The Night Didn't Bring Peace

Zelene turned under the weight of her covers, the sheets twisted around her legs like ivy spreading over stone. Usually a refuge of soft shadows and soothing silence, her bedroom was restless tonight in a way that made her skin tingle. Outside the window, the old oak branches hummed with the wind, shaking only slightly against the glass. 

The moon hung full and silver, creating soft light fingers on the thin gauze drapes. Shadows moved along the flooring, changing like quiet phantoms. She had kissed her eyelashes hours ago, but it had not brought her far. Sleep She floated in and out, lost in half-dreams filled with warmth and an odor she could not identify. 

The smell of burned smoke and damp pine. Of wood and fur, of fire. Though she hadn't left her bed, a smell persisted with her even now. Her breath shallowed, her hand crept beneath the pillow and fingers brushed the cold linen. Benevolent closed lids revealed the dream returning. Around her the jungle stretched out.

She was barefoot, the ground damp under her feet, the wind whirling about her naked arms. Her breath came rapid, but it was something else that pushed her not fear. Craving. Wanting. Her pulse echoed across the stillness like a battle drum, matching the hammering of the ground under her feet. Leaves swept her ankles across rows of silver-lit trees. She was running through. Moonlit and whispering, the canopy above twisted branches in complex webs. She trailed a shadow behind her. 

She felt it tall, silent, persistent even though she couldn see it. Not a menace. Not hunter. something more ancient. Her stuff. She pivoted, catching a form always just beyond reach behind the trees moving through the mist. She could not stop even though her lungs burned. 

Her forest encircled her like a memory. And in that flickering instant, her thoughts murmured a name she had not spoken out. damian. She halted. The woodland stood still. He came out of the shadows bare-chested, moonlight gliding over the carved muscle of his torso, eyes flickering slightly with something more than human.

The fantasy changed. She was being beckoned, not merely running. lured. He moved near her and something in her rose met him. The woodland burst in light the instant their hands touched. Zelene jerked awake. She slicked sweat from her skin. Under her her linens were moist. The air seemed too warm, too constrictive, as though the house's walls had been invading her sleep. 

She sat up and pushed a quivering hand to her chest. Her heart galloped in her ribcage, galloping with a cadence not of her own. Bare feet hitting the cool hardwood floor, she swung her legs off the bed. Her breathing varied. There somewhere in the house a floorboard creaked. The air smelled now faintly yet definitely. Her dream had that same wild fragrance. Ground and pine. 

Smoke and flames. She had never known yet could not forget a fragrance. She moved automatically, as though driven by something ancient and invisible. Her footsteps carried her across the hall, past the stairway, toward the door closed since she had returned to this place. The attic is where I live. Her hand stayed over the knob. She had not set foot in the attic years ago. Her grandma used to say it was a holy spot for quiet and remembering. Zelene had thought it haunted when a child. 

She wasn't really sure it wasn't now, an adult. The door moaned as it opened. The attic wore silence and dust. Here the air seemed older and thicker. Through the oval window at the far end, slanted moonlight revealed forms under dusty white sheets old trunks, rocking rockers, forgotten furniture. Long and stretching like fingers of a period long buried, shadows swept across the floor. Zelene moved forward gently, her breath weak as she passed and brushed her fingers over the papers.

She was being drawn toward something. She was not sure what. Just that it lingered someplace in the shadows. Her feet led her to a trunk close to the rear wall. Weighty, worn-out, engraved with symbols she had never seen before. crescent moon. a leaf-covered vine. Paw of a wolf. She knelt and fingertips brushed the latch. It clicked open naturally, like though the trunk had been waiting for her. Inside layers of lace, scarves, cloth shawls, antique robes. All orderly folded, unaltered by age.

Deep purple velvet covered a little pouch beneath them. Her fingertips tingled the minute she touched it. Her arm felt the sensation crawling up, shivering her spine. Heart hammering, she sank back on her heels. She tore off the velvet with quivering hands. One dropped into her palm a silver pendant. Cold. Fluid. Formed like a crescent moon, twisted with the shadow of a wolf midway through howl. delicate but strong, buzzing just slightly with invisible vitality. A pulse low, like a rhythm under her skin, started in her chest as she touched the pendant's core.

The attic appeared to get dark around her. The pendant shone more brilliantly, reflecting something else as well as the moonlight. Something in her. Not among her memories. Not uttered in a whisper. An age older than blood itself. Her mouth stopped. 

Her fingers drew tightly around the pendant. She muttered, "What the hell is happening to me? But no response arrived just the thrum in her chest, the warmth radiating through her bones, the echo of a dream in which wolves pursued her and she did not flee them. She sat in the attic in solitude while clutching the pendant to her heart and listened to the wind howl across the outer trees. She had no idea what waking inside her was. However, it had started.