A Tale Wrought In Silver and Blood

Chapter Two

Waking up was an uncomplicated process for her. She’d never been like those Lycans and humans who would wake up in an instant, bright and alert to the slightest stimulus despite her predatory nature. At the same time, she was also something of a morning person too. She loved to savor the liminal period between wakefulness and sleep. She would linger on the edges for a few seconds, trying to hold on to fleeting images, trying to ignore the intrusion of the real world in her blissful state.

This time, however, her eyes flew open immediately and she was catapulted to full awareness by the adrenaline that rushed through her veins and the staccato pounding of her heart. It was always like this with nightmares in contrast to dreams.

She stared.

“Fuck.” She whispered into the cavernous expanse of her room. The expletive echoed in the silence, a silence that weighed on her shoulders like a heavy and oppressive shroud. Or maybe that was just her perspective. She sighed.

She felt a bit out of sorts, but she didn’t take more than a minute to sort herself out. Satrina had never been the type to dally or dwell overmuch on an unnecessary issue, and agonizing over her nightmares was decidedly unnecessary and counterproductive. She would find sometime later to brood over it anyways, as she had a habit of doing ever since this particular recurring nightmare started over a year ago.

Satrina stood up from her bed, her covers sliding off from her body and exposing her lavender silk night shift and lacy underthings. Her pale bare feet patterned on the ground as she walked towards her personal bathroom, and she shivered involuntarily at the cold of the marble floor. She should’ve worn her inner slippers, but it was already too late at this point, and she would much rather go on to freshen up than turn back just to make her feet feel more comfortable. She felt the sweat accumulated from the stress of her dreams drying on her skin, and the sticky feeling made her a bit uncomfortable.

On her way into the bathroom, she pressed a small golden buzzer placed at the side of the door. She couldn’t hear the buzz, but it wasn’t meant for her anyways. It was to summon the servants, to let them know that she had woken up earlier than expected and that she wanted to freshen up with immediate alacrity.

Seconds later, she was standing in front of a platinum framed mirror, brushing her teeth with an uncharacteristic deliberation, the bristles slowly moving over and over her gums. She was staring idly at a sharpened fang, but her mind was somewhere else. She was still thinking about the dream. Sometimes, her eidetic memory was more of a curse than a blessing. She remembered all the iterations of this nightmare that she had ever experienced. All of them. She remembered the terror, the defiance, the riotous deluge of emotions. She remembered the pain most of all. And yet, she was still no closer to figuring out what the dream was trying to communicate, trying to portend. For a Moon-Touched like her, dreams were almost never simply idle recollections and mental eidolons dredged up by the subconscious. For one with the Lycan with the gift of premonition, that was truer. She never dreamt an idle dream. Period. So what was this?

Satrina knew, with a bone deep certainty, that the Lycan fleeing from the figure wasn’t her. It felt more like she was seeing through someone else’s eyes, instead of her own. Taking this into consideration, should this happen to be some kind of premonition, then it probably wasn’t meant for her or anyone she knew. Satrina caught herself growling slowly in frustration. This was all so confusing. And the way Dream-Satrina, even though Satrina felt like it wasn’t her at all, was fleeing from her pursuer! Sure, she had stood her ground at the end, but the sheer cowardice on display was simply pitiful. Satrina wasn’t the strongest Lycan even in her own family, much less in entirety of Argentia’s upper echelons, but she had that pride that was characteristic of Lycans of noble blood; that ingrained sense of certainty that on the hierarchy of power in the world, she stood closest to the top.

She was jolted out of her thoughts with a screeching sounds, and she jumped, startled. She looked down at the source, and she saw that her claws had unsheathed themselves without her noticing and had carved a thin, barely noticeable groove on the rim of the porcelain where her hands had been leaning. She cursed and promptly flexed her fingers, sheathing them back. She had lost control for a moment there. Her mother would be tutting and taking disappointedly at the pointless display of overflowing passion were she there to witness her mistake. Satrina sighed and composed herself, molding her body language to a degree of comportment expected of a scion of House Vilhem.

She heard her door open, and the pitter patter of feet that suggested that the servants had arrived. Good. Satrina washed her mouth and tooth brush, and then studied her face in the mirror one last time. Her hair was long and curling, a curtain of silky ebony bouncing down to her shoulder blades. Her face was pale but angular, possessing a cold, almost timeless beauty that she had inherited from her mother. She wasn’t at the prime point of her development yet, but she knew that she would keep her attractive features for a long time. Lycans easily could easily live in excess of a century; the stronger ones maybe even two.

Satrina nodded. She was a Lycan, blessed by the Moon-Mother herself, and a scion of House Vilhem besides. She would allow no dream, no matter how ominous or portentous, to fill her with fear or intimidation. She would keep on trying to puzzle its secrets, but whatever complications may arise in process, she would rend with the fury of her claws. No exceptions.