Him and i - Dreams of trauma

I think I know what's smelling like this. I think I know where I've met this smell before. Here after all. I remember the tomb above and…and the blue lights. I remember the smell. I remember. I… It's a smell…

"Mmmmm. Smell of freedom. Of happiness. Of everything you want. Come to me, breathe in."

I'm stunned. The voice. Same calm voice. But the words…burn. Words don't seem to belong to this voice. The words belong to someone else. Bound to the memory, are also these words, the memory also bound by the smell. How? These words, the smell, the tomb, I rem…I remember…

I start to gasp. I can barely breathe. It hurts. Agony. I'm dying. I can't hold it, all I have now in me wants to explode, I can't hold off. I can't resist! NO!

"Forget! Hold on for a little longer. I'm sorry. Maybe not ready yet…"

I suddenly turn to look behind me. Nobody. I thought this time I'll get him by surprise. Why do I keep hearing these voices? I thoroughly scan my surroundings. I'm not aided by the compass anymore, I have the torch now, I can see so much more. But I see nobody.

I heard the voice coming straight from my soul. It was very close. Almost felt His breathing in my ear. It's the smell. It's poison. Or something hallucinogenic. Maybe that's why I keep getting this impression that I recognize the smell. I must run, I can't stay here. I hold my breath and start in the opposite direction.

"You can be what you want, you can have what you want, but you must come. You must come here, towards happiness."

Again, these words that give me a state of uneasiness. As if the voice recites to me a text that I already know by heart. An incantation. And in the end, I won't like what is summoned before me. I try to run as fast as I can, to distance myself from the voice. But I hear it as close as ever, I hear it in my head. I keep looking from time to time behind me, to be sure I'm alone. It's just my shadow, that runs too, after me.

"Don't run…from happiness."

"It's fake. This happiness of yours is fake!"

"But it's way better than what awaits you ahead. Come to me. Accept my happiness, my love, my contr…"

The smell starts thinning out. It's weaker and with it the voice is quieter, but still there, in my ear, in my head, I hear it whispering to me faintly.

"Nothing is fake in this world as long as the truth is much much worse. But stay on this path, it's the right one."

I take some more breaths while running. The smell is much weaker. But I think it got stuck in my nose. Even outside, in a field full of flowers, I'd still feel it, it got burned into my brain. Even if I won't ever remember where I know this smell from, I know I won't ever forget it from now on. I slow down, tired from the running that I did today. I continue to look for some open doors, but from now on I only see barricaded doors with more than enough wooden planks.

Far away I see a small dot of light. Finally something. I start once more to pick up the pace, jogging, and barely lifting my legs from the ground, as my whole body is tired, completely exhausted and aching. But I keep going as I'm motivated by this new discovery. As I get closer, the dot of light gets bigger and bigger. But I've been coming closer for a long time, as I've been jogging for more than a couple hours towards the dot of light. It must've been hours, it really felt like hours.

I sit down on the floor, almost collapsed, and try to not die. It feels like I'm dying. Like that story of that Greek that delivered the message of victory to the magistrates, some victory of a battle, and he died instantly, right after delivering, by mouth, the message. He died from running. A sacrifice to save the city from being set on fire in a retreat strategy. I feel like I'm going to share his fate.

And it's the 4th break I'm taking since I saw the dot of light. I notice how it grows, so how I'm getting closer, but how much longer? Until now I've found nothing on my way, but closed, blocked and barricaded doors.

I'm getting closer. The walls around me are starting to catch this light I'm chasing. I'm getting so close that the torch becomes useless now, but I'll still keep it. All this intense light comes from ahead. From the right side of the hallway, and it looks as if the wall itself is shining that light. Or there is a window that leads straight to the sun. I start to distinguish the source. It's a door, on the right. And it's closed, but that's where the light is coming from.

