I woke up the next morning tired and sore.
I’d slept funny, apparently, and there was a light dusting of snow on
the ground outside. It wouldn’t
last, and I knew it. It never did.
Not this winter, anyway.
Saturdays on campus, for me, have always been reserved for sitting at my
desk, attempting to get some homework done, and this weekend I had three papers
to work on for three classes. That
was atypical, and meant I’d gotten unlucky.
I rolled onto my stomach and stared at the clock.
Seven AM? It’s a Saturday
and I’m awake at 7 AM. What’s
wrong with me? I buried my face in
my pillow although I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep.
Curling up, I thought about the dreams for what seemed like the
thousandth time. Even after having
them for the entirety of the school year, they still weren’t making any sense
to me whatsoever. I’d managed to
puzzle out that I was Shai of Clellan, a warrior that was apparently close to
one Lord Craig’Ian of Malcolm. There was the blue magi, Jude, and someone named Miral,
another one named Kittyhawk, then the guy who looked like Lance, the one whose
name I’d never really caught. Each
equated to someone I knew in life, right down to page that had arrived in the
last dream. Except for one.
Who was Sha’dan Tyree, the entity we were fighting against? Who were the Dan’ling?
They were the same questions I’d been asking since the beginning.
Who were they? What made them important?
And more importantly to me, who did they equate to?
I rearranged my blankets as I rolled over and stared out the window at
the already melting snow and the sun that was beginning to shine over the
campus. A cool breeze was blowing
into the room through the window, the one that we never closed.
I watched the early morning joggers and the few other people up at that
early hour. The answers I sought
just wouldn’t come.
I finally got up about two and a half hours later, as Jude was hauling
herself out of bed. Rubbing the
sleep from her eyes, she squinted at me. “You
need to get into the bathroom? I’m
going to take a shower.”
I shook my head. “Go
ahead, I’m all right.” I ducked
under my lofted bed to my desk, where I booted up my computer and hauled out the
various books and sheets of notebook paper that I’d need to write my papers. Jude shrugged and ducked into the bathroom.
As I settled down and began to write, I was able to lose myself in the
work. The questions were still
there, though, when I finally finished five hours later.
“Something’s wrong, and I can’t tell what it is,” Jude said from
my right.
I looked up to see her staring at me from her own desk.
She didn’t even look like she’d been doing anything except for
watching me. I frowned and turned
back toward my computer screen. “What
makes you say that?”
She shrugged. “I don’t
know. Something’s just not right,
you know? I can feel it.”
I sort of laughed at her, knowing that she knew I didn’t put much stock
in that sort of thing. The laugh was hollow, though.
She was more right than I was ever willing to admit.
I think she knew that, too.