Church bells sounded somewhere in the distance as the crows joined in, creating a symphony I didn't hear before, calming me instead of making me feel scared. I could feel his eyes on me even before I turned, but now that I was facing him, that I was seeing those emerald green eyes, I wanted to go to him.
No, Ineededto go to him more than I needed to take my next breath and it scared me more than standing on the cliff, ready to plummet to my death. I knew it was coming. I knew that the pain was inevitable, and yet I didn't mind being here.
I didn't mind the familiarity or the uncurling of the claws around my heart as our eyes connected, as the pain I so oftensaw in his entered through my body, mixing with my own. But it wasn't the pain of losing my family that made the fear erupt through my veins. It wasn't the fear of me dying that had me taking a step toward him and away from the cliffs.
It was the unexplainable fear of never seeing him. It was the yearning slamming into me, even though it had no place to be here now. I didn't know this man.
I had no idea if he was a figment of my imagination or if he was a representation of something else I was suppressing, but I wanted him closer. God, I needed him closer.
"Who are you?" I asked, my voice barely louder than the wind slamming into me.
The shadows wrapped around him, dancing together with the wind as I took another step toward him and another, begging fate to let me see him. Just once. Just this once I wanted to see who this stranger was. I wanted to know why I kept dreaming about him when I was certain I had never seen him before. At least I was certain I had never seen those eyes before.
I don't think I would've been able to forget. Not their color and not the pain, yearning, fear, love, so much love in them, and I had to understand why.
Why was he here? Why was I being tortured like this? Why did it look like he was in pain every single time I saw him?
And why was I seeing him and not my family?
"Tell me," I pleaded, trying to close the distance between us, but the more I walked, the farther away he appeared to be, and I stopped, seeing myself back at the cliff, looking down at the sea. "Please."
"A stranger." His gruff voice wrapped around me like a blanket, cocooning me into its warmth. "But I wasn’t always."
"That's not an answer!" I yelled out as the wind picked up, pushing against his shadows, pushing against me. "Please! I need to know your name. Tell me your name!"
The sharp pain stabbed through my middle and I didn't need to look down to see the blood covering my hands as I placed them against my stomach. It was always the same. Always, but this time the shadows wrapped around him revealed his neck, showing me a tattoo on the left side.
"I need you to remember," he said, instead of revealing his name. "Please. I need you to remember me."
"I can't," I cried, feeling the tears falling down my cheeks. "I can't remember. Please, tell me your name. Tell me!"
"Remember me. Just remember me."
My body had a mind of its own and instead of letting the wind push me down, I took a step forward and then another, fighting against the force pushing me back. The shadows around him shimmered, becoming bigger, hiding him, hiding his neck, his eyes.
"No!" I bellowed, feeling the loss of him as if part of my soul got torn apart. "Come back!" The wind slammed into me one last time, pushing me over the cliffs and into the dark abyss.
"I need you to remember." His voice followed me as the darkness took over, whispering as if he were standing right next to me. "Remember me, Kore."
I jumped up in my bed, breathing as if I had just run a marathon, my hands still pressed against my stomach.
"Holy fuck," I mumbled, wiping the sweat from my eyebrow. "Holy fucking fuck."
The duvet I had used last night was already on the ground, as if I'd been fighting with it the entire night. Given the dream I've had, I wouldn't be surprised if I reallywasfighting with it.
"This has to stop fucking happening," I groaned while my body still tried calming down from that entire ordeal. It had tofucking stop. It's been almost a year since he started visiting my dreams and I was nowhere near closer to seeing him fully. Or to, at the very least, understand why these dreams were happening.
I turned toward the window, seeing nothing but fog outside covering the ocean that should've been visible from my window. But no matter how hard I tried focusing on the swirling clouds of white, I couldn't stop thinking about the dream.
About him.
There was so much sadness. So much fucking sorrow, I felt suffocated just thinking about the feelings those emerald eyes were conveying. His mere presence, his words, they tilted my world, making me think more about him and these stupid fucking dreams than my family. And I had no space in my head or in my heart to think over something so insignificant as that dream.
I had nothing left to give and if these dreams were some fucked-up way my mind was trying to play tricks on me, then it had to stop. I wanted them to stop.
Do you really?came out of nowhere, slamming into the forefront of my mind. The wicked whisper. The slow decay as those three words caressed my skin, because my subconsciousness knew something I couldn't admit to myself.
Seeing him.
