She sat up with eyes closed and shook her head, as if the motion would shake off her dread. She didn't necessarily like noise, but this is why she absolutely detested silence. She sat and thought about what she could do to fill the void her thoughts were so eager to fill.
Her eyes drifted over to the old desk in the room's corner. She sighed and used every ounce of willpower she had to pull herself from the bed. She sauntered over to run down the desk and popped open the lid. There in the center, swimming in a sea of old parchment, was her leather-bound journal.
She considered sitting in the old metal-and-wood chair at the desk, but felt her bed beckon to her like a watering hole to a thirsty mare.
So she grabbed the dusty journal and weakly walked back to the relatively soft embrace of her bed. She undid the journal's binding clasp, took the pencil out of his holder, and flipped to an empty page.
She stared at the blank parchment for a beat, felt it staring right back at her. She took a sharp inhale, like what she was doing took an immense amount of effort. She supposed she hadn't kept up with her writing like she should've.
She placed her chin atop her hand as she gazed down at the book, the uncertainty of what to do weighing on her.
She figured maybe if she saw what she'd written last, it would give her some idea of what to do. She began flipping to the left, past countless pages of white, till she came across her last written words.
The words looked like they were written frantically, like she'd been rushing to get it down onto the page.
'Never trust a pixie!!!' was written in big letters across the page over and over again. She squinted at the hastily written words, and tried to remember when in the world she'd written this.
She rubbed at her face as she scanned her memory for whatever event had caused this. She'd almost given up when the realization hit her like a freight train. How could she be so gods-damned forgetful over this? Maybe she wanted to forget it?
A few years ago, before she'd even run into Heath, she'd made quite the name for herself in the stage coaching scene. She was given this tip on a supposedly 'easy job' by a couple of pixies. Most pixies on this side of the ley-lines dealt in one thing, information.
Being small and hard to catch could give one a multitude of opportunities for eavesdropping on folks, she thought. These pixies, the Belar brothers, were a couple of cheats, though. They gave her that tip for every penny she had, but had failed to mention they gave the same info to every marshal, crook, and merc in a 30-mile radius.
By the time she'd arrived to scope out the place for the job, it had already turned into a bloody warzone. The cargo that was supposed to ride through had to take an entirely different route because of it.
And that's why she'd never trust one of those winged pests for the rest of her days.
She flipped past that awful reminder to even earlier pages. She trailed her eyes over old shopping lists, old heist plans, and a few poems.
Without realizing, she'd made it to the front of the book. She flipped with feverish delight, reliving some of her old memories. Till she made it to the very first page and saw whose elegant handwriting lay on the first page. She couldn't go back to that; she couldn't read those fucking words.
She quickly shut the book and threw it to the side of her bed like it was some empty bottle. Looking out the window closest to her bed, she could barely see the head of her new scaly companion.
'Guess the poor bastard needs a name, don't he?' She mulled over what to call the snake, if she should call it anything at all.
When people name things, they get attached to things. When they get attached to things, they've just got more to lose. She also didn't want any damn animal-caller perks replacing what she already had in her slots.
She flipped her wrist around and sent a jolt of energy into her brand. In an instant, her small menu appeared before her eyes.
[Cassidy Valthane]
[Race: Hybrid]
[Path: Spell-Shot]
[Total Bounty: 300,550 Points]
[Perks: Crack-Shot // Hunger-Strike // Revengeance]
Her eyes immediately went to her perks, just to make sure nothing had changed. A sigh of relief left her lips, and she closed up the menu.
The amount of perks a person could have was predetermined at birth. Most humans would count themselves lucky if they even had one, though humans with more did happen. Nobody knew what the requirement for each perk was till they unlocked it. Even those who did know usually wouldn't tell unless money or torture were involved.
It had taken her some years to unlock hers, just galivanting around. She'd never even told Heath how many she had or what she did to get them. Heath was probably too polite to ask, she figured.
A person's perks, however many they had, served as their last line of defense. The difference between the strong and the dead.
She looked out her window, towards the locked iron gate. Vestiges of moonlight began peeking through the bars, and as the moon grew higher, she only felt more alone.
Noting what time it was, she figured it'd probably be best to get some sleep. Heath could be a dunce sometimes, but even he knew better than to travel at night.
So she lay there, and stared up at the creaky wooden ceiling till her eyes grew heavy. She tried to drift off to sleep before her fears could catch her and keep her in that lonely room of hers.
The last of her conscious thoughts was a mixture of dread and misery.
As she fully surrendered herself to sleep's dark embrace, she felt everything slowly fall away. Waves of unconsciousness slowly pulled her under, as she sank deeper and deeper.
The pain and exhaustion of the day, gone.
The fear and dread ceased to be.
The eerie creak of her bedroom walls, silenced.
Cassidy...
She felt like she floated in an unending void. The darkness of unconsciousness comforted her like an old friend. Something far away called to her, something deep in that darkness.
Cassidy...
As she followed it, the calling grew louder, and louder as she grew closer to it. The small, high-pitched sound slowly turned into a voice, a voice she hadn't heard in a long, long time.
Cassidy...
Her calm stride became a raging sprint, but as she strode forward, she felt nothing. Not on her feet, not through her hair, not on her face. As she ran through that endless void towards the voice, the dark emptiness around her began to take shape.
She froze in place as shock and terror crawled up her skin. She knew what this place was.
She was home.
Not the home she and Heath shared, not the many motels and inns she'd crashed in before that, no, this was her old home. The one home she'd ever truly loved.
She stood on the cobblestone walkway of her childhood home. The gray painted walls, the old wooden fence, the old weeping willow tree in the front yard.
A gruff voice called from behind her.
Cassidy! Come give your old man a hand with this, eh?
Her eyes began welling with tears as a sharp pain caught in her throat. She knew who she'd see if she turned around, what it would do to her, but she couldn't stop herself.
She turned to see her father leaning on a large crate of food and supplies they'd need for the winter. He tried his best not to look tired in his old age, but she always saw through it.
Tears streamed down her face as he looked at her and tried to give his best tough guy smile. He beckoned her over with his hand, too out of breath for words.
Instantly, she bolted to him and grabbed the other side of the crate. She didn't know what she was doing, but she couldn't control her own movements. It was like she was a passenger in her own body.
The wood of the crate, the stone under his feet, the beat of the sun. She couldn't feel any of it.
She couldn't even speak.