The light is beaming through the gaps between the door and the walls and through the keyhole. The light is so strong that only the small rays that manage to get out light up the entire hallway up to, maybe some kilometres back where I came from, and I think same in the opposite direction. And the light, even being fully used to it, starts to bother my eyes.

The door is different, not made from the same wood as all the others. It's a black wood, seems thick and strong. I touch the door handle to open, the door opens slowly, squeaking, creaking, it's heavy. I'm terrified by what I'm going to find inside. I squint my eyes in preparation.

Instantly, as I opened the door, I got hit by this insane wave of light. I feel like the whole hallway got lit for hundreds of kilometres. Without a trace of shade. I feel like the International Space Station can now see a strong point of light coming from Romania. That's how insane the light is. Anyway, now I can't see a thing. My eyes are already closed, but it's useless. It feels like I went blind, forever.

The light is too powerful to even face the room. I turn around, with my back towards the room and open my eyes. My sight comes back, with time, time which I spend thinking how a light this powerful should also burn my skin, or at least warm my back right now. But I don't feel any heat at all. Sight is back, and with it I notice my shadow, and by that I mean, the total lack of it. I should have one, as the source of light lays behind me, but from my feet starts nothing. Even raising my foot off the ground for a few centimetres, I see no shadow under it.

As I close my eyes, I can clearly see the room behind me. It got burned into my retina. The room is empty except the middle of it, where there is a small hole in the ground, from which a huge fire rises.

A fire so tall it reaches the ceiling. A fire so yellow and so powerful that it burned this image into my mind instantly, and it killed my sight in the split second that I was exposed to it. I felt my eyes dead and numb like two round rocks, good for nothing.

I decide to enter the room, keeping my back to the fire. I close the door and sit in a corner of the room. I open the journal, place the torch in the corner, against the wall, and I look at the text. It's exactly where I was. And I can see perfectly now. Not a crumb of shadow touches the writing. I continue reading.

 *

I look at the sky, the sun is in the same position as yesterday when I checked the compass. Meanwhile, on the compass, the needle has moved a little over 6 units. 6 out of 24. It needs to pass three times more for the needle to get back in the initial position. He has three more days to live. I visit each family to tell them that we don't have much time on our hands.

The girl that said she had no one to conceive with, wasn't in her tent. But a message was, written on the table. She apologises. She feels bad for hiding that she had someone. She apologises for that she can't bring that someone into our community. She apologises for that she's leaving. She says she can't convince him to come with her in our community, so she'll leave to be with him. She says that she feels so bad that she failed in her duties to bring Light into the world. That she's disappointed in herself because she can't help us. That she feels she doesn't deserve to be a part of the community anyway.

Her writing is shaken, and done in haste. She could barely hold her train of thoughts, and only apologised for most of the message. She is in a dark state of mind. I can't let this happen. If she'll get pregnant and Light is born by her, I won't be able to find him. We won't be able to protect him. The others will come look for him. And Darkness… I must bring her back, even if I'll have to force her.

I go to Georgi's tent. He was just getting ready to go hunting. I explain the situation to him, and he aids me in searching for the girl. We start in the direction that the guards on duty told us they saw the girl going, and I leave Georgi to do his thing and track her.

After some time and a few false leads, we manage to find their tracks just before the sun sets. After a night of continuous walking we start to get closer. At the sunrise we notice on the empty sky, a smoke column. They made a halt there. We start in that direction, from where the smoke is rising. We get there when the sun sits in the middle. There aren't many shades in this dense forest to hide us at this time of day. And there are a little over two days until the death of Light.

We move through some high bushes and stop at the very edge of them. We can see the fire, and the girl cooking. But we see no man around, and the tracks were of two persons, one heavier. I get closer to the girl, slow as to not startle her, while Georgi signals me that he'll stay hidden. At my sight, the girl gets startled, but not enough to make her scream.

"What are you doing here? Haven't you found the message I left for you?"

"I've found the message, and read it."

