Chương 3: Dream a Little Dream

Anaisa's mouth dropped open in surprise, then snapped shut. Panic swirled in her belly. This stranger was asking about where she would be sleeping. Suddenly she felt vulnerable in the extreme. If anything happened, who would hear and heed screams from the barn? Would anyone notice?

The man sitting at the table watched her in clear confusion, not understanding her silent alarm. Slowly, understanding seemed to dawn on him.

"It's… it's not you is it? You're the one that sleeps out in the barn? Surely it's not safe for you?" The stranger glanced down at her hand for a wedding band, and, finding none, looked back up into her eyes.

"What business is that of yours?" Anaisa roughly picked up the dishes, her face flaming with shame. "If you try coming near me, I'll kill you where you stand." The threat was utterly empty, but she felt the need to make it anyway.

"That's not--- I---" He stuttered as she turned and fled, but she did not stop to listen to him. She needed to get away. Rushing into the kitchen where Katia tended the stew and took more bread from the oven, Anaisa breathed a sigh of relief.

"What happened?" Katia asked. A rag graced her fair head, shielding her hair from the steam and mess of the kitchen's tasks. Anaisa set the dishes in the washbasin.

"Nothing important," Anaisa smiled. Katia's extreme shyness had made Anaisa give her sister all of the kitchen chores while she did everything that would involve being seen by or talking to potentially rough guests of the inn.

Katia's eyebrows drew close together, doubting her sister's assurance but not finding the will to push back against it. She wanted to be reassured, to feel safe, and to be taken care of.

"Annie?" She asked, and Anaisa softened at the girlhood nickname. "What are we going to do… after this?"

"I don't know. But we'll find out together." The younger woman smiled at the elder as she left the kitchen to take a bowl of stew out to another customer.

Setting it down, she heard the innkeeper conversing quietly with the man who had been talking to her moments ago.

"You're interested in one of my servant girls? They're new tonight, sir, I'm not sure about either of them being willing…" The Innkeeper was saying.

"No! No, nothing like that." The man grimaced. Anaisa averted her gaze. Why was he talking about her? "I'm not interested in them in that way. I want to give them my room."

"There are no refunds, and they have no money to pay—"

"You fail to understand me." The soldier interrupted. "Keep my money, it's yours, only, let the girls have the room. I will sleep in the barn. It's not safe for women to be out there on a night with so much drinking and revelry."

Anaisa nearly dropped the dishes she was holding. She set them down gently in front of the customer and turned with a flourish on the man interfering in her future.

"We will be indebted to no one," She glared at him, "We work for our keep and take what is owed to us, nothing more." Her pride still stung mightily from having everything she owned wrenched from her.

"No, no debt," The man held up his hands in surrender, looking at a slight loss. "My name's Trace, and I just wanted to do something kind—"

"We don't want your charity, either." Her eyes hardened, and he sighed. She and Katia would climb back to their rightful position on their own merit and skill, not on the backs of others.

Trace gave her a contemplative, frustrated look, but then a slow half-smile crept onto his face. Anaisa's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"I'll be sleeping in the barn," He stated firmly. "You and your sister may join me there, if you'd like, or you may sleep safely upstairs in room four, where a bar across the door will keep out myself or any other uninvited guests. The choice is up to you." He tossed the baffled innkeeper another coin and collected his pack, heading out the door with a measured glance towards Anaisa.

Her mouth was hanging open. He'd bested her, and he obviously knew it. If she were alone, she might try to call what could be a bluff. With Katia in the equation, she didn't dare. Truth be told, it would be nice to keep her sister in a secured, safe room in a warm bed tonight. She just didn't like being beholden to the very odd soldier who had made it possible.

____________

Trace hadn't had the urge to go exploring other people's dreams since he was little. At first, it was only his parents whom he bothered with his little trick, but after seeing some of the dreams that they had, of past sorrows, of greatest fears… he learned that being nosy had terrible consequences.

And so he had let his talent go stagnant for most of his life. Once he mastered control over his own dreams, he hesitantly asked his mother if he could try to tame her nightmares. She had been reticent at first for her son to expose himself to the trauma of a childhood lives in the slums of a great city, but eventually had relented.

It had taken several tries before he was able to calm her troubled mind and give her a dream of a beautiful sunrise over rolling fields. Calm and simple.

The war was the first time he'd used his magic in years, but tonight, he could be left to his own dreamland, cultivated specifically to give him sweet rest or great amusement. It was a world his own.

And yet… he had the strange urge to go explore the dreams of an auburn-headed woman nearby. Which was wrong, and unspeakably invasive to do.

So he contented himself with his own world, riding a steed of wind across gleaming golden hills toward a glorious sunset, chasing the sun to its place of rest. The air across his face was glorious, the sky and the blooming stars a tapestry of mystery overhead.

He smiled. His dreams were so much more vivid than other people's, as real to him as the world itself. The soldiers of his company had dreams that were vague, and often riddled with inconsistencies and illogical presumptions. Blurry around the edges. Many gave him headaches the next day.

His own were crystal clear, his senses completely engaged, down to the whisper-soft blades of grass that stroked his head as he lay down among them to watch falling stars streak across the sky.

Time was hard to pin down in dreams, but he watched them for a long while before getting up once again. He took off at a run, anxious again to move, to feel the freedom of being out of the army reflected here.

Trace leapt into the air at the edge of a cliff and arced an elegant dive into a crystal-clear sea as the sun rose behind him. The waters sparkled as all manner of plants and sea creatures swam about him. He swam deeper; there was no need to hold his breath in the waters of his dreams; he could grow gills like a fish or stop breathing entirely without discomfort.

Ah, how much sweeter this was than reality. To have his own world back. His job was complete, the horrors and fears and confusions of others were no longer places he needed to visit. The cool water tickled his skin as a happy, flippered creature blew bubbles towards him.

Laughing, he winked at the multicolored, iridescent fish and then took off swimming at a speed that would be impossible for a human in reality. The race was on.

Streaming to the surface and breaking through with a leap into the air, Trace did a flip before landing on a boulder that peeked out of the surface of the sea. He lay there for several minutes, letting the heat of the sun dry and warm him before standing and stretching.

"Much, much better," He murmured to himself, but he could feel the pull of consciousness beginning to tug apart the edges of his world. His dream was ending for the night. The sun's yellow brightness began to blur, and the sea's waves fell quieter.

"I suppose this is goodbye for now," He tossed a bittersweet smile to the birds that had come to rest on his sun-warmed rock. "I'll see you all tomorrow night."

Though he could hold onto the dream longer with enough effort and remain asleep, there was usually a good reason he awoke; it must be morning, and if he recalled correctly, he was sleeping in a barn tonight.

"I'm sure I'll need to bathe as soon as I get home in a few days," He grimaced, finally submitting to the fraying and allowing himself to be coaxed into consciousness, "but at least I'm free to go."