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Post by Shinko on Nov 8, 2014 23:33:22 GMT -5
Index: It was late in the night, two days after their departure from Haflinger. Despite the rising tide of summer, the weather in the Bernian mountains was fairly balmy. Sieg had remarked earlier in the day that he never imagined he could be completely comfortable wearing long sleeves in June- though he usually wore long sleeves regardless of the temperature outside to hide his horrific scars. But not only was it pleasantly cool, once the night fell he actually found himself shivering a little until he slipped into his sleeping bag. That being so, if anyone who spoke Elvish had wandered by his and Orrin's campsite, they would have been rather surprised to hear what he was muttering in his sleep. " It's hot... fire... can't breathe, it's hot!" His shivers were entirely unrelated to chill now, and his nails dug into the fabric of his sleeping bag. " Stop, it burns, it burns! I can't move, I'm trapped, please help me! Oh Woo, it hurts, it hurts, the fire, the fire!" The half-elf quieted for a moment, lapsing into a brief lull of murmurs and whimpers almost too quiet to make out. Then, his voice rose in volume again, even more frantic now. " Papa? Papa what are you doing, no, no, stop. Please, please Papa stop, no, you can't it'll kill you, please- NO!" And its time for Knight Adventures Arc 2!
Two days out from Haflinger, Sieg's having another nightmare. This makes his fourth since meeting up with Orrin, and the third Orrin will have personally witnessed- confirming the half-dwarf's hunch that his nightmares are a frequent, recurring problem.
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Post by Omni on Nov 9, 2014 1:47:37 GMT -5
The knights had been settled in for a nice night's rest, when sometime during the wee hours, a sound stirred Orrin from his sleep. For a brief, bleary-eyed moment, he wondered what the sound was. However, it didn't take long for him to recognize it. Oh great. Here we go again.After pulling himself from his sleeping bag, the half-dwarf headed over to the saddle bags, fishing out the lemon candies. Unfortunately, he hadn't thought to get anything else to help wake Sieg up with while they were in Haflinger; hopefully he could remember the next time they were there. For the meantime, he would have to improvise. Orrin carefully took hold of his voulge. Sieg told him he usually wouldn't lash out if woken gently, but he figured it was better to be safe than sorry. He held the voulge at an angle that would obscure the blade, pointing the wooden end at the half-elf. "Sieg?" he said, trying to speak softly but still loud enough to hear. "Sieg, wake up." He gently prodded the half-elf with the handle of his voulge. Sieg awoke with a gasp, pulling away from the sensation and stiffening as his eyes fluttered open. Orrin considered that a good sign: at least he didn't have to remind his friend again that grabbing the voulge "didn't work last time." Not wanting to scare his friend further, Orrin gently set the voulge down behind himself, bending down near Sieg. "It's me, Orrin," he said, pulling a candy out of the pouch. "Can ya take a good look at what's around ya?" Sieg's sleeptalking wakes Orrin again. Orrin gently wakes Sieg and asks him to look at his surroundings, hoping he'll notice he's not in nightmare land.
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Post by Shinko on Nov 9, 2014 9:08:53 GMT -5
The gentle nudge against his back drew Sieg's mind to awareness, and as he'd indicated before he woke less panicked without the sharp prodding or frantic voice in his ears reinforcing the terror state of his dream. He was still completely out of it, his amber eyes glazed with pain and confusion, but when he heard Orrin speaking to him again the calm voice drew his attention without drawing his fear. Where... he didn't recognize... Hot tears began to roll down the half-elf's face without his permission, and a low animal whine emerged from his throat. The memory of the dream was still fresh in his mind, and the image of that kind, loving face being consumed with fire, the sound of the voice that spoke ridiculous corny lines about the power of love screaming in agony made him want to claw out his eyes and ears. But this place, this place was all wrong. It didn't smell of burning wood, armor and flesh. It smelled of pines, a slight sting of chill in his nose that was only present during the coldest winters of Corvus. He turned to face the voice that had spoken before, realizing dimly that he was lying in a sleeping bag, not pinned under a mountain of burning debris. The face before him was a familiar one, though he couldn't call the name to mind immediately he sensed somehow he could trust the person. Miles and years removed him from the event he'd only just relived, and that realization combined with the lingering dreamstate made Sieg pull himself into a ball, the sobbing he'd been holding back starting in earnest. Sieg wakes a little more gently this time around, but that means the grief of the dream displaces the fear of his last two wakeups, so he ends up going into a fetal curl and crying before he can fully ground himself in reality.
