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?