"Then what do you want from me anymore? Why have you followed me here? Why aren't you leaving me be?"

"I can't let you run. If Light gets born by you, you'll be in danger, you, your child, and your partner."

"It doesn't matter, we'll stay in hiding and won't attract any unwanted attention. We'll live a simple life, alone, secluded. Nobody will find us."

"You'll live all your life running, not knowing who's your friend, and who's your foe. Is this what you want for you and your child? You won't be able to sleep at night from worrying that something will happen to you. You won't know how to raise him. You won't know if what's happening to him, at any time, is normal or not. And all this without ever knowing if your baby is Light or not."

"I have someone to protect me, to take care of me."

"And who takes care of him? Come back to us. We take care of each other, we want you in our community. You walked so much with us, to this place, so you can leave us?"

"I can't. I want to live my life along Brasus. And he doesn't want to come to our community. I've tried to bring him to our camp, but he refused coming any closer. He pulled me back into the woods. It's hard for me to communicate with him, we can't understand each other at all, but we feel good together, we love each other."

"Let me talk to him. Let me help you."

"He doesn't understand our language. He gets hostile around unknown people. It's…"

"Trust me, I know how to communicate with him. Let me help."

"If you change his mind and make him come to…"

Before she got to finish her idea, Brasus dashes out of the bushes and sprints towards me. Without slowing down a bit, I can just look at him, no time to react any other way. With his fighter pose, and the body similar to a demigod, he looks like he's about to kill Ares. I can clearly see his intention to kill me, laid on his face. Georgi, that looked all this time at us, dashes too out of the bushes, smashing straight into Brasus and throwing him to the ground. All this happened so close to me, that the air of the throw hit me and my clothes pushing me behind.

Georgi is desperately trying to hold Brasus on the ground, but he's much inferior physically to him.

"Stop! You're killing him! This is how you want to help me?!"

I run to Georgi and just as Brasus gets to escape his hold, I touch his forehead. The barbarian stops instantly, and his limp body falls on the ground. He's not moving anymore. He looks threatening even while sleeping.

"What have you done to him?! He's…"

"He's alright. Just sleeping."

The girl calmed herself a bit, but she's still scared. Her hands are shaking and her face shows how overwhelmed she is by the situation. She doesn't know what to do, she doesn't know what she wants to do.

"I'll talk with him when he wakes up. I'll convince him to join our community. But you two will have to leave before."

"No. You'll hurt him."

"You know me. You know I wouldn't do something like this. Let me talk to him and tomorrow, we will be back at the camp. I'll bring him by his own free will and we'll initiate him properly into our community. As one of us."

"I don't know…"

Georgi grabs the girl's hand.

"You better listen to the hag, you know well what she can do."

Georgi pulls the girl's hand slowly as she starts going with him. She resisted at first, but then she let herself be taken away by him. They're gone.

I look at the barbarian. I'm going to let him sleep for a while. I'll finish cooking the food that the girl started and think on how to approach this problem. The sun starts setting. After the food is done, I fill a bowl and go to the barbarian to wake him up.

I touch him gently on his forehead. He wakes up. I lay my hand on his chest before he gets to make any move and I stop his body movements. He looks at me, terrified, trying to struggle. He realizes he can't move anymore, his face is showing this. This, and that if I'd release him, he'd kill me in an instant.

"Calm down, I want to help."

He moves his eyes frantically left and right. He doesn't know where the voice is coming from. He doesn't know what's happening to him. This is beyond his understanding. He suddenly stops his eyes on me. He's in shock. He realized the voice in his head comes from me. I place my hand on his mouth and relax the jaw and neck muscles. I start feeding him with the spoon. He's eating, scared to do anything else. He's not even trying to struggle anymore.

"It's good food right?"

He just looks at me, no reaction. I continue to feed him.

"It was made by your friend. She's a good cook."

Still nothing.

"You want to see her?"

He stops chewing and concentrates on me, like he's trying to escape from his hold, to break the mental chains that hold him down and break me too.

