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The cottage was on fire. I stood, transfixed, watching it burn.
The air was thick with the acrid scent of smoke. As I watched, sparks from the burning timbers of the cottage flew into the meadow of wildflowers that surrounded it and began to ignite.
The entire place quivered with an unsettling energy. Flickering flames danced wildly against the backdrop of the starlit sky.
I lifted my hands, then dropped them again uselessly by my side. One could not fight flame with flame.
And Draven was not here.
I had thought this was a true dreaming. Now I questioned that assumption. If Draven was missing and the cottage was burning, perhaps this was simply a nightmare after all. Like the one I’d had of Kaye.
A very vivid nightmare. One I very much wanted to wake up from.
With that thought, my uncertainty was put to rest.
In the doorway of the burning cottage, a figure of a man was emerging.
He came slowly towards me, as if he had no care for the flames. As if they could not harm him.
Wild tendrils of gray hair aglow from the flying embers framed a face etched with the fortitude of tempest. Gray eyes, fierce and forbidding, burned at me with an intensity that pierced through my stupor.
He wore a suit of gold and silver armor, the finest I had ever seen. Behind him flowed a cape of brilliant scarlet.
Slowly, he came towards me. As if he had all the time in the world.
“What have you done?” I snarled, furious at the look I saw in his eyes. “What right have you to come here?”
Before he answered, I feared what he would say, and as the words left his lips, I wished I had never spoken them.
“The right of a father,” the man said unnervingly. “The right of a loving father who wishes only to see his daughter.”
“Loving? Is that what you call this? Destroying my home?” I was fighting back tears but refused to let him see that.
“You call this shack a home?” The man shook his head and laughed. “You have been away from your true home too long, Daughter, if you believe this was a fitting place for you.”
“I will decide what is or is not a fitting place for me to reside,” I said angrily.
It was a dream, I told myself. I could rebuild it.
But what was the point? He had found me here twice now. He would only come again.
“I don’t want you here. Can’t you see that? I have no wish to see you.”
A scowl came over his face. “You hardly know what you are saying. Your mother’s treachery took you from me. Poisoned you against me. Do you know how long I have been looking for you? Seeking you?”
I watched, fascinated, as I saw him try to force the scowl from his face and replace it with something else. He seemed to be seeking to show emotion. Perhaps, yes, even something akin to the love he claimed.
But he was ancient. Timeless. He was hard and cold, and bitterness seeped too strongly through his veins.
He could not show it no matter how he struggled. Eventually he gave up, his face returning to its glacial state.
“You’re wrong about my mother.”
He stopped on the path.
“I saw what she believed about you,” I continued. “She believed you truly did love me.”
I had been wrong about his ability to convey emotion. A look of shock crossed his face.
