My heart beat hard against my chest as I panted to take in breaths. A heavy arm laid across my stomach. I urged myself to calm down, examine the dark around me without moving my head, trying to remember where I was.
A faint light filtered in from a window and the smell of dust hung in the air. Above me, I slowly began to make out shapes in the patchy material above us. The room wasn't familiar but I knew where I was. It would be some time before I was used to this room enough to not wake up and feel like I was backwards.
My breathing was still coming fast, raising Grysn's arm enough to worry I might wake him. It was late. Or early, I suppose. If he weren't right there, I'd get up and move around for a few hours, hoping for the sun to raise before falling back asleep.
Forced to remain in bed, whether due to my anxiety of facing him or respect for his sleep, I closed my eyes hard enough to hurt until I was asleep again.
When daylight finally woke me, Grysn was already out of bed.
He made us breakfast and gave me two pills that Lynatin had given him. Vitamins, he said. Apparently, my health wasn't up to their standards. I took it without complaint or grumble as Grysn watched. I was careful to avoid direct eye contact with him this morning. I would forget the dream enough after a few hours, I knew. Days maybe, if I was unlucky. Until then, it was just too hard.
If he noticed the avoidance, at least he didn't mention it as we sat and went over several points from last night. He pulled out a dress he'd also gotten from Lyn for me to wear and cleaned up the kitchen as I changed.
I hated being made to wear gowns, even if they were somewhat more comfortable. This one was thankfully less difficult to keep in place than the last one. The heavy beige fabric falling over me didn't hug my body as much as it blanketed it. There was a belt he left on the bed that I wrapped around my waist, and that was the only defining feature of the outfit. I had expected him to make me wear something more extravagant for such an event, but I was glad to be wrong.
I sat on his couch until he finished with his menial chores. There were boxes and an assortment of items scattered around the living quarters that I hadn't noticed yesterday which held my attention. I assumed they had something to do with his chores from last night, but I didn't ask.
I didn't ask anything, in fact. I was always quieter after dreams. That was a good thing today, and I held onto my silence in preparation for what was to come.
Once he was done, Grysn put on his shoes and his coat, and with a great, motivational sigh set us on our way.
The streets were even more crowded today than they had been the previous. I kept my head down and body close to Grysn as we had discussed in detail. He had painted an eerily vivid picture of how well I'd sell if the right people saw the opportunity to grab me.
It was all for the best. The paranoia took some time to wear off, and I'm sure constantly seeing the wary and fascinated glances coming off every gray- drygson, I mean, was enough to flame the bushels of suspicion within me without any assistance on a good day.
"Normally I would hail a cab to get downtown," Grysn said as we walked past someone getting into a sporty little carriage drawn by a single horse, "but I want you to get acquainted with being around other people."
By which he meant other grayskins. Stars above, I did it again. I sighed, frustrated at how difficult it was to stop using that name for them.
Hopefully, he was right and I wouldn't need to speak at all today.
After a little more than an hour of crossing streets and turning corners in a mostly linear fashion, we stopped in front of a large church. Gray pillars rose high above us to hold up the immense ceiling, covered in cylindrical carvings reminiscent of spider webs. Higher still, a tower rose to weaponize its giant clockface upon the city it overlooked.
I shrunk slightly as Grysn led me up the stairs and through the building.
My throat felt tight and breathing was getting difficult as he spoke with guards and workers for instructions and directions for the hearing. I kept my head down, slowing my pace until I was slightly behind Grysn so I could focus on his feet and nothing else.
I wasn't dreaming, I knew that. But it still felt like a dream. That comfortably sick heaviness upon reality bore down on me until I knew too much movement would make me wretch.
Why was I doing this? How in Shila's graces did I think this would be okay?
My hands trembled at my side. I was deliberately directed to not glare today. It would be an impossible task. I would look up at the first spoken word and immediately wish death upon the first person I see with a look so violent, so terrible that they would call for my head to be chopped off at once and I wouldn't even have meant it. I'm a natural glarer, and I'm in a position that calls on that power constantly, there was no stopping it.
Driven to death by my own eyeballs. Or perhaps the blame would fall upon my brows, eyebrows being the most crucial part of-
A tug brought me to the side of the corridor we were traveling, halting my thoughts. Grysn held both my arms tightly as he bent down close.
I was shaking to the point my head hurt, and my frantic breaths came quick and shallow through my half-open mouth.
