Amethyst

Chapter 10: Rest

Chapter 10: Rest

  Water splattered into a bowl off to my side as a damp cloth was placed on my forehead with a gentle hand. Fluttering open, my eyes met with a set of murky green-grey speckled with lighter and darker spots as well as spots of red - Chalcedony. 

  It was the young apprentice Sage from earlier, “Shhh….” Hushing as she continued to apply the wet cloth to my forehead, “I was charged with watching you while you were away.” Away? I had no memory of leaving the Cathedral? When had I left? I wondered with a dazed confusion, where I had gone, and how long had I been away? The young Sage continued, “While it is good that you are now awake, - the Elder High Sage and the rest of the Older Sages will want to see you, in order to discuss much of what happened to you further.” Moving the cloth off my head, dipping it in a nearby bowl. The water trickled as she rinsed before returning it to my forehead once again in her blotching and genal manor.

  “Where… where was I?” I heard how my voice was hoarse even to myself. “Where am I?” Attempting to sit up by propping onto my left arm - arm, it shook as it struggled.

  Chalcedony gave a sympathetic smile to my struggling before placing her hand on my chest and gently pushing me back down onto my back. “You need to rest.” She said, seeming to be acknowledging my condition as her strange eyes perused my face. “I shall go and tell Opal that you have regained consciousness. She will be revealed and pleased to learn that you have returned to us and that you have awakened.” Standing up from my side, I watched the girl dropped the damp cloth onto the side of the etched silver bowl.

  From my peripheral vision, I watched her leave the yellow, etched, sandstone room. Her shoes tapped against the floor echoingly. Firstly, heading over to the one glow stone in the room, touching it lightly to dim its light enough to comfortably suitable for sleep and rest. Chalcedony had made her point of resting even more deliberately clear. 

  With a creak, she opened the large, rough wooden door. Briefly, my mind flashed with black skies, with amassing waves of water and with a vessel made of wood which groaned against gales of storm winds. The girl, the young Sage Chalcedony, looked back over her shoulder momentarily, her tiny and regular fingers lingering on the doorway before she darted out. The door thumped, lightly, shut behind her.

  My gaze darted around the room as I tried to make sense of any of what she had said. Despite an understanding calm that I could not yet explain, her words did not make any sense… The room was twice as tall as the one in my family’s chambers in the Opal City. Four uncarved pillars or yellow sandstone at each corner of the room. The walls between them were ornately carved with complex and sacred patterns. Patterns that spoke of the natural order and repetition were found within the laws of nature itself. The bed I lay on was soft, with layers of Goldhorn hides atop an etched, etched, yellow sandstone base. On top of the layered and stuffed leathers was a draping sheet, one of the Opal Cathedral’s opal silken-material sheets. It was soothing and comfortable and yet durable and distinguishable from other Medurian materials and significantly aided in helping to identify when Medurian’s were from other cities. Such as when different cities traded with ours, their traders always adorned the silken material of their city. The chestnut wooden door lay on the opposite side of the room, close to the right-hand side. Its archway was unetched, just as the pillars. The door itself was lined, top, bottom, and center of and rivets for reinforcement. The wear of age was apparent on the top and bottom, which was chipped and partially frayed.

  Unlike the main temple hall, the roof here was stone, also largely uncarved apart from a spherical design centered in the middle of the room. The single dimmed glow stone hung at the corner by the door to exit the room.

   Returned? I mused puzzledly to myself, When had I left? Why had I left? My head whirled with one hundred questions, needing to be answered with starving desire. It felt like there were things I did not know or things that I had forgotten. Especially with the way that the young Sage, Chardonnay, spoke to me. With empathy but her eyes glinting woefully at my condition. I hadn’t felt like the girl was hiding anything from me. On the contrary, I found it cleansing in the room, to the point that it almost held a restoring property. 

  Within the time, Calcedony had left, which must have been some long time by now. Between that time and now, I had surveyed my surroundings and wracked my brain of all possibilities of what her words may have meant and how they could possibly make any sense. All my energy had begun to reduce, first unnoticeably, and then all at once. 

 I, really, had not noticed at all until I felt the swell of the fatigued crash over me. Yielding to the young Sage’s wishes and my own exhausted yet unwarranted weariness, I closed my eyes and allowed for sleep to take hold. Snuggling into the soft quilts and silken sheets.

  All the questions I had to ask and the uncertainty of what was going on… where I had been. I had accepted that I would likely get an answer to all of these and more once I was rested. More importantly, once I had regained my strength.

  The once thing I knew for sure was that I was in the Opal Cathedral and with the Old Sages. I knew I was safe, and so it would be safe to rest a little more.