xp_logs | Amanda's Dream

No fight can withstand the pressure of healthy teenage hormones, and so Friday night Amanda spent in Manuel's room. More specifically, Manuel's bed. Deep in sleep, not even aware of Manuel's absence, Amanda found her dreams taking her on strange and unusual paths.

It was a village, tucked deep within thick, encircling woods. The buildings were rough yet well-built, hastily erected but strong. They gave the impression of transience, of a people who travelled easily and frequently - the thought came to Amanda easily, as if it was something she'd always known, the way knowledge comes to us in dreams. Unseen, unmarked by the sentries at the edges of the huts, she found herself drawn towards a group of children playing in the bare circle of earth at the centre.

There was perhaps seven of them, four girls, three boys, strangely few for the number of huts she saw. They were dressed in dull colours: muted greens, greys, and browns that blended with their surroundings. The clothes were obviously cast-offs from older siblings, even adults, roughly adapted to fit; the effect should have comical, but something about the sight of those over-long cuffs and bits of string holding up too-large trousers was deeply saddening. Amanda leant back against one of the huts to watch them play - the dream was a vivid one, as hers usually were, she could feel the sun-warmed hardened plastic of the wall against her shoulder blades.

The oldest- a girl of maybe ten, with reddish-brown hair in an untidy plait and a fierce, pointed face - was directing the others in a fluid, musical-sounding language. It was incomprehensible, but also strangely familiar, although she couldn't place it from any of her spell books. The girl had some sort of helmet tucked under her arm, its visor cracked and several scorch marks on it surface, and as the other children scattered she put it on and began to count:

"Eyan, diya, fiel…" The helmet obscured her vision as she kept her head down.

"I know this game," Amanda said to herself, not noticing the girl's count had faltered a little. "Hide 'n go seek."

As if to confirm her guess, the girl stopped her count, pushed the helmet back on her head so she could see, and began searching. The expression o her face was deadly serious as she moved through between the buildings, looking behind boxes and under tarpaulins, until she reached the beginning of the woods. Her quarry were remarkably good at hiding too - in that strange way that dreams have, Amanda had a sense of time passing both very quickly and achingly slowly. But at last the girl caught sight of a grubby bare foot sticking out from beneath some bushes, and, seizing it was a grim expression, pulled her playmate out. Amanda waited for the tickling, the giggles, the good-natured: 'Oh, you found me, good for you, my turn…' childish banter she remembered from watching Miles and Artie and the other little kids playing. But there was nothing but a stern look from the finder, a resigned nod from the found. Then the older girl pushed the helmet back down, obscuring her expression, and pulled a wooden dagger from her belt. The other child, a boy of no more than seven, freckles scattered across his snub nose and a gap where his front teeth were growing through, knelt before her, facing away from her. He didn't even flinch as she roughly grabbed a handful of his thick, sandy hair and yanked his head back, before drawing the wooden blade across his throat. No blood was spilled, no mark was left, but the implication was blindingly obvious, even to Amanda: You get found, you die.

"No," the witch said, coming forward even as the boy slumped forward in mock-death without a twitch. "It don't have t' be like that."

The girl turned, turned and looked at her with cold grey eyes. "Va'haila," she said, her child's voice terribly adult in its weariness. "What is, is."