Nightmares and dreamscapes....

[Jaymee]

**Authors note: We start with a look back. You cannot have a present if you have no past...***

[Jaymee]

((8/18/10))
It is a fine spring day, small flowers dot the meadow and a warm breeze plays over the grasses. A small young elf with wild hair sprints through the grass, barefoot, shirt open and flying behind him. They were arguing again...his parents, his uncle...anymore it seemed like they were always fighting. He didn't know why but the words "blood traitor" and "betrayer" had been tossed like daggers. The whole villiage seemed to be turning against his family, even him...and he was only small.
So he ran, ran across the fields, through the woods and back to the hills where his secret cave was, where he could hide from all of the trouble back in the villiage. The cave was sanctuary, his secret world, where he was big and strong, and no one ever argued. But today would be different...today they came.
Scrambling over the rocks, he came to the entrance of his cave, but stopped short. Something was wrong...he heard voices from inside. Carefully, quietly he listened, his eyes widening. He didn't understand their strange tongue, but they sounded angry. Here in his cave were strangers...fighting. He had to tell the Elders.
Sprinting back to his villiage, he threw open his front door, the faces of several angry elves meeting him with pointed looks from the sitting room. His father opened his mouth to speak, but the boy's words cut him short. First they don't believe him, but soon are on their feet, moving towards the door...but its too late...
The sounds of horses and men shouting is heard...people screaming....there's chaos suddenly...and then the smell of smoke. His mother looks scared as she ushers him into the small food pantry, her hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. She leaves him with little more than a quick embrace and is gone. He can hear the sounds of a feirce battle outside the walls of his house, and the smell of smoke is acrid and thick, and soon he notices that it is seeping under the door. He struggles to open the closet door, but its stuck fast, a burning timber holding it shut from the other side. He screams loudly, but it is in vain.
As the flames lick the door, he realizes his only way out will be through the fire. Waiting until the door is blackened and he can no longer take the heat, he raises his arms to attempt to sheild his face and charges through the weakened wood, his skin blistering in the intensity of the fire. Falling embers land on him, and he cries out as each one sears him. Disoriented, he stumbles around until he manages to find a window, its been busted out and he climbs out, landing on the ground in a heap...and then the blackness comes.....

*Sitting up, he is covered in a cold sweat, eyes wild, glancing around the room. Its either very early or very late, shadows still covering the familiar furniture. Putting his bare feet on the cold floor, he cradles his head in his hands. The nightmares are back...*

[Jaymee]

((8/12/10))
*sitting at the small table in The Black Widow, he picks at a plate of lukewarm food, knowing full well he's not going to eat it. The meat and gravy has started to gelatinize, the greens are already cold, as he's been staring at it for some moments. Poking his fork into the meat, something about the way a small trickle of juice dribbles out of the small holes takes him back...*

The smell of meat on the spit, smoke rising into the sky and men, women, elves laughing heartily. These are the things he actually likes about these damned crusades. Nights around the fire, sharing a meal with those who remain, trying to keep each other's spirits from breaking. These folks are his comrades, some of them his bedmates, and he would fight to the death for them all. Its actually a comforting feeling, and he's not sure when it got there, but he doesn't mind. They are his family now, all that he has.
Sitting on a log, he looks into the faces around the fire. Battle worn, exhausted. He knows he can't look much better, the burns on his face blistered and peeling, his hands wrapped and seeping. He eats the food on his plate hungrily, the boar tasting spicy and wild...humans actually knew quite a bit about how to make meats taste good. He picked up on their tounge pretty quickly too. It was amazing how far he'd come in these last weeks.
After the meal, he lies on the grass, watching the stars dance overhead...you almost wouldn't know there was a war on.

