There was something so unusually serene about this coming morn', Dagramir had thought quietly to himself - wandering through woodlands with his arms stretched out by his sides, his fingertips gracing each passing object; pads brushing against the contours of oak, the delightful prickling of branches and bushes against his pale skin. Despite the quiet voice whispering warnings into the back of his head to not wander too far, such advice was almost immediately shrugged from his shoulders - a shawl of hesitation slinking from his frame to expose the gentle inner-workings of a man lost in time. With each tickle that the surrounding nature gave his skin, the world around him felt ever more real. The scenery encapsulating his frame fluidly adapted with each step he took, black boots unlocking new depths of the reality that was forming before his eyes. The woods sure enough gave way to endlessly spanning fields, evenly dissected by gently rolling hills and cascading burns alike. From there, the grass beneath his feet appeared to part, giving way to rising cobblestone, and sure enough he was wandering through an indiscriminate village. Wooden buildings appeared to build themselves as he trudged forwards in a trance, his legs seeming to carry themselves, as if the muscles within his body were working solely upon memory.
Wood melded with stone as crudely constructed huts morphed into towering walls, their captivating claustrophobic height instilling a sharp sense of safety within his chest. Strangely familiar voices began chattering all around him as shadows began to appear in all directions. Men walking to and from their avenues of work, women and their children doting around the sprawling marketplaces, friends engaging in idle conversation. From the shadows, came figures clad in simple clothes, a detailed picture painting itself before his very eyes. Despite his attempts to scan for faces, cerulean orbs darting this way and that, he could make no one out despite their familiarity. Backs were always turned to him, their heads cast in shadow or blurred to a censor beyond his comprehension. They appeared to take no notice of the ghost-like frame floating through the centre of the street, his relaxed expression and shuffling walk offering no reason to look up. It wasn't until his head rolled dreamily back towards his front that his muscles clenched, and his feet dug into the stone beneath him.
A small boy knelt keenly on the stones in front of him. Small, white hands fiddled for a moment before producing a wooden figure, a knight clad in the finest armour that one could whittle, painted a silvery-grey to denote the fine condition of the presumed plates of metal. A white logo was emblazoned to the knight’s chest, an all-too familiar tree sprawling across the expanse of his chest-plate – a knight of Gondor, no less. The boy’s hands danced around with the figure in tow, juvenile noises chortling through chapped lips, tossing it this way and that as the knight flew through timeless adventures, saving princesses from drakes and winning the day for the glory of Gondor. Dagramir smiled, a pang of nostalgia playing through his mind like the annoyingly catchy tunes of whatever bard was roaming the land this week. ’That used to be me’, the thought that nestled quietly within his head as he reminisced to much simpler times that lay well in his past.
The nostalgia he felt refused to stay within his mind, however, as it ran across the scene like water over wet paint, cascading through the fabric of reality to reveal so much more hidden behind the haze of the dream. And, with that, he heard the phantom call of his name emanating from an unknown source behind him. A call that almost deafened him with its unknown pitch. His ears prickling, his eyes widening. Slowly, the boy’s face tilted upwards, and Dagramir’s heart sank within his chest. The eyes staring up at him were unmistakable in their hues of blue, and the black curls of his hair only affirmed his suspicions. Like looking through a mirror of time, the child’s features slowly formed into that of his own. The call came again, a siren shattering glass within his own head, a voice he simply just could not place. The young boy to his front appeared to be looking him up and down in disbelief, a feeling only further echoed by himself, until he realised that those eyes were not looking to him. They were looking through him. His thighs pulsed and tensed as, with a blink of his eyes, he had floated a meter to the right, his body tilting to face the scene as the dream had intended. An outside viewer. A passenger to this charade. Furrowing his brows, he was forced to simply watch as the scene unfolded before his eyes.
~
“Dagramir!” the woman called once more, and the warmth of her voice soon enough gave its explanation. The boy’s mother ran through the crowds, her eyes wild with anticipation as she desperately searched for her son before softening as they finally landed him. Her brows furrowed, her posture tensing, as she stalked towards the child with an ever-building furore.
“Dagramir, how many times do I have to tell you! Do not go running off without telling me first!”
An innocent face peered up to the elder, a toothy smile soon appearing between rosy lips as the glee in his cheeks came to be known, grinning in the face of what surely would have been an apparent scolding.
“But mother, you were busy talking to that man! Lord Denethor couldn’t wait, he had to protect his lands!”
Each word fumbled from his lips with the grace of a clumsy horse as he concocted whatever story was necessary to evade his punishment, in this instance, choosing to play the fool with well-rehearsed innocence. An act that his mother saw straight through, her glare telling all the tales it needed. With a huffed sigh, one of equal measures relief and annoyance, a thin arm extended, her hand lacing around his to drag him back to his feet. Pulling him away from the busy bustling of the street and back towards their home, a smile peaking at the corners of her mouth.
“Please don’t try that one on me, little one. That may work on your father, but it will never work on me.”
The boy would stick out his tongue. “Only because you’re a girl. Father says lies don’t work on girls, they always see through them eventually.”
“Your father is a smart man. Perhaps you should listen to him more.”
“But he’s always working, which is so boring! I want to go out with my friends and play, not sit and read those stupid books.”
