In High Tide | Scissor Seven

Chapter One

He woke up in a cold sweat, alone in a dark structure, his head pounding. 

Seven raised a hand and pressed it against his cheek, dragging his fingers down his face. An incessant buzzing echoed in his ears, surrounding him in a sphere of noise that existed for him and him only. He scrunched up his nose and gritted his teeth, but the sounds persisted. 

It had been a week since the dreams had first began. One week since he'd found himself on that circular island, surrounded on all sides by water and the impassable wall of his mind that locked him in at night.

Most people laughed at dreams. "They're nothing more than your brain's reassembly of the events you witnessed in the day," they'd say. At first, Seven had agreed. What meaning could dreams possibly hold to him?

After a week of visiting the same place in his dreams over and over, he was beginning to wonder.

The air was colder than it had been yesterday. Seven sat up and massaged his temples with two fingers, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Maybe the oncoming storm was messing with him, sending his body into a state of disarray in the face of cold weather. He doubted it, but at least that would provide him with an easy answer.

Seven let out a quiet huff as he stood up, brushing himself off. He'd slept on the hard stone floor of some temple he'd discovered while scouring one of the great forests that wrapped around the country's territory. The action had probably ticked off some ancient deity for all he knew, but at least he'd gotten a decent night of rest. 

Or at least, as good as he could get when he was constantly in a state of being half awake.

He ran his fingers along the fabric of his clothes, smoothing out the larger wrinkles that he could see, before bending down to pick up the long overcoat that had served as a sheet for him to sleep on that night. Seven stared at the coat for a moment, then slipped it on.

It was strange, really. His dreams had been so peaceful in contrast to the world he truly lived in. If dreams truly were based off of the day's events, then his should've been filled with the anguished cries of the dying.

Seven raised a hand back to the side of his head as another dull throb bumped its way through his skull, hitting harder on one side as it went. Whether his headaches were from a distinctive lack of feeling well-rested or actually brought on by his dreams themselves, he wanted them gone. It was an inconvenience, a nuisance to him in anything he did. Every movement seemed to amplify the pain. 

Light from the rising sun painted the stone floor of the temple in swathes of rosy hues that shone in his peripheral vision as he walked past. He stepped over a patch of crimson shades and lifted his head, gazing up at the cloudless sky as he made his way down the small flight of stairs at the temple's entrance. Maybe at some point, when the temple had yet to be abandoned, people had come to worship and offer sacrifices under the very same roof that sheltered him now. Maybe they had stood like he had, considering the impassive sky that stretched so far above, wondering if there was truly anyone up there watching.

He shook his head slightly --- as if to clear it --- and stepped onto the grass.

The temple was situated deep in the heart of the forest he'd been trekking through, surrounded by tall, imposing trees that stretched far above his head in a maze of dark green branches that twisted and turned to create a woven net in the sky. No light reached the forest ground, where fallen pine needles carpeted the floor in a layer of mellow orange and tangles of roots sucked dry the precious minerals and nutrients of the land. Despite all that, forlorn clusters of low-lying plants managed to force their way out of the soil, growing blindly at his feet.

Seven crouched down next to one and reached out, prodding a leaf gingerly with his finger. The plant was just a plant. Its leaf was just a leaf. Yet it was able to survive where so many others had not.

Maybe he was like that plant. He'd certainly survived much more than the others had.

Another muted spike of pain pulsed outwards from somewhere just off the center of his head. Seven sighed irritably as he straightened up, two fingers pressed hard against his forehead. A slight feeling of nausea rocked through him, leaving him puzzled for a second, before he realized: he'd done the same action before, in his dreams.

He felt very real. His touch was there, slightly chilly but there all the same, and when his fingertips moved to his neck, he could feel the steady dance of his pulse beneath them.

But the dreams had felt real, too. The wind against his skin, pushing his hair away from his eyes. The sand of the beach, shifting as he walked across it. The cold metal of the railings that stood to keep people from wandering out to sea. The sound of leaves as they raced across the pavement. The brush of a cat's tail across his leg. The sound of their voices.

They had shown up a couple days in, when Seven had first begun to explore inland. At first, he hadn't taken much interest in them. They seemed to blend in with the other residents of the island, just two others in a sea of people. But after a while, they began to stand out. He saw them in the streets, on the beach --- everywhere he looked, they seemed to be there. Maybe they were watching him. Maybe he was watching them. Whatever the case, he knew that his dreams were trying to guide him.

A disconcerted sigh escaped him as he stepped over another small, wilted plant on the forest floor. He didn't know what his dreams wanted from him. It had never struck him how much he valued a full night of sleep until it had been snatched away.

The sound of a single bird chirp sliced through the air. Seven's eye ticked. He glanced up towards the web of branches, his gaze shifting over the dark streaks that stood out so sharply against the bits and pieces of the sky that he could actually see. The bird sat nestled deep in a wreath of interlocking twigs. It opened its beak again and let out another biting chirp in the silence, inviting another wave of pain through his head. 

Seven unsheathed his sword, running a hand across the hundreds of fractures in his blade. He focused in on the pieces and raised his hand. Gently, a single shard drifted up into the air. The bird stopped its chirping, its head swivelling to focus on the metallic fragment as it drifted to settle in front of its face. He could end its life in a second. He could return the forest into the flowing silence it had been entrenched in with a single thought. He could---

"Seven."

His head jerked up immediately, eyes going wide before narrowing a split second later. The shard, which had begun free-falling towards the greenless floor when his concentration had broken, returned to his sword to complete the deadly weapon as he slowly turned in a circle, scanning the darkness of the forest around him. The bird gave another unbearably shrill chirrup and took flight, somehow squeezing its way through the thick tangle of branches, but Seven paid no attention to it. That voice. He knew that voice.

The branches on his left rustled. Seven whirled around, his sword at the ready. He watched as a single green pine plummeted to the ground, laying to rest next to a flattened, stout plant that had given up its battle against the giants above. 

No one was there. The bird had long since disappeared. 

There was no way. He'd only heard that voice in his dreams, and there was no way that he had been right there, with him, just moments ago. He didn't exist. Not outside of his head.

But he was sure that, for a moment, he had not been alone.