*smiling a bit, he looks down at the meat, taking a small bite and wishing it tasted like the boar did that night...that last peaceful night of his life.*

[Jaymee]

((8/17/10))
*the moonlight plays over his skin, the grass soft and cold under his feet. He can't sleep again. The wind whispers through the trees, telling him secrets the night can only share when all is still. Hearing a branch snap behind him, his body instantly springs into old ways, and he nimbly climbs up a nearby pine, almost soundlessly melting into the greenery. Holding his breath, he looks down as a deer enters the small grove of trees, almost where he was standing. Exhaling softly, he watches the animal move, its grace reminding him...*

"...and I told him I wasn't going to do that, no matter how much he paid me!" The men around the bar erupted into laughter, drinking and hitting the bar. The young wild haired elf grins, eating up the attention like a hungry dog chews a bone. "So then, he pulls out a sack of..." stopping short, his gaze is focused across the room at the door. The men at the bar turn, following his eyes. A few of them let out wolf whistles and vulgar utterances as they turn back to their drinks...but the young elf's eyes are stuck on the figure walking across the room.
It wasn't the first time he'd been attracted to a human woman, but this was the first time he'd ever thought that possibly he'd be willing to give up all the wild ways and stick to just one. Atleast for a little while...
The way that dress followed her figure...the way her black hair fell just below her shoulder...the way her dark eyes scanned the room...how she paused just a moment when her eyes hit the bar, almost making eye contact...it was enough to make him have to cover his lap a bit.
Swallowing hard, he straightened the lapels on his uniform, shined up his officer's pin, rolled back his shoulders and orders an extra ale, strolling over to her. She looks up at him, and he turns on his best charm. "Is it hot in here, or is it just you?"
Moments later, he returns to the bar, ale dripping off his face. The men are laughing, but he breaks into a grin. "She said she'd go out with me." The laughter increases.

*He startles himself by actually laughing out loud, the deer taking off into the underbrush. He almost falls out of the tree, remember that night almost as vividly as if it were yesterday. 'Marris.' He hasn't spoken her name in eons...but it seems to break an invisible chain on his mind...he suddenly feels freer than he has in months. Laughing hard, he falls out of the tree, landing in the nest of needles at the bottom. 'MARRIS!! You wench...who'd have thought you'd be the answer?' He is laughing...actually laughing again.*

[Jaymee]

((9/20/10))
*Its cold, dark and smelly. The greasy light from a fatty candle far across the cave sheds a sickly yellow flickering glow that barely reaches him. The chains on his wrists cut into his flesh, raw and bleeding from struggling to get free. His left eye is swollen almost completely shut, just a throbbing blackened mass with a slit in the middle. Limply he hangs from the bolt in the wall, his legs splayed out in an awkward position. His right foot is surely broken, a swollen throbbing club twisted off to the side like a broken stick. For a brief moment, he wonders for the hundredth time where his boot went. Somewhere back in the darkness it must be lying, waiting for his foot to come back to it like a lost puppy waits for his Master. Sniffing, he can smell them coming back to torture him more, trying to get some unknown response out of him, their words, if you could even call them that, thick, bulky and foreign in his ears. A sharp pungent smell hits him suddenly and the aroma of shade fills him with dread. He's already been drugged by captors once...*

Tied to a chair, gaunt and bleeding, he hasn't eaten real food for weeks. The dirty wash water they have given him and the skinny, diseased rats he has been able to catch in his cell have kept him alive, but just barely. He hasn't seen sunlight or breathed fresh air in just as long. His tiny windowless cell was not even big enough for him to stretch out in, and the fetal position he had been forced to sleep in made him ache all over. His hair had grown out down to his shoulders, now a long tangle instead of the neat spikes it usually stood in. Grimy and smelly, he awaited the next round of pummeling he knew was coming. But today was different...
Today, they had other plans.
He hadn't talked, not spoken a word to them despite all the torture they had put him through. Even when the hot irons scorched his ribs, he managed to stay silent, biting his tongue till it bled. He had been trained well.
But today, they walked in with a heaping plate of food...a giant slab of roasted cow, potatoes, onions as big as your fist, links of fine Skaran sausages, a great loaf of bread and an overflowing pint of warm honey mead. His stomach turned, snarling like a caged beast. He could not stop himself from drooling. They took off his shackles, knowing full well he was too weak to escape, and handed him a fork. Go on, eat, they urged. He knew better, oh Avatar, he knew better than to eat it, but he was so ungodly hungry! He wolfed it down, barely tasting it. Slugging down the pint, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand leaving a greasy filth mark. A giant beast of a man sat across the table and just looked at him, waiting for something.
"Now, little rat, you will talk. You have just eaten enough shade to knock out a bull. Now you will talk..." The man smiled with satisfaction.
His eyes got big, just as the world started to spin and suddenly everything went black...he knew all was lost.
Four days later he was free, but most of his men were slaughtered...some commander he turned out to be...

