Dreigiau Book 1: The Gift of Flame

Chapter 8

She appeared within his dreams, as she always did, her two bare feet perched flat upon the stone in the middle of the wading pool. The vision perfectly recreated their secret meeting place, where they used to escape the political struggles between their people, if just for a little while. He never returned to the place after that day, but every detail was etched into his memories.

"JouKa," his voice spoke her name, sounding just as he had on that day long ago.

The girl turned to him, her once luxurious hair cropped short in a symbol of her defiance. Or, perhaps, it was a sign of her acceptance of what was to come. Her green eyes were haunted as they searched his face. His name was the only word that crossed her lips.

"KoGuRai."

The pair of snowy wings unfurled from her shoulders, the twin arcs of feathers just as clear in his mind as the day he last saw her. The sunlight caught and leapt from the plumage, casting a hazy illusion of rainbowed light. KoGuRai had seen this vision unfold so many times now that the shock of the memory had long since worn out. However, his awe of the beauty and grace draped over his memories, unchanging with time.

"I'm still looking for the answers," he told her. "The reports are so inconclusive."

He had stopped asking her questions when he realized she could not answer them. The wings. Her transformation. What it meant. How it came to be. His first instinct was to ask her these things. What happened? What did this to her? How? Why?

It took so long before KoGuRai finally realized JouKa didn't have any more answers than he did. Here, she was only a shadow of a confused moment from his past. It was then he decided that he would have to search for the answers on his own.

"I 'ave to go," she told him, speaking the words that she repeated each time. "The Gatherin'... if they see me like this... they'll call me one of the Cursed."

JouKa paused, looking down at her reflection in the water. Her expression was of one who was watching all hopes and dreams shatter before her. She would leave her home, family and the one she loved most, and vanish to a place where KoGuRai could not find her.

"Do you think I am... one of the Cursed? A creature of the Bane?" she finally asked.

"No, of course not," he swallowed the lump in his throat. No matter how many times he heard the question, he still choked, because she believed it about herself. "If only you knew how much I've miss you... how much I wish I could find where you've gone."

"I can't tell you that," JouKa turned away. It was a pre-determined statement, he knew. She wasn't responding to his words, only playing out the actions of a time that came before.

"I won't stop searching until I find you," he told her.

"I love you," she said, reaching one hand out to him with a longing look.

KoGuRai reached to her in return, "As I do you."

Where their fingers met, the dream-vision began to warp and distort. He could feel reality drawing him back to waking world. Sometimes when he was sleeping heavily, the dream continued off in other directions. Today, he was merely stealing a short nap, and woke from the dream with a heavy heart.

KoGuRai glanced at the Time Guide on his desk with sleep-itchy eyes, then rolled forward in his chair with a jolt. The next Council meeting would happen shortly, and he had no chance to sort his reports and get his notes ready. Not that anything constructive would come of the meeting. He would make sure of it.

The Council is nothing but a group of old fools. I own half of their votes and have the other half squabbling amongst themselves to make sense of it all.