A Painful Sacrifice Ch. 01

"It's not that," my mother says angrily. She pauses and rubs her temples. I can tell she is getting frustrated. "Poppy, I've had dreams," she continues in a more measured tone, almost a whisper. "For over two moons now, they've come, dark and terrible."

"Enough mother," I interrupt her. I can't listen to any more of this nonsense. My mother has always mocked the superstitious nitwits in our village, and now I'm listening to her babble on just like one of them. "I'm not going to give up my best friend just because my mother has been drinking too much fermented Eudian root before bed and had a couple bad dreams."

Her open hand strikes me so fast and hard that it takes a moment to register. I just stare down at the table dumbfounded, feeling the sting on my left cheek. My mother has never hit me before. Never once has she struck me, although I probably deserved it a million times over.

I can feel both my cheeks grow warm with rage. I slowly raise my head preparing to unleash every curse in the seven hells. When I look up though, the anger quickly drains from my body, and all I am left with is fear. My mother's eyes are watering. I've never seen those dark brown, stoic eyes even so much as grow moist, not even when my father died.

"I'm sorry," she says in a soft and trembling voice.

"No, I'm sorry," I respond earnestly. I know I can be a disrespectful shite of a daughter.

"You'll stay away from Lydia then?" My mother asks without much hope in voice. I can't bear to lie to her, not now. Looking down, I take another spoonful of stew, although my appetite is completely gone.

After dinner, we spend the better part of an hour in silence. The only sound is the crackling of the fire. I whittle, she knits. Periodically one of us will get up to throw another log on the hearth. My mother pours herself a mug of Eudian ale, and I follow suit. Typically, I don't drink the stuff. I never much cared for the flavor, plus it makes me dizzy. It does help me sleep though, which has been difficult for me as of late. For nearly a week now, I have woken in the dead of night, unable to return to any semblance of a restful slumber.

"I'm turning in," I state matter-of-factly. The ale served its intended purpose; I can barely keep my eyes open. I set down my knife well over fifteen minutes ago for fear of taking a finger off.

"Poppy," my mother calls after me, as I stumble towards my bed in the corner of the room. "You're not ugly either. You're beautiful." In my tired stupor, it takes me a moment to figure out that this apparently random compliment is drawing back to our earlier conversation. I feel my cheeks blush and a big smile spread across my face. My mother doesn't hand out compliments lightly.

"Does that mean I'm smart too?" I ask, with a stupid grin still plastered on my face.

"No," my mother chuckles, "you're dumb as a rock...dumb as they come." I giggle along with her, not offended in the least. She's right after all, I'm pretty sure they only graduated me from our village's tiny schoolhouse because, by the age of 12, I no longer fit in the desks. Honestly, at the moment, I'm just proud to have made my mother laugh; it's no easy feat!

"Goodnight mom," I say, trying my best to feign indignation. I lurch another two paces across the room and collapse unceremoniously into a pile on my bed. I momentarily consider taking my dress off, as I tend to sleep better in the nude, but heavy eyelids quickly make me forget the idea. I pull my blanket up to my chin and bury in head in my pillow. Off in the distance of the forest, I hear an unruly pack of coyotes begin to yap as the waking world fades from memory and darkness overtakes my senses.

There I am again, in the same pitch black room. The darkness is so great that the presences of walls, or any definitive dimensions, are but figments of my mind. Cold and scared, I exist in a void. My body is drenched in what I can only assume is sweat. I would cry, I would devolve into a sobbing wreck, but the pain in my chest is so intense that every ounce of my willpower is locked in a desperate struggle just to breath. From across the room, a figure approaches. I assume it's a corporal being at least, the only aspects of the creature I can make out are its two, hate-filled eyes. They burn with an unnatural purple glow. I know as should be terrified, but as the thing nears all I can feel is sadness, a deep, overwhelming sadness.

I jolt awake in my bed gasping for air, my dress utterly soaked in a cold sweat. It's still dark outside, but from the center of town a bell tolls loudly. 'Fire,' is that thought instantly settles in the pit of my stomach. One of our town's best bakers, along her husband, perished last year due to an errant spark of the hearth. She was a kindly of old woman, always giving Lydia and me free bakery when we were children; I still miss her. Something's wrong though, from our cottage's vantage point up on the hill, I should be able to see a fire of any size from the window. Stranger still, the bell seems to be tolling rhythmically, 3 rapid rings followed by a prolonged toll.

"Mom," I ask, hearing her footsteps from behind me. "What's going..." Turning, I stop mid-sentence when I see her face. Her eyes are wide with terror and she's hold a long steel sword in her right hand.

"The village is under attack," she answers my unfinished question. Her voice is barely a whisper and yet her words seem to ring in my ears.

To be continued...