Elsí's dreams

It was not every night, but it was enough nights.

Enough nights, Elsí would dream of severed, rotting, dexterous hands pulling her by her hair down a dark corridor slick with what seemed to be a light green substance. Blood oozed down from the ceiling with the viscosity of Rook's drool. Where it fell, it mingled with the light green substance like oil and water. She spilled through it.

She was always off balance. Always falling backwards as the hands pulled her hair ruthlessly. Her hands, shaped into panicked claws, would scrabble at the walls until her nails broke. None of her friends or family or rivals were ever there. She could not scream their names.

The dream came to her enough nights that she no longer enjoyed sleeping. It felt high stakes, exhausting. She would put off falling asleep each night as long as she could until she would slip away from exhaustion. And in the morning, she would wake to find her nails, cracked and bleeding, digging into her flesh - her arm perhaps, or her leg. The bags grew heavy under her eyes. She no longer smiled.

She knew deep down that she had to hide her injuries from her parents and Kjellnir. She could not explain her problem; whenever she attempted to speak of the dream her voice would disappear. So naturally she started covering her body at all times, wearing long sleeves that shielded her scarred arms and troubled hands from sight. She stopped swimming in the river with Kjellnir and Sciiho. And she cut her hair. It grew back in the dream.

When the weather quickly turned too warm for long sleeves, she filed her nails down and then found herself waking up biting her tongue. Enough mornings, her mouth would be thick with pain. So she fashioned a mouthguard and slept with it in, a piece of wood in her mouth like Rook with a stick. It would have been embarrassing if anyone knew. But they didn't. She slept facing the wall these days.

One unusually humid morning she woke to find that she had bitten the mouthguard clean in two. The bite marks looked ferocious, like something beyond her means. When she ran her tongue along her teeth to investigate, she felt the sharp prick of a splinter embedded in her gums. She closed her eyes in exhaustion.

Enough.

Elsí lay there on her bed for a moment, broken mouthguard cupped in her hands. She considered trying to tie her hands before bed moving forward to avoid damaging herself, but she could not be bothered. She was too tired to fight any longer, in dreams or outside them.

Enough.

The next night that she had the dream, the air was thick with its inevitability. That evening at the Silver Ram, as the others laughed boisterously with the newly married Halfdan, she did not or could not speak when spoken to. Kjellnir cut her off early, blaming the mead. And earlier that day, her wounds on her arms, nearly fully healed, had reopened unprompted. The blood got in the pastry dough before she could stop it, ruining the whole batch. She blamed a knife and took the stinging smack on the cheek without protest, too busy trying to hide the still-flowing blood amidst her sleeves. And when she passed by the mirror that night right before bed, she could have sworn she saw an orange ponytail swinging after her.

Enough.

Her body felt paralyzed as she lay there awaiting sleep or death or hell. She tried to call out for Kjellnir, who laid close by behind the decorative wooden room divider. She was not surprised when she could not. She did not fight sleep, but still it did not come easy.

Enough. A voice called out; not Kjellnir's. She fell asleep.