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Post by Omni on Nov 9, 2014 20:08:38 GMT -5
When Orrin saw the tears and heard a whimper, a pang of sympathy came over him. When Sieg looked at him, the pain come stronger still. Sieg hadn't mentioned this might happen. He hadn't woken with a start, but Orrin wasn't sure he liked this any better. He dropped the bag of candy as the half-elf curled in on himself, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Hey," he called. He wanted to continue with something else, but he wasn't sure what. Asking if Sieg was okay would be pointless because he knew he wasn't. He also wasn't sure if he wanted to ask what was up just yet, or tell him things were okay if he didn't know what the matter was. Still, though his hesitation, Orrin hoped he could give some reassurance. After awhile, he settled with "Hey. I'm here, Sieg," and gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. Guh! Feels! D=
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Post by Shinko on Nov 9, 2014 20:56:09 GMT -5
Sieg felt a hand squeeze his shoulder, and a rough but gentle voice talking to him. He covered his face with his hands, trying to stem the flow of tears. Papa was dead, but he'd been dead for a long time. He hadn't just died, even if Sieg had just watched it. That had all been years ago, and now he was... he was... Uncurling slightly, and sitting up, he tried to get a grasp of his surroundings. A forest... in the mountains? But there were no mountains in Corvus, you had to go north to Rindfell or... or Bern. The memories flooded back in then, and the half-elf's shoulders slumped. "Augh, 'Pit curse it, did I wake you up again? Orrin I..." His voice caught in his throat and he wiped a hand roughly across his face. "I'm s-sorry you have to keep seeing this. It hits me p-pretty hard, sometimes." The half-elf couldn't stop that tremoring in his voice, and he hated it. Swallowing hard to bite back the lump in his throat, he forced himself to smile. "Th-thanks for waking me up, and for helping me remember. I'm really sorry this keeps happening." Sieg remembers where he is, and tries to fakesmile for Orrin again to reassure his friend that despite having been sobbing only a few minutes before, he is perfectly fine now.
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Post by Omni on Nov 9, 2014 23:21:40 GMT -5
There it was again. That smile. It felt slightly different this time - less creepy, more somber - but just as before, it was very dissonant and quite jarring. "Please don't smile at me like that, Sieg," the half-dwarf said, unable to hide a slight wince. "I can tell it's fake. Heck, it's part of what's got me worried." He looked at Sieg, his expression concerned. "The other thing that's got me worried is the 'keeps happenin' part. I know it's not uncommon for knights to have nightmares, but I'm pretty sure this isn't normal. Please Sieg, what's goin' on? I want to help ya. Or if we're stuck with it... I should at least know what we're dealin' with." Orrin doesn't like Sieg's fakesmile and asks him to stop. He then asks Sieg to tell him what the matter is.
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Post by Shinko on Nov 9, 2014 23:37:11 GMT -5
The smile vanished instantly, replaced by an expression of hurt. "I... O-Orrin..." There was nothing for it really- the smile was fake, and Sieg knew that. He wasn't supposed to be pretending he was happy anymore anyway, he'd only been doing it because he didn't want to worry his friend. Instead he'd apparently just made it worse. "It hurts," he admitted softly. "I don't like talking about it. It's like having to live it all over again, as if the nightmares weren't bad enough." He couldn't look his friend in he eye. His shoulders were hunched, and his amber eyes dull and glassy. "Do you remember the day we first met? You took me to Stallion manor, and his grace saw me there. He recognized me, because I resemble my parents so strongly- he met my mother in Medieville, and my father during the Langean War. So he started asking me questions, and since he said he knew my father I felt like... like he had a right to know the truth, regardless of how it hurt me to tell the story. But I think you knew I didn't want to discuss it, because you tried to give me an excuse to leave." The half-elf pulled his knees up, leaning his forehead against them. "The answer to the question he asked me that day is the same as the one you're asking now. The nightmares are... they're..." His voice caught, and he clenched his hands into his hair. "I dream of the b-battle where my f-father died. I was th-there, Orrin, I saw the whole thing. I... I..." Sieg gives Orrin a very abbreviated explanation, really not wanting to talk about the episode in detail yet again.
