice was a cautious low whisper, to which Gaia took some time to respond to.

"Do you remember anything after your prophecy?" she asked with that same hushed tone.

I slowly shook my head no.

"Then no, Caspian. That block wasn't lifted. And all I can tell you in regards to it, is that it can't be lifted now. The person who placed it is dead."

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