Part of Them

Part 22

After taking a quick shower, I felt a little fresher. Even though everything turned sore as hell after cleaning all the dirt off, I still prefer that rather than being stinky and dirty.

Now that I was dressed in some comfortable, maroon sweatpants and an oversized black hoodie, I decided to just get back to bed. The fever didn't really seem to get any better as the night passed and I started to feel more and more as though reality was slipping away.

I was plagued with confusing visions of some child living on the streets with a white haired woman.

Why was I receiving those?

There were only two possible explanations.

First, a powerful mage or wizard/witch could be reviving lost memories of mine, which I highly doubted or second, they could be sending me memories of their own.

But the biggest question here was, why would such a power being even bother to contact me?

Things weren't making any sense and I wasn't quite sure how to get answers. I mean it's not like I could ask anyone without appearing suspicious or just completely insane.

As I was about to fall back into my beloved pillow and try to doze off, there was a knock on the door.

Frowning, I shifted to laying on the side, facing the closet door instead of the door the knock resonated from. Rayi should just leave me alone. I wanted nothing more than to sleep and have a rest from all those recurring thoughts and scenes.

When the door opened and silent footsteps followed I quickly closed my eyes, pretending to be in a sleeping state.

The footsteps were too silent and considerate, but in my feverish state, I failed to notice those things. Rayi was completely oblivious to others emotions and acted on impulse, without thinking most of the time.

As the sound of shoes hitting the ground came to a halt at the other side of the bed, shuffling could be heard. A second later, I felt my bed dip to the side and a hand reaching for my shoulder and pulling me to lay on my back.

Groaning in protest, I rolled back onto the side facing away from the intruder. I didn't want to be disturbed now that I was finally getting tired. I haven't been able to sleep anymore ever since I woke up.

In response, the person behind me sighed and grabbed my arm.

Now I came back to my senses and ripped my eyes open, but it was too late already.

The hand pulled me across the bed sheets to their side. Even with the painkillers, I could feel the pain ring from my shoulder through the entire body.

For some reason, you could pop my shoulder out of its sockets extremely easily and it's happened to me many times before. But the worst part about that wasn't the pain when it happened, but when I had to pop it back in. It took me a while to figure out how to perform the exact motion to get it back into its original position but believe me, the process of finding it was the most painful thing ever.

The most plausible explanation of my weak shoulder was probably that I never popped it back in correctly, but as long as it got the job somewhat done, I was fine with it.

With wide eyes, I tried to bite back a whimper by gritting my teeth, but I didn't succeed.

The other person also seemed to notice that something was off, either by the pop and the weird angle my arm was positioned in or the pained whimper that had escaped my chapped lips.

"What the..." sounded a deep voice behind me.

I immediately recognized the voice as I've been dreading it for the past few days.

It belonged to Alerus.

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Sorry for the short chapter! But the next chapter will be intense and long (probably).

School has started again for me, so the updates will become more regular again (every Monday or Thursday, so most likely once a week).