*The great hulking figure approaches the bars of the cage, holding a smoking tray in his fat fingers. He can see the stems of the shade hanging off the ends. The beast opens the cage door, grinning a horrifying sneer. He sets the tray down just out of foot reach and begins to waft the smoke towards his prisoner. So history was going to repeat...let us just hope this time he had built up enough immunity, thanks to the "coping" methods he had been given. With no choice, he began to breathe in the tainted air, dread filling him...*

[Jaymee]

((10/28/10))
*naked, bleeding, broken, dirty...he limps down the corridor of yet another foreign tunnel. He's almost become immune to the smell now, and he has all but forgotten what light feels like on his skin. In his hand he carries a small shovel, a crude instrument they fashioned for him. Behind him he drags a stained and filthy bag of barely shiney rocks. He scratches gingerly at the collar around his neck, his fingers bruised and swollen, a few of the nails missing. His eyes have become almost completely black, the pupils dialated to take in the minute amounts of light down here. They have beaten him into slavery...digging "shineys" for his disgusting masters. Few thoughts have kept him sane down in the depths...Pond's smile, Luke's firm gaze, the thought of grass, finding the Pink Orc. He could barely remember what it was like to sleep in his own bed, or to take a bath. In his moments of clarity, he begged the Avatar to send help or let him die. Neither came. Hope was waning, as was his body...soon he would fail and they would kill him.
Turning to the wall, he poked at it with the tip of his spade, a bit of shiney poking out. Once more, he begins to dig...*

[Jaymee]

((4/21/11))
*It felt like waking up, feeling the memories in his mind and from the mind of...the other...melding together. All at once he had gotten all the joy, all the sorrow, all the pain and the laughter. He ached. All of the things that rat had done to his life, it wasn't fair. He never got to experience it, to make it work right instead of the mess it became. He knew, and yet he didn't know anything at all...

...the love of Piper and the fury of her temper...the honor of knighthood...the companionship of good friends...even the hurts and the betrayals....

He ached for all of these things in a way he didn't really understand. It was like a part of him had died and he was reading over his own journals, begging for understanding. In the darkness he wept, sitting alone in the garden.
Alone, again apparently. Atleast he wasn't going crazy any longer. She had taken it from him, all of it. Even the twitches had finally subsided.
Her...
Her name that rolled from his lips like the answer to a great mystery. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn't flinging herself at him or the fact that he found himself in disbelief wanting to work for something again that made her so appealing. Her looks didn't exactally hurt, but no...there was something...more. She had worked so hard to rectify her mistake...no normal person would have put that much effort into a stranger. There was deffinitely something....and he had to find out what...*

[Jaymee]

((4/26/11))
*He sat on the edge of the roof, his bare feet dangling over the low wall in free air, the rain a steady downpour running over his flesh. It plastered his hair to his head and ran in steady streams down his bare skin, running strange pathways over his scars. In his lap a pile of crude daggers, rusted and tarnished, the result of a day spent hunting orcs. One by one, he lifted them by their dull tips and flipped them carelessly into the void. An empty cider jug sat next to him, the taste of it growing stale in his mouth the longer he sat.
In his mind, the thoughts swirled and eddied. They'd managed to set him off again, down that path of remembering...and how, from talking of that damned weed again...He flicked another dagger as the images in his mind took shape...*

Wandering barefoot, bloody, naked and alone. The camp was just over this hill, and a full stomach of dread knotted and twisted within him. There was no smoke from cookfires, no sound of repairs, no gentle nicker of horses. He knew what he'd find cresting the hill.

Nothing could prepare him, and it was even worse than his nightmares.

At the top of the hill, he surveyed the very pits of hell. Slaughtered and mutilated bodies littered the once vibrant and safe camp. The tents shredded and plundered, the horses stolen or set loose. The stench of death rose even to the height at which he stood like a warning of immediate doom.

He sank to his knees and a thin wail echoed off the valley walls.

It was all his fault.

*Another dagger spiraling through the air, vanishing into the darkness. The rain continued to fall dampening all sound in the world, leaving him in his personal hell like the last living thing on Sosaria. And for once, he didn't mind being alone.*