Young Writers Society

Chapter Six

I stared out the window and sighed quietly so not to interrupt Ren who was working on a project. Aryiana had gone to visit a friend for the day and I admitted to feeling uneasy without her around after the past month had flown by.

A movement in the house next door made my unease thicker and a wave of anxiety tighten in my chest. The man next door felt familiar somehow and not in a good way at all. The man invoked a strong sense of danger and the instinct to run as far away as possible always gripped my heart when I saw him.

"Jellal? Are you alright?" Ren asked me, her cold hands touching my cheek in attempt to pull my focus away as the man headed out back to the forest that lay beyond his backyard.

"Who lives in the manor across the street?" I asked, pointedly ignoring her question about my well being.

She frowns and glanced out the window. Even before seeing her eyes, I knew she did not trust the man just as I felt the desire to hide from him. "He is Lord Dracken. He lives alone since the death of his wife during childbirth. No one has seen the child and many proclaim it died along with their mother."

I winced as distant shouts rang loudly in my head, feeling as if someone had scrapped nails against a chalkboard in my mind. There was something about that man and his past that pulled at me and I couldn't help but wonder if he had something to do with my memories.

Ren pulled on my hand to lead me away from the room. Reluctantly, I allowed her to guide me to the kitchen where the smell of fresh bread wafted in the air when she bends down to open the oven. I stood to the side of the kitchen, out of the way, and watched as she sliced and buttered several slices.

"Tell me, Jellal, have you been drawing more recently?" Ren placed two slices on a plate and hands it to me with a kind smile.

I nodded absentmindedly and gazed down at the bread with a grimace when a wave of nausea struck hard. She knew I hadn't been eating, I realized as her perceptive eyes glanced at me in concern.

The dreams I have been having as late were relentless and terrifying. I had begun to sleep less and along with that my eating habits had become nearly nonexistent. I drew nearly constant nowadays and would be hard pressed to be found anywhere besides the storage room Aryiana and I had spent most of our time together as we pursued our own interests in the arts.

"I have and the images that I've been drawing I feel are memories that I don't recall." Many of my current drawings depicted of a creature only told of in tales. A being that fed off the souls of others yet every time I dreamed and drew, the image would send a chill that felt as if it was encasing my entire soul within its grasp.

Ren smiled sadly in understanding and once again glanced from my face to the plate in front of me and I caught the message quite clearly. With a resigned sigh, I took a bite and was relieved not to bring it back up right away.

"They've been causing you stress. You need to sleep more, child. An hour or two of rest is not good for a growing teenager nearing his adulthood." Ren chided as I finished the first of three slices.

"If I had a better way of relaxing and a way to keep the images from plaguing me, I might sleep better." I grumbled, a bit annoyed. It wasn't as if I were intentionally staying up all hours of the day and not eating as much as I should. The past few weeks I had became even more unnaturally thin than I was before.

Silence consumed the room around us as I stood up and left. Without noticing, my feet had taken me to the room I was provided. I didn't feel like resting so I scoured the books Aryiana had dropped off before leaving. Picking one that seemed interesting, I settled in the window seat. I opened the curtain to allow the warm sun to stream in and cracked the book open to the first page.

It wasn't long before I found myself consumed into the pages of the lost magic of time manipulation. It was a truly horrifying yet compelling history to learn how the magic had been used and then lost to time in attempt to prevent people from creating horrible catastrophes in their greedy attempts to take back what should stay the same. My eyes burn in attempt to stay awake but after a few more chapters I found myself drifting off into an restless slumber.