Prompt#241 - genuphobia- Nightmares - Tekia - original

[tekia.livejournal.com]

Title: Nightmares
Fandom: Original
Prompt: genuphobia
Warnings: part of a larger story.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Nolyn sees the future while awake, and the past while asleep.

It was a dreary day, and a dark night. Nolyn stared out the small window to the outside world allotted to him. The sky had been grey and overcast during the day and now the threat of rain hung heavy in the air.
He missed the rain, he realized.
Before he had arrived in this world, he had been fighting the war in the far East where the trees stood so numerous that the rain never had a chance to reach the ground. Now he was imprisoned away from the fresh air, but it wasn’t these metal bars and locked doors that kept him here. It was the weakness if his wounded body, the emptiness of his soul.
He missed more than just the rain.
The lights around him flicked out and a voice echoed down the hall, signaling the time for regulated sleep. Nolyn sighed and stood. He wished it would rain. He wanted to hear the thrum of water splashing against the ground and taste the wet air. He wrapped his fingers around the cool metal bar separating him from the outside and closed his eyes, giving himself a moment to just breath.
He was going to dream tonight, he knew. He could see his future self tossing and turning on the hard cot under the thin blanket. Sweat beaded his furrowed brow, and his jaw was clenched tightly in either fear or anger, he couldn’t tell.
He did know that he would get no rest tonight.
Was it the oncoming rain?
He took a bracing breath and turned to his still made, empty bed. He slipped under the grey blanket.
Before the guard made his way down his hall, Nolyn was asleep.
He dreamed of bright, vivid colors that he hadn’t seen since he had arrived in this world. A pang of homesickness washed over him as images began to take shape and he recognized the landscape forming around him with a shock that set his heart pounding. The landscape was engraved in his memory despite his desperate attempts to forget it all.
He hissed and flinched at the brown sky, yellow ocean, and orange grass. Instantly, the scene changed and Nolyn was in another, far more unwelcome prison. The room was vast and filled with silk pillows and light and breezy draperies.
He shivered and felt fear tug harshly at his chest. He trembled as he forced himself forward.
There were others in the room now. Others that Nolyn had met before, in the real place this dreamscape was formed after, many years ago. Then, as well as now, Nolyn refused to speak. It had been his only defense, then.
And it was what made his cruel master insane with frustration. It drove him to extremes in his efforts to break him.
The first thing he had done, was show him others that he had already broken. Confidant that this would shaken Nolyn’s resolve.
One woman, now laying helpless and terrified, had her every fear visited upon her until she couldn’t think straight, couldn’t even control her own body anymore. She was a pitiful sight, tearstained face and matted hair.
Nolyn longed to reach out to her and brush back her long golden hair and set her life back upon its rightful path, but she was only a reflection of the past and she was long dead. Her soul had moved on to a new path.
She faded away and he murmured a prayer to his Maiden on her behalf.
Next was a man that was bloodied and deformed. He had been tortured by the Wyld and had been broken just as completely as the woman before him.
He suffered Nolyn knew not what, and it showed. He had a new fear pressed upon him and feared it so much that he had ripped and tore at his own flesh, tearing his own legs off. Because of the Fair Folk’s horrible sense of pleasure, this man had grown to suffer from genuphobia
The poor man, Nolyn thought and he repeated his prayer to his Maiden.
He too was long dead, and his suffering had come to an end.
At least, Nolyn hopped so. One could never tell with the Wyld. Maybe the humans had died, or maybe they were still suffering under the Fair Folk’s control.
It wasn’t a fear that Nolyn was broken with, he remembered as the man faded away and animals filled the room. Strange animals that had no place in Creation and were only formed from the Fair Folk’s will. He licked his suddenly dry lips as he realized that he was no longer in the creature’s lair, but out in the open, in field of orange grass that didn’t bend with the wind, but spun on their roots. He tripped over his own feet and he felt himself falling.
He never hit the ground, but was suddenly in the strong arms of his master surround him. They held him tenderly a moment before they became too tight and oppressive. Nolyn wanted to struggle free, but he couldn’t. His body was too heavy and refused to obey his commands.
He couldn’t breath and his vision was growing light. White light filled his sight and he gasped suddenly, his eyes wide open and staring up at the dingy ceiling of his prison cell.
He blinked up at the streaks of sunlight spilling across the room. There was a breeze coming from the window and there was the scent of past rain.
He had missed it.
Nolyn sat up and rubbed at his eyes.
He still missed it.