Dragon in a Dream........"Thinking Too Much"..........Lady Blaze

It was some while before my body gathered enough energy to move. Dragging myself on the bed, I stared up at the cobwebbed rafters, trying to think straight but finding the task to be nigh unattainable. My wrists were beginning to ache from the abrasive rope, simply another biting pain to enter my fogged mind. The growing shadows collecting in the ceiling’s corners showed I had spent more time knocked out than I had originally assumed. Eyes moving slowly to the window, I confirmed it. The sky was being painted a dusky blue faded to purple. I had not noticed the darkening room.

A deep feeling of vulnerability began to fill me, lying there bruised in my ruined dress. I had never faced people in a brawl wearing a dress, though I supposed it would not have made any difference, being tied. I vowed never to put myself in such a situation. Remorse at the trashed garment was replaced with an emptiness I could not put my finger on; I was all of a sudden indifferent to it, believing the dress had no use whatsoever except to hinder women. I would not make the same mistake twice. If I had had the strength to blush, perhaps I would have, my thoughts touching on how low the front of it was, how unforgiving it could be when a female such as I, with little fat content, wore it. I knew I had gotten used to working and living together with men, though the process had been slow and sometimes uncomfortable. I was not one to ordinarily blush. But this was an entirely new feeling, one combining a shame in myself I never knew I had and my acute naïveté towards feminine arts. I had no one to guide me in these unmerciful waters.

I lingered on muddled thoughts of Gerath, posing him as a shark in the water, and Jerron some irritating sea creature such as a jellyfish, beautiful but deadly. And this twist in the plot, my abduction, a net descending rapidly towards me. In over my head, I had no place to go except onward.

The scenario melted around me as reality made its way into view. My predicament was much more complex than that. Not only was I no nearer to unlocking the secrets of the Dragon Skein, but I was now probably known as a face to at least half of the people who had attended the party at the palace, as well as this band of rogues who had taken me prisoner. This would make my mission harder twice over. I pondered the chances of my getting out of the city and returning home without more townspeople poking into my business.

A reflective thought led me to something Jerron had said earlier, while he and his advisor had been talking privately in the chapel. Something about meeting someone…and the frustrated grumbling of Averice when he had left… appointment with an old friend. Up there… The dragon's dead, been dead for more than a while, tomorrow as dead as today…

No, I said to myself firmly, that’s more than an insane thought, that is improbable. The Dragon has to be dead…

I shifted on the thin mattress and tried to doze off, higher gear-grinding too much of a waste of energy.

-- Hehe, I just couldn't wait.. :P

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