"She turned back to our community with Georgi, the boy you fought with."

He starts getting angry.

"It's alright. She's safer there than anywhere else. She turned back of her own will and she wants you to join her. You'll see that all the people from the community will accept you. All will help you. All will treat you like a brother."

His reaction hasn't changed, he doesn't want at all to communicate with me. I have to find more about him. I have to find out why he's behaving this way. I place my hand on his forehead. He's trying to move his head and dodge but I touch his head, and he suddenly falls asleep.

I'm on a mountain, on a narrow trail that is not spacious enough for more than one person side by side. It's a torrid day, and the sun is up, straight in the middle of the sky and closest as ever to the ground. Not so many days ago was like this. On the narrow trail, on the edge of the mountain, we are descending in a large group. Large and cheerful. Everybody's happy, everybody's singing and yelling. Brasus is right in front of me, even happier than the others. I go to him and touch his forehead again; I need to look earlier.

I'm up on top of the mountain we were descending. We're on the highest peak around. There are some cairns and some statues made of wood and a circle made of stones. Inside the circle are Brasus and another barbarian. They're fighting. And people around them watch and yell. The two fighters hit themselves with punches, stones, anything they can get a hold on. I even see some weapons on the ground, but outside the circle.

The two barbarians don't hold back from their hits. It's a fight without rules, or apparently, there don't seem to be any rules. Brasus manages to grab the other barbarian and throws him behind. The other falls off the cliff. Everybody's quiet now, no side is yelling anymore. The other barbarian can't be seen anymore. Brasus runs to the edge and jumps down. Everybody gasps and runs towards that edge.

Below the edge, there's a big stone, stuck on the side of the mountain. The barbarian fell on it and broke his hand. Brasus grabs him and helps him climb back. Some people start cheering and applaud Brasus. The two barbarians hold hands and resolve then and there, all their differences they had before the fight. The conflict seems to have been disputed. Seems like they fought for whom to lead the two groups that are merging after this fight. Brasus is now the leader of the two tribes.

I pull back my hand from the barbarian's forehead. Everybody is descending the mountain yelling and singing. Brasus with his group in front, and the barbarian that lost and his group behind. Some are happy, some are quiet, resigned. The group of the defeated barbarian starts descending faster and tries to pass the others on the narrow trail barely enough for one person. The two groups are mixed now. Two barbarians stop in front of Brasus and grab him. The others from the defeated group of barbarians pull out their swords and hold them out towards the other barbarians. Brasus is confused. His men can't get to him to help. Brasus grabs his sword but before he gets to do something, he's thrown over the edge, off the mountain, into a deep fall. Down, at the feet of the mountain, he is woken up by our girl, she helps him get up and tends his wounds.

I pull back my hand from the barbarian's forehead. I now understand why he doesn't trust us. He barely got to trust the girl that healed him. He almost died, betrayed by the new allies, and unaided by his own brothers. He looks scared at me. He knows what just happened. What I just did to him.

"We are not like that. We are united. We help each other. No matter what. The only thing we seek is to live peaceful and uneventful lives. Come with us."

He seems docile now. He's still conflicting about what to do. But I think I'm safe now, so I touch his chest again and free him of any bond. He looks at my hand and then at me. He knows he's free. But he stays put, doing nothing.

I pull back softly and slowly and then I place the bowl of food on the ground. He still is not moving, but he's watching me attentively all this time. I need to show him that I trust him. I turn my back to him and go to put out the fire. I hear him getting up in a single move and running towards me. I turn back to him, but he jumps on me and smashes me to the ground. He stays over me, strangling me with all his strength. He looks to the right, sees a stone and grabs it. Before he gets to bash my head with it, I touch his hand that's still strangling me.

"I'm sorry for what's about to happen."

He falls asleep. I won't get anywhere if I keep trying to tame him. And I can't stay here until he starts to trust me, if that's even going to happen. I'll have to make him obey me.