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Post by Omni on Nov 10, 2014 16:18:04 GMT -5
As Sieg began to speak, mentioning the time he first met the Grand Duke, Orrin's face began to fall. He felt creeping up on him a combination of empathy, guilt, and that feeling that he'd been stupid. He really should have known that it was something very, very bad - he had every indication that it was. Then again, in a sense, he had known. He knew Sieg was plagued with terrible nightmares. He knew that the nightmares were troubling them both. He knew that he wanted to help, but not knowing what the problem was only seemed to complicate things. Still, now it was obvious that the full answer wouldn't be easy, and neither would it be to help his friend. "Aw, yeesh. Somethin' like that... No wonder it bothers ya." He still wasn't sure it was normal to be bothered by nightmares that often, but at the same time, it started to make more sense. He reached out and gently grasped his friend's shoulder. "Tell ya what, if ya don't want to talk about it, ya don't have to. But if ya need someone to talk to, ya've got me." The half-dwarf paused. This was no small problem for Sieg, and after what happened at the clearing, it was a little late for embarrassment. "Ya know what, com'ere." He reached out with all four arms and pulled his friend into a hug. He held him close and gave him a light squeeze. And of course, just then he remembered. "Ah..." he held out a lower hand to show Sieg what he held in it. "I've also got one of yer candies." Orrin feels bad, tells Sieg he doesn't have to keep talking about his nightmare if he isn't ready, and pulls him into a four-armed hug. He then remembers that he's still holding one of Sieg's lemon candies and offers it.
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Post by Shinko on Nov 10, 2014 17:06:53 GMT -5
When Orrin pulled Sieg into a hug, it was everything the half-elf could do not to break down again. His eyes blurred, and he trembled with the strength of the emotions he was struggling to suppress. It wasn't just the grief, though that was as always a yawning void in his chest. The guilt and self-loathing was there too, like a shackle around his neck that was throttling his voice down. He wanted more than anything to tell Orrin the whole story, but to go there again, to once again confront the fact that Belial had died saving his stupid son... He bit his lip so hard he could taste blood on his teeth, but he was able to swallow the tears this time. He couldn't quiet the trembling his body was doing, nor could he seem to summon the desire to sit up and support his own weight, but at least he wasn't about to dissolve into hysterics. "Thank you," he said hoarsely. "I-I'm sorry, I don't think I... not right now. After the dream it's too close, it hurts too much. But thank you for caring. It's awful, having to see it over and over and over again... thirteen years I've been living with these nightmares, at least twice a week. Nothing I've tried stops them, all I can do is endure it." When Orrin offered the candy, Sieg chuckled softly and accepted it. The expression was a humorless one, but the gratitude in his smile was sincere at least. "Thanks. The knights at home have this little cloth ball full of little seeds that's been soaked in peppermint oil that they give me to squeeze. It helps, having something that feels weird in my hand and smells strongly." He put the candy under his tongue, and sighed. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry you have to deal with this." Sieg is sad some more. =C
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Post by Omni on Nov 11, 2014 11:20:14 GMT -5
Orrin could feel Sieg quaking within his grasp, literally still shaken from his nightmare. Instinctively, he held the half-elf closer still, as if to still his body and still his fears. He listened as his fellow knight expressed difficulty talking about the dreams so soon after experiencing them. "Not right now is fine. Maybe sometime when it won't cost us both sleep," the half-dwarf said, trying to stifle a yawn. "And maybe we'll find somethin' that cold help. We'll just have to keep our eyes out." The half-elf accepted the candy, speaking of a little toy ball the elf knights used to help him with the nightmares. "It helps, having something that feels weird in my hand and smells strongly.""Well, unfortunately I don't think I have anythin' that fits that description, unless ya count me." The half-dwarf couldn't help but chuckle softly at his own joke. He really needed to get back to sleep. "I'll see what I can come up with, though." Sieg popped the candy into his mouth and let out a sigh. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry you have to deal with this." Orrin shook his head. "It's alright," he said. "Like ya said, ya can't help it. It's not yer fault." The Stallion knight paused, remembering something that Sieg had told him earlier. "I'm gonna try somethin'. Let me know if it bothers ya." He lifted a hand behind his friend, closer to the half-elf's neck. He set his thumb on one side and gently ran it across the back of his neck, stroking across the spine. He repeated this, hoping Sieg would fine the touch soothing. Orrin tries to be comforting, even poking some fun at himself. He remembers what Sieg said about being sensitive near the spine and strokes his thumb across the back of Sieg's neck.