His mother smiled once more. “Those books are our history, Daggy. Hundreds of years of history. Without those to remind us of where we have come from, however are we to know where we are supposed to be going? And what dangers to avoid?”
“I dunno…”
“Exactly. You don’t know. Just like you don’t know that running off and sitting in the alley like that can get you into trouble! What if a warrior had ridden by on his horse and he didn’t see you, you would have been trampled!”
“No, I wouldn’t!” The boy exclaimed, doing his best to wrestle from his mother’s grip. “I’m the fastest and best-est warrior in all the lands! No one can stop me!”
The mother’s stern looks could last no longer, her expression softening to reveal a loose grin tugging to her lips as she slowly crouched down by his side. “Is that so?” she would ask, coyly. “Are you so sure about that, little one?” Her hands would snake towards his midsection, a solitary brow raising above her twinkling eyes. There would be a momentary pause, before she would spring into motion, wrapping the boy in a tight embrace and tickling at his belly. Small giggles of glee would escape the boy’s gasping mouth.
“No! Mother! Stop!” he panted between joyous laughter, squirming this way and that in his attempts to escape almost certain death.
With a laugh of her own, his mother would stop only to twist him round to face her. Peering past him only to look in the direction of their home. A smile painted upon her features. “See, you’re not so tough… You’ve a long way to go yet, Dagramir, remember that. Now, run along home back to father.”
“But mo-!”
The child’s mouth would part in immediate protest, little brows frowning in disapproval, only to be hushed by a solitary finger grazing his lips.
“Go. I won’t be much longer. And no dilly-dallying! If I see you still outside, you know what’s going to happen.” She would grin once more, pouncing at his stomach to give him a fright.
The boy would yelp and jump away from her, though with a knowing smile on his face, he would concede defeat. With a slow nod and an almighty huff, he would spin and begin to trudge back off towards home. His fingers still fiddling around with the figure in his hands.
The woman smiled, her eyes not leaving his back as he stalked back down the street, only satisfied once he had made the correct turn that ultimately led to their house. With a satisfied sigh, she would shake her head slowly.
“That boy…”
~
Dagramir’s eyes were transfixed to the back of the woman standing in front of him, disbelief splayed across his face. There stood his mother, plain as day, in what felt as real as a memory. But he knew it couldn’t be so. The young man had never truly met his mother, having cost her her life during a terrible childbirth. An act that his father had forever harboured resentment towards him for. A resentment that had led to the subsequent death of his father, too. Both those who had brought him into the world taken out by his own hands. The solidity of the landscape around them faltered, and the scenery began to shatter like a broken mirror. Shards collapsing into heaps around his feet, pinning him down in place until only he, the woman and the void remained. ‘You’re not real’, he repeated to himself, ‘you’re not real’. Her head slowly turned to the side, as if her ears had impossibly picked up upon his inner monologue and his sanity’s attempt to wrestle back control of this ordeal. Fear crept through his heart, knowing not how to deal with this scenario; his primal instincts ordering him to run, barking instructions into his body that his muscles refused to comprehend. Layers of glass and rubble pinning his feet to the darkness which they stood upon.
The one thing he had remembered was her face, the medium of a portrait that was displayed proudly above the fireplace in his childhood home provided him a picture of his mother to keep. The woman he undoubtedly would’ve caused havoc and misery to throughout his troubled childhood but would’ve loved and fought for to the end of the world. Even through his childhood, being raised by the harsh hands of his drunken father, his mother’s love was effervescent. Swallowing him up in times of trouble and hardship, providing him safe harbour from the horrors of the world to keep him sane. Though this experience was something different. He had dreamt of his mother before, the voice his mind gave to her, her wavy hair, her beautiful face… Her face. Dagramir frowned. He hadn’t seen her face. A quiet grunt of amusement came from the other, as if she had been waiting for him to realise this whole time. Her frame shifted slowly, turning to face him. Dagramir blinked a few times more, his pupils sharpening as her features came fully into view. The woman of his dreams, the woman standing afore him with a telling smirk on her lips, was suddenly not his mother.
It was her. It was the Raven. It was Ashaia.
With a gasp, Dagramir panted himself awake, his prone frame lurching upwards in a panic. Beads of sweat dripped down from the creases of his forehead to the black outlines of his brows. His mouth was agape and the hairs on the backs of his arms were static, prickling like the pines of a hedgehog. Once more, his sleep was plagued with bad dreams. Echoes of a past life rattling through his hollow skull, providing him with a headache. His eyes scanned his surroundings, the room he was sleeping in filled with naught but darkness and the cool glow of dying embers in the firepit. The silence broken occasionally by the loud snore of the patron sleeping in the room next to his. He sighed, taking a moment to clasp his hands over his face, wiping over his forehead, before he would drop backwards back onto the tough bedding. Though time had passed, the pictures that haunted him remained the same. Running away hadn’t worked. Running back hadn’t worked. Evidently, even the bliss of sleep was becoming tainted with the unmistakable pang of regrets. The shadows of his past continued to haunt over him, smothering his mind and clouding his judgement. As he tried to piece his thoughts together once more, to make sense of the age he had spent in solitude, another loud snore pierced through the veil of his proverbial mind palace. With a groan, he sat back up and lazily plodded off the bed, stalking towards his things to dress himself and escape back out into the night.
If there was ever a time when whisky and good conversation was needed, ‘twas now.
