Flow

I.

Tossing and turning like a newborn sheep, the young man was sweating profusely. There was fire everywhere. The flames licked at his feet in whispers of damnation. He tried to scream, but no words would come out. "Burn, witch, burn!" his ears rang with the furious chanting of the townsfolk. Why were they doing that? They had no idea who he was. Why were they so angry? Why were they so scared of him that they needed him to be turned into ashes? He wasn't like that. The ropes tightened around his arms and legs. He wasn't a bad person.

"Die, Constanze!" a louder voice echoed in his ear.

Constanze? No, he wasn't Constanze. That was his mother. Were they seeing another person in his place? Was he paying the price of being the witch's son? "Die, Constanze!" the voice insisted. His thick tears felt hotter than the fire at his feet. Then, in a fraction of seconds, the ropes turned into hissing pythons who bit viciously at the veins of his neck.

"Stop!"

Klaus jolted out of the bed struggling to catch his breath. His body was shuddering, and he could feel his heart pounding against his chest as if trying to burst out. His widened tar-colored eyes moved around frantically, not recognizing their surroundings for the better part of a minute. Then, as he started to calm down, he realized he was still at home, in what used to be his mother's bedroom. His sweat soaked the silky red sheets. Running his fingers into the curls of his wet hair, Klaus tried to swallow down a nauseating feeling stuck on the back of his throat. What a fantastic way to start the day. And his birthday, for that matter.

He placed his feet on the cold tiles of the bedroom's floor, and breathed in. His lungs were pleasantly filled with cold morning air, and the strong scent of the ocean. As his brain took in the new oxygen, dizziness left his head and allowed him to take his first steps toward the door.

He felt disgusting with all that sweat trickling down his sun-kissed russet skin, so he made way to the backyard, where he bathed in pond water he had collected the day before and left charging under moonlight. The cold touch of the water running down his back was the last step in regaining peace. For a moment, he allowed himself to sink into it, and meditated as the water in his ears blocked out the outside world. Resurfacing only enough to capture fresh air, Klaus could feel the gentle exchange of energies with his element. He washed out the heavy burden of his nightmares, and basked in nature's undeniable power.

Klaus was a very secluded man. His social skills had gone quite rusty after his mother was executed in a witch trial. Unable to show up by the village often, he only had his childhood friend, who would occasionally stop by for a quick visit. She was probably the only person who knew about his existence, in that old house in the coastal woods. When the guards captured Constanze, he was hiding behind trees, and she claimed to live alone. To that day, he was not sure if she did that because she didn't think his presence was important enough to mention, or because she had a glimpse of motherly affection and wanted to protect him.

He put on black woolen pants, and a gray shirt with the drawing of a bright teal symbol resembling the sun sewn on the chest. He made those himself. Handmade things were his passion – in part because he had no interest in leaving his place to interact with others, in part because it soothed him.

"Good morning, Maus," he smiled softly at the sight of his royal python slithering around the kitchen. They had grown up together, and eventually he discovered his pet was also his familiar, when he first started dabbling into the ways of sea witchcraft. "Hope you have a gift for me."

The snake continued to crawl toward an unknown destination, its little tongue going in and out. Klaus shrugged, and started heating up a thick meal made of corn and coconut essence he had bought from a traveler, two days prior. The sweetened smell made the young man's stomach growl in anticipation right before an effusive knock on his door caused his heart to skip a beat. "They're coming for me! They're coming for me!", the phrase he so often repeated when he was younger reverberated in his mind, but found no way to his mouth: he had long stopped fearing knocks on the door, when he concluded that the guards weren't coming back for him.