This time she dreamt that she was standing on a shore, staring across the water at where she knew Avalon was. She wanted to go there so badly. Maybe if she went there she wouldn’t feel so hungry all the time. All she wanted was to end this hunger which seemed to gnaw at her very soul. The sky was a strange red colour. Something smelled strange, almost like copper. Then she looked down at the water and saw floating bodies, dozens of them. Most of them were sith but there were some humans and cait sith as well. Their throats had been ripped open and blood was oozing out, staining the water a deep red. She was so hungry. Timidly she stepped into the water, wading up to her waist. She cupped some of the bloody water in her hand and brought it to her lips. Her entire body craved the sweet taste that exploded across her tongue. She grabbed one of the bodies, a sith with golden hair, pulling it closer and cradling it in her arms. The sith’s eyes opened up and looked at her in terror. His face was streaked with blood and at first she was too focussed on the wound on his neck to notice that it was Keegan. He tried to say her name, but she did not care. She did not really see him anymore; he was food. She bit deeply into his neck, letting the blood pour down her throat in thick gulps.
Several hours later she awoke again, tasting blood and feeling drained. Her energy had been depleted almost completely. She realized that the spell cast by the necklace had only a limited duration and she must have somehow been recasting it in her sleep. She had never heard of anything like that happening before. Thinking back over the last few hours she realized that she had drifted in and out of consciousness, perhaps she had been awake enough at the time to recast and had then forgotten. The duration of the spell lapsed again and Tara was returned to the normal realm. Her fingers were stiff from the cold and her joints ached.
Carefully she tried to stand. Pain shot through her leg and her knee nearly buckled. She caught hold of a tree and held herself up, a wave of dizziness passed over her. She began to think that she really would die out here in the woods, no one knowing what had happened to her.
Forcing one foot in front of the other she began to walk, trying to ignore the throbbing in her leg. Her progress was incredibly slow, even after she found a branch to serve as a walking stick. Every step she took felt like it would be her last.
As she walked, Tara imagined what would happen if she did indeed die out here. She pictured her body being found, years from now, little more than a skeleton with strands of red hair clinging to the skull. The funeral she pictured depressed her, she saw only a few people there, none of whom she was particularly close to. Neither Eldan nor Keegan were there in her mind, although Lady Klaria was there. Her mother was there, dressed in black, with the usual stone cold expression she had on her face whenever Tara was in the room.
Finally she was too depressed to continue thinking about it, so instead she began to picture her father, wondering what it would be like to meet him. There was one painting of him still in the castle, but it was in her mother’s study and as a child she had been forbidden to go in there. Even as she had grown up she avoided the room, it was her mother’s private space and she did not belong there. So she had had only fleeting glimpses of the painting, not enough to come up with a clear image of what he looked like. Her mother had once dismissed the painting, saying it was not really accurate anyway.
This train of thought seemed equally depressing, but no matter how hard she tried to think of anything else her mind always wandered back to the subject of death in some form.
She did not get far that day before the darkening sky warned her that night was coming again. She built a fire and had a small supper before settling down for the night. Her leg was still throbbing and now it was also beginning to itch. Dried blood was flaking off of the bandage and her shirt around her upper arm, causing her skin to itch even more. The next morning she changed her shirt but she did not dare try to change her pants for fear of disturbing the bandages and causing her leg to bleed again. |
