A Cold Entity-Chapter Six

I woke up after who knows long, lying in what felt like a small cot, with a thin sheet covering my body. My eyelids were still heavy; I smiled weakly in my sleep. Tobias, I thought, Don't you remember you don't need to keep me warm?

Still, I made no effort to remove the sheet. I was simply too exausted, and it wasn't uncomfortable enough for me to waste the effort. I had only been asleep for a few hours, not enough to regain my strength. In those few hours, night had come, and the only light came from a flickering fireplace. Tobias must've carried me to his home.

I closes my eyes once more, the dream coming back back to me in jerky, vague thoughts. So many thoughts were running through my head right now, into an incomprehendable stream of questions. Was it a dream? A message? A warning?

It had to be a message, the dream, although hazy now, was so vivid in its duration. Every question I asked, every word of the hawk. It had spoke in riddles; nothing it had said was fully understandable to me. And it had questioned everything I believed in. It tried to impose its own beliefs on me. It was those words that had started everything; the mess running through my mind right now.

She had asked me, "What if She was wrong?" What I wasn't meant to be a Goddess? But my mother couldn't be wrong. I had no other role, no other place in this world if I could not become a Goddess. It was how I was raised, the only thing I was taught to believe. I tried to force myself to believe this, but doubt tugged at me still.

"Are you awake, Arcuna?"

Tobias' words interrupted my thoughts, and I forced my sleepy body to sit up and look forward. He was sitting at a table by the fire, with flickering shadows dancing across his face. He held a quill in his hand, the tip black with ink.

"Yes, I'm awake. What are you doing?"

"Nothing," he said quickly, hiding the quill under the table.

I gave a weak smile. "Come on Tobias, don't be embarassed." I got up and walked over to the table he was sitting at. On it sat a bottle of ink and a stack of parchment. He quickly slid a blank page over the top of it to cover it up. "I like to write," he said, looking up at me timidly.

"Why are you so embarassed about that? It sounds like a very worthwhile pasttime."

He smiled. "Yes, I enjoy it very much, it's just-" he sighed. "How did you sleep?" He obviously wanted to change the subject, and I decided not to push the matter. It was then that the dream came back to me, killing my slightly content mood.

"Arcuna? Are you alright."

I spaced out for a moment. "Yes, I'm fine, I just had a-peculiar dream."

It was apparantly the wrong thing to say. "Really? What was it about?" It just made him more curious, as if my dream was strange in an exciting way.

I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to lie. My mind was so anxious it couldn't think of anything to say. As strange as it sounds that a simple thing like would make me want to scream, that's exactly what I wanted to do.

Why is it that you would tell a complete stranger all of your secrets, all of your feelings?

It was what Tobias asked me after I told him the story of my childhood. I still didn't know why, but I knew that I had to tell him the truth. He deserved it.

"Arcuna?"

I turned towards him once more. "I dreamed that this one bird talked to me. It told me that I shouldn't be a Goddess, that I don't know what I'm getting into, that I'm not ready. It questioned everything I believed in,"

"Oh..." It was obviously not what he expected. "I'm sorry, Arcuna. It must have crushed you in a way, having everything you were taught questioned." I was surprised how he could sound so sympathetic to something so far above him.

"That's exactly how it felt for me," I said. "So much that it angered me."

"But did you believe it?"

I shook my head. "No, but it doesn't stop me from doubting myself. It planted the seeds in my mind. I'm beginning to second guess myself."

IN PROGRESS