Year 415: Port of Treno, Disputed Territory

  Warning:

  Spoiler Mentions of Vomiting, Depression, Starvation/Eating. some Profanity

  [colpse]I hated the feeling of waking up.

  When I was asleep, I felt like I was invincible. That I was a saint, a ghost that could phase through walls, a knight in shining armor that could command all sorts of magic at my fingertips.

  For a couple of hours a day, I could escape my life here on this waking world and walk the path that I so fantasized. Free from the need or the desire to stay alive, free to wander the continent, to visit the temples of Nikh, the alpine castles of Yngolia, the beautiful vils of the Heartnds.

  Today, or tonight, as I should put it, I was in the middle of the mountain vistas in the western end of the Southern Realms. I flew along the mountain passes as light as a feather, joining the birds on their migratory patterns westward. The chill morning breeze pulled against my hair, and the sunshine lit the path across the jagged peaks, engulfing the vibrant green farmnd in radiant, warm sunlight. The birds aroundme chirped in unison, waking the cows and pigs from their morning slumber.

  Three hundred more miles, I thought. Then I will be at the mythical gates of Nikh. What wonders will I find in that pce?

  I could feel the heavy patter of rain on my face. I was not a bird, at least not anymore.

  "Aaaaahhh..." The pain of hunger was the second thing I felt, and what I wished to avoid. If only I could have stayed in that dream a while longer. At night, I often ate at vish banquets, dressed in exquisite silver gowns, serving fine-cut steaks dotted with thick, creamy sauce. I almost felt like my body, even in this world, could digest those rich dinners, even as my body grew weaker and thinner as the days dragged on.

  "Liz!... Liz!"

  I could hear the faint voice of someone calling my name. My limbs struggled break free from the mounds of wet, soggy mud that covered my bony arms and legs. I could feel the dirty, smoggy air in my lungs alongside the putrid city stench and struggled to not throw up on the spot.

  Just let me sleep again, I thought. Let me close my eyes and return to that other world for a couple more hours. Days. Maybe Years.

  In fact, just let me stay in that world forever. Let my body in this world starve and rot, for all I care.

  "Liz, you have to wake up!"

  I struggled to open my eyes, trying to blink away the rain and dirt that had formed on my face. A gaunt face of a young boy moved into my view, his scuffled and unkempt blond hair dripping with rainwater and grime. I stared into his bright amber eyes, which had contorted into a worried expression. I saw a bony and frail hand, covered in mud and dirt slowly reach closer to my face.

  I frowned. "Don't you dare let that dirty hand of yours touch me, " I hissed.

  The young boy smiled. "Y'know, I was worried for a sec. But judging by your response, you seem to be all right." He lifted my back with his hand gently, propping me upright. My vision went bck, and then blurry and dizzy.

  "Liz, try not to throw up. You're going to need all the food you can get inside you."

  I wonder if my expression looked a bit too sickly and gave away my nausea. I knew that it would be a bad thing for me to throw up what little food I had in my body, but all I could do was try to focus and suppress my gag reflex.

  Once I could see clearly again, I focused my eyes on the boy who was sitting next to my bed, or rather, my little sleeping cot, if you even call it that. He was short and frail, even amongst the orphans in town, with pale skin and messy, long hair. I had met him a couple weeks ago, and he introduced himself to me as Ilya. He told me that he had escaped from one of the numerous vilges in the Nevers countryside which had been raided in the war.

  "Do you feel like you can walk, Liz? I can see if I can grab some leftovers for you if you feel too sick." Ilya winked at me.

  I nodded. "Yeah, I can. Don't make me feel even more useless than I already am."

  He ughed. "You have such a way with words, Miss Eliza. You always say the nicest things in the worst way possible."

  I couldn't help but faintly smile as well. I suppose that was truly one of my gifts, other than being able to dream like nobody else could. To be honest, I had no idea why Ilya had decided to stick with me at all. I had, in all honesty, been nothing but icy and standoff-ish towards him the first day we met. And yet he had stayed by my side, even as I started to become weaker and weaker from ck of food.

  "Come with me, whenever you feel ready." Ilya's voice sounded patient, but I knew I needed to get up fast. We were going to go down to the docks, where the workers threw the trash away into the bay every morning. When it was just me and a couple of other homeless orphans who were in the city, we usually could get whatever we needed- leftover pastries and unsold produce, even some cool trinkets like disposed magic pouches with some spare runa dust inside of them, which could fetch a pretty decent price on the bck market.

  I stumbled to my feet as fast as I could with the help of Ilya's outstretched hand, fighting the urge to not colpse on the ground.

  However, as the war intensified and the city became threatened by the invading monarch forces, trade dried up and so many of the merchants and well-to-do families packed their bags and left. In their pce came many poor refugees from the countryside, like Ilya, who were also hoping to find any way to survive through the war. Less supply and more demand, in essence. For the st couple of weeks, there was precious little of anything left, barely anything edible, and almost nothing that could be sold.

  We walked slowly out of the narrow alleyway we were staying in, his arm pressed against my waist to steady my body as I trudged and stumbled alongside. I must look like death, I thought, at least in my current state. Not that it was unusual, for alongside the mud-soaked street as far as my eyes could see, there were thousands of boys and girls, some as young as ten or eleven, others older like Ilya and myself, many with faces that looked like they were one step away from death. If Ilya weren't here, I would be like them as well, I thought to myself.

  After walking for several blocks, the salty smell of the sea began to flow through my nostrils. My mind drifted to the delicious whole fish and buttered shrimp I had for dinner in the other world one night, and I nearly stumbled to the ground before Ilya caught me halfway down.

  "Are you okay, Liz?" Ilya sounded a bit worried.

  "Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Just lost my bance, is all." I coldly brushed it off and continued to stumble along.

  As we finally reached the docks and the usual dumping pce, my heart dropped. The entire pce was picked clean, to the st dust of food. Even the unsavory bits like the animal feed and nibbled leftovers had been completely wiped away.

  Shit, I thought. Was it because I was too slow to wake up? Shit, I did this to Ilya. It's all my fault that I slowed him down. What am I going to do?

  I turned to him quickly, seeing his crestfallen face. "Sorry," I mumbled, before I quickly turned away and started running as fast as my feet could carry me and as fast as my weak body could handle. The ground became a haze of brown and the sky and fallen, decrepit buildings lining the street surged from side to side, up and down, as I struggled to push one leg forward, then the next.

  "Eliza, Eliza, please wait!" I could hear footsteps in the background. "Please, stop running!"

  My feet stumbled across a small rock, and I saw the ground tumbling towards me. My outstretched arms somehow caught a stone outcropping from one of the small buildings and I found my body barely supported upright, leaned over against the outcrop. The world was spinning and spinning around me: the sun, the ground, back to the sun.

  I felt the warm touch of two hands around my hips, pulling me gently back from the outcropping.

  "Liz... are you all right?" A voice whispered. A hand gently ran down my face, wiping away tears from my face. Did I really have tears running down my face?, I thought. I could barely respond before the world around me slowly grew darker and darker.

  "Liz...? Liz!...."

  The st thing I saw was Ilya's concerned face again, his amber eyes opened wide and his mouth open, shouting something that I couldn't hear. Then everything went bck. Pitch bck.