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Post by Shinko on Nov 11, 2014 13:20:10 GMT -5
Sieg was a little confused when Orrin talked about "trying something," and even more confused when the half-dwarf put a hand on his neck. But when the Stallion knight's finger traced along Sieg's spine, his entire body shuddered, and he gasped. "Oh Woo, I forgot what that feels like," he muttered, his knotted muscles going almost instantly limp and his eyelids drooping a little. He laughed softly. "That's not fair, you suck." In spite of the admonishing words, the joking tone in his voice and the evidence of his demeanor made it plain that he was enjoying the sensation. His back rippled with little tremors as Orrin's hand brushed the tender skin, and the fear and grief in his face relaxed into a somewhat bemused smile. "I hadn't thought you'd realize the further implications of the warning I gave you about my back, but apparently I underestimated you," he muttered sleepily. Good job Orrin, if Sieg were a cat he'd be purring. As it is though he's probably going to pass out on you if you don't stop, that spine-stroking triggers a pretty strong relaxation reflex. XD
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Post by Omni on Nov 11, 2014 17:16:03 GMT -5
Orrin had thought that gently touching Sieg's spine might feel good and help him relax, but he hadn't expected such a strong reaction. What really surprised him was how the half-elf shuddered and gasped, let alone how he fell limp in Orrin's arms. Apparently, the sensation was pretty intense. A little too intense for Orrin's liking. He pulled back his hand. "That good huh?" he said, giving a nervous grin as he tensed, the discomfort also present in his voice. "If yer feelin' better now, how about we get to bed? Er... Go to sleep?" Orrin's a little uncomfortable with just how much Sieg enjoyed the back stroking. =D;
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Post by Shinko on Nov 11, 2014 17:32:31 GMT -5
Sieg peeled his eye back open as Orrin pulled away. He hadn't missed the nervous discomfort in the half-dwarf, and an impish grin quirked at the corners of his mouth. "That is one among many reasons I don't usually tell people about my back. Next time you get a wild hair to test the physiology of a species you aren't familiar with, ask first hm?" He sat up, wincing and rubbing his face. "But thank you, regardless. Yes, please go back to sleep. I'll be fine, and we've a long way yet to get to Lake Moran." Short response is short; Sieg is amused and tells Orrin it's his own fault for experimenting with stuff he didn't understand. Then he agrees to try and go back to sleep.
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Post by Omni on Nov 11, 2014 18:50:31 GMT -5
As Sieg started to pull away, so did Orrin. "Yes, I'll remember. To ask." He stood up, almost forgetting to grab his voulge. "Sorry. Sieg. Haveagoodnight. Sweet dreams." He walked back over to the cart and put his voulge away, then pulled out the map to try and see if there were any rivers nearby. ----- When they knights woke up, they were greeted by a silvery-gray, overcast sky. This was somewhat worrisome, as heavy rain could affect their travel. Then again, part of Orrin was hoping it would rain, as it turned out there were, in fact, no nearby rivers listed on the map. "Again, I'm reeeaallly sorry about last night," he said, in a double-pleading gesture. "I'll try not to do it again, promise!" Orrin really wishes he'd asked before he tried the back thing.
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Post by Shinko on Nov 11, 2014 19:09:05 GMT -5
Sieg, who'd managed to doze off and on for the rest of the night and was decently rested, was a bit confused at first as to what Orrin was even talking about. Then memory hit him and he laughed, going a bit pink. "Orrin, for the record, it is really not a big deal. Admittedly, among the elves it's considered rather rude to touch someone else's back without their permission, but how were you supposed to know?" He waved a hand dismissively. "Apart from the nerves on my back being touch-sensitive, rubbing them triggers a sort of semi-involuntary relaxation impulse. Like massaging a cramped limb, only it hits all the muscles at once. My mother used to do it when I was little, to help me sleep when I was restless- or just being a brat, as children often do around bedtime." Admittedly, that wasn't the only purpose it served. Sieg knew for a fact it was something his mother had also done for Belial, but the less said about that the better. It would only make Orrin more uncomfortable. "But tell you what," he said suddenly. "How about we get some sparring in? Should make you feel better to whack me a few times." Sieg explains a bit more about why touching his back made him react the way he did, then suggests dispelling the "that was really weird" vibes by doing some MANLY SWORDFIGHTING.
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