"Take a breath," he instructed in a low voice.
I flinched away from his gaze, my eyes closing on the last scene my dream had burned into me. "I don't need your help," I hissed through clenched teeth, trying to ground myself into the sparkling, black tiling.
His grip tightened on my arms as he shook me, his expression becoming more serious. "Don't do this now. You can fight me all you want after this, but not now. You're panicking and you need to calm down. Come on." And with that, he exaggerated a large inhale and equally exuberant exhale, then repeated the process until I was breathing with him.
Once my breathing was coming in at an even, steady rate, he let me go and stood back up. "Remember what we went over. And put faith in me, however much you may bear. Everything will be fine."
He waited a few seconds until I nodded and began moving in the direction we'd started in. Keeping his pace slow to ensure I stayed with him, Grysn paved our way through the building. We traveled through halls filled with windows and scatterings of people congregating periodically near open doorways until we reached an area where a small man- for their standards, at least- behind a desk directed us to take seats in an open area facing a closed door.
We waited, listening to the murmurings on the other side of the wall. Broken rays of colored light illuminated the otherwise dim and colorless area.
I put my hands between my knees, glancing around the room without raising my head. The noises came and went, sometimes escalating to the point I could almost make them out. They sounded angry.
Deciding to move my focus to less stressful things, I admired the high vaulting ceilings above us that met at a ridge in the center. There were no alters or worshippers of any kind I'd seen, so far. None of the fancy dressed gr- drygsons were acting as priests or leaders. For such an extravagant building, I couldn't believe it would be anything other than a church. No one here was acting like they were in a church, though.
Would it make more or less sense for them to be a religious people? The lessons made it seem like they were incapable of proper government systems, much less organized religion.
Maybe unorganized religion?
I can't say what that would mean. Besides, I'd already heard them talk about churches. I knew they had more than one, more than one god also. I wonder if their's are in any way similar to ours. I wonder if they stole those from us, too.
Can you steal gods?
I jumped as the door opened, and swaths of people began ushering loudly out. They gossiped and chattered about whatever event they had just attended and its outcome. And while I didn't look up, and Grysn made no movement also, their conversations quickly quieted to whispers as they neared us. They slowed as they passed, hushed in their awe.
I gripped my hands tightly together and closed my eyes, waiting for them all to leave. I knew myself enough to not risk a single glance. One accidental glare and off with your head.
A hand patted my thigh. I knew it was Grysn even before I opened my eyes. He was trying to comfort me again, and I was still straining against it.
I trusted him enough to come all the way here into the mouth of the beast. I didn't need to trust him more than I already did. And he could keep his miserable reassurances and pep talks to himself.
I was here to survive. Not to be babied by some miserable grayskin.
Drygson.
I sighed.
Grysn rose from his seat next to me, and I did the same. He kept a hand on my back as we entered the now cleared-out room. Down the center aisle, surrounded by heavy wooden benches, we walked until we were positioned near the front where two seats awaited us, facing the stands at the other side of the small clearing.
We sat and waited some more. A few people could be heard behind us, filtering in and filling the seats. Nowhere near as many as the last event, thankfully, but I was still quite surprised that anyone would be here other than who ever were to decide my fate.
In front of us, in the stands, sat seven... drygsons. Yes, good. They sat above the room, looking down across it. If I was correct, four of them were women, and I wasn't sure how to feel about that. Women rarely if ever held positions of significance for us. I'd always hated that. When I was too young to know my place, I'd often tell people I'd eventually be a leader of the town. The position I would claim changed often, but I was always certain I'd fill one of the important roles, until I figured out how life works.
It stung to see their women had that option, that... that freedom. They were capable of forging their own fate.
And now they would decide mine.
By the time we started, the noise in the room had increased significantly to the point I was desperately forcing myself to not turn around and examine what all the commotion was.
The center of the seven in front of us stood, signaling someone to the side to call out an order of silence. Hair that fell past the curve of her waist settled against the purple robe she wore as she clasped her hands gently in front of her. The effect was all but immediate as the one who stood began. "Grysn Mulsk, please come forward," she stated. Her voice carried across the vast audience and held its weight all the way to the back walls.
I didn't realize I was meant to join him until he pulled me up and toward the center of the open space. It felt like the room was moving around me, putting me into position, and if I wasn't staring at my moving feet I might believe Grysn was carrying me.
