Chapter Nine
A Dream of Storms
SITTING UPON THE HARD floor, Seften was gazing out from his cell, contemplating. What he was contemplating, neither brother knew; for past the cell’s confining bars a few paces was the wooden hull wall of the prison ship, and no, this was not absorbing his attention.
But not was his gaze upon this wall; he hardly noticed it to be there. He was seeing again, but not with his vacant, dreaming eyes.
The distant horizon sky was the dirty brown a dusk could stain it. The winds were dragging in a northerly direction, cold winds they were, and on the southern horizon, warm, calm winds were pulling in to displace them. It seemed that once again it would be a peaceful night up there in the skies…
Up, up he rose again, soaring into the sky, the lower and higher hemispheres, ascending layers of the sky, seemed like echelons of his ascension, until he was level with the far distant clouds, seeming like distant islands of gray and black, upon an ocean of air.
He concentrated to the approaching south winds, and found no storms within it. He felt to the retreating north wind, finding the energy of a storm permeating it…
What if the storm should come, and sweep away his imprisoning ship below? Wrecked at sea, they could escape and swim to safety, couldn’t they, he and his brothers? What a wondrous dream it would be for this to occur.
He reached into the southern horizon, reaching into their winds carrying away his wishful storms. “Come back to me” he found himself crying, with a voice not of his own. He felt as if the sky had frozen for one second, the black clouds of the northern storm billowed up as miles of it seemed to halt upon itself. Electrical power hummed in the air about him, and the black thunder clouds soon angrily rolled toward him, icy winds screaming at him, lightning slicing the night about him, with the warm winds to the south sped up from a drag to a roar and went from it’s calm warmth to a dangerous hot, and like an onslaught of to apposing armies, the cold storm and the hot winds clashed, tearing apart the peace that once was the waters and the night.
Seften awoke from a skidding crash into the prison wall. A deep, painful groan of the ship’s wooden body sounded as the stormy sea pushed it around. “What is happening?” yelled Paetoric, pulling himself against the prison bars to save from sliding around.
“Storm!” Rhoin replied, bracing himself as well. “And a bad one!”
They heard yells of men above and pounding waves through the ship’s hull walls, and booming thunder laughing upon the terrible fate of the seafarers. Several long hours of ship tossing in storm passed, and the sea calmed again.
Seften spoke not to either of his dream, but he could feel Rhoin’s curious eyes upon him, who might have detected something with his heightened Elvin awareness, but Seften would hint nothing.
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