I push him off me and lean over him, I put my hand in his head, grab, and pull out his soul. I'm killing him.

He'll be like me, before. I don't want this… I'll lock his soul then. He won't have any control over his body, but he will be able to see everything. The soul will still be there. Like a spectator to his own life.

It's the best thing I can do to him. I'll make him act normal, and civilized in the community, I'll command him. I'll raise him anew, like a new-born baby. Empty baby. He'll be a good puppet. I place my hand on his forehead. He wakes up, with an empty gaze. Sad. He gets up on his feet and waits. Waits for me to order.

I look closely at his gaze, I can't see anything in his eyes, I can barely see a fragment of his soul. I hope the girl won't notice. I look at the sky, it's almost dark. I order him to put out the fire and we head to the camp. He follows me closely from behind with a lit piece of wood in his hand.

We arrive at the camp. The girl didn't go to sleep, she was wandering around the tent, walking and walking and keeping herself occupied. Anything to not fall asleep. She was waiting for us, and when she sees us, she runs in her beloved barbarian's arms. She looks exhausted. But also happy and relieved from her tense wait. She really though I'll do something to him…

I did. The barbarian is cold, untouched by her hug or presence. She notices his indifference, but before she starts thinking about him, I speak.

"He's still dizzy, from the sleep I put him into. But after a little while, and a good sleep, he should come back to his senses."

She stops hugging him and starts looking closely at him.

"You are tired too. I can see it on your face. Go to your tent. Sleep. You'll have enough time to speak from tomorrow onwards. You'll show him when you wake up, the camp, and greet all the people here. And we'll talk some more tomorrow."

She stops analysing him and they go to their tent. I go to mine. I see Georgi getting ready to go hunting. The sky is blue, the night went on, and the sun starts to show its rays. I pull out the compass to check how much is left. Less than six units. That means tomorrow, Ognian is…in my tent. Looking through my stuff. Barely holding on his feet. At my sight he gets startled.

"How can I help you, Ognian?"

"Ah! For you, I was looking for, Olsana. What's the word on…"

"Looking for me? Or for my compass?"

Ognian sits on a chair, tired, moving heavily, breathing heavily.

"I must know. Please. I know I don't have much but…maybe if I see when, I'll be comforted. Maybe I'll accept it easier."

"You know I can't tell you. If you find out, you can influence, without even wanting to do so, your fate. Be calm, relaxed. You've lived a long life. It would be something, to get scared of death just now."

"I'm not scared. But everybody started to get flustered, and it got to me too. And who isn't scared of death?"

"You mustn't get flustered, or even think about this. Just be with the ones that are waiting Light in their lives. Be with the members of this community. You have to make this passing over, smoother. To strengthen the bounds between the soul and the community. To aid in the returning of the soul in this community."

"You're right. I don't know what got into me. I don't even know how it would've helped me, knowing…"

"Go and talk with the chosen families. Tell them what to expect. They expect it to be different from a normal child. Calm them. Teach them. Strengthen your affinities with these people."

"I'll go talk with them. I'll do my duty. Have a nice day!"

 *

Light leaves the tent. The old woman continues to make teas for fertility and give them to the chosen ones to drink. The next day, Ognian dies. The compass stops. I want to find out which child is the light, I bet it will be the child of the girl that ran away. Text transforms. The old woman gives the compass to each baby to hold it. The girl that ran away is there too. Actually, her baby is the light, he holds the compass and it lights, bright.

In my hand, the compass also lights up. I take out the compass from my pocket. It lights, but it's weak. I remember that it lighted weaker when the chosen women held it. The women that could give birth to the light. Does this mean that there are chances that light will be born as my son? How stupid. Anyway, the old woman only checked the women. I don't think that's the reason the compass lights in my hand. And in the baby…light's hand, the compass lit up very bright and powerful.

So why does the compass lights in my hand?