First Dream

The young maid padded softly through the library, moving books back to their place and straightening things as she went. It was a futile effort, bound to be undone, but it was her job.

The wood floor was cold, it seemed it always was when it was time for cleaning. She was a night maid, one meant remain out of sight, only working in the dead of night with silence as her main companion.

A book on the floor caught her eye, discarded as if it had offended someone. Kneeling, she scooped it up and glanced at its contents curiously. Normally a maid of her social standing would not know how to read, but the knowledge was key to her duties as she did not interact face to face with the owners of the mansion. It was a book about the peoples of Eranthis complete with descriptions of each.

A quick glance showed a preference towards the Elfin, a group that included the owners of the mansion in which she resided and worked, and a disdain for those it named as Ferals, describing them as little more than wild animals that learned to mimic the Elfin to earn their trust and destroy them.

Rather than reshelving the book as she ought to, she set it gently on a small table, intending to read some of it if she had time. Walking through the rooms she was meant to clean, she went to work, doing everything soundlessly. By morning it would look as if all but the living quarters of the mansion had been cleaned by magic.

During the day, a few others would clean the rooms at predetermined times, to remain unseen by any guests. They were treated well enough, so long as they remained out of sight. The owners of the mansion, the lord and lady of the region made sure they were given rooms and food, clothes, and a place to bathe. They took good care of the things they were given and as such, often needed less than the cleaning staff of many other such nobility, a fact that their nobles often bragged about.

Her work was not completely alone, at times she passed others like herself in the halls, acknowledging each other with quick nods or waves and in the larger rooms working wordlessly together to make everything immaculate.

Her parents were among those that she encountered through the night, though none of them worked alongside each other. The lord of the mansion thought it would encourage them to slack off, so they stayed separated through the long quiet nights.

With her list of chores finally completed, she returned to the library, pacing the shelves to check that everything was perfect before gently picking up the book and looking through its pages. Illustrations adorned several pages, more in the Elfin portion of the book than the other.

Cities were pictured in the Elfin part of the books, places she had never seen, would never see as she did not leave the mansion. Small towns surrounded by farmland, filled with people and animals, busy and yet strangely remote and lonely at the same time. Enormous cities filled with towers and statues, roads made of gleaming stone filled to the brim with carts and people alike. There were also places more like the surroundings of the mansion, a moderately sized town with wooden walls to keep the people safe. Each of the Elfin towns looked beautiful.

Things changed when she thumbed to the Feral portion of the book, there were no more illustrations of bustling towns, or lonely little havens in which people worked together. Instead, the few illustrations that marked the pages were primarily people. Unlike the Elfin illustrations, the Feral ones looked, wild and unfathomably angry.

They stood with fangs and claws bared towards the reader, as if wanting nothing more than to leap off the pages of the book to destroy them. Despite the intended ferocity, the Feral illustrations did not scare her as they were supposed to. After all, she was one of them.

She read a few passages of the entry for Ferals like herself, Faelyn, and frowned at the inaccuracy of it all. The book said Faelyn were lazy, a trait she had never seen in any of her family, and magically gifted, another trait she had never seen. Her family was so terrible at magic that they could not even work the mage-stone lamps in the rooms that they cleaned. They had to rely on their night vision and, honestly, hope they did not miss anything important.

As if the book served as a reminded of the level of comfort her clothes provided, her tail lashed against the petticoat and she wrinkled her nose slightly at the feel of it. They worked unseen, she did not understand why she had to shove her sensitive ears under a bonnet and endure her tail being all but bound against her most of the night.

The worst offender though was the ring of metal around her tail, always icy cold and brushing against her legs at the most inopportune times. The very feel of the metal made her feel wrong, frozen, in a way she felt as if it robbed her of her very life. All it was though, was a marking that showed her to be a servant of the lord of the land so that she could not find work elsewhere.

At least, that was how her parents explained it to her. She was not so naive as she had once been, of course, she knew it was a mark of ownership. It was to keep her from trying to run away, though she had nowhere to run to. She did not know the place the Faelyn called home; her parents never spoke of such a place if they had seen it.

She sighed slightly and glanced at the window to gauge the time. She had hours yet before anyone in the house should rise, but honestly, she would rather spend them with her family than reading a dusty stupid book that was not even correct. She slipped the book back into its place on the shelf and did one last round of the room.

As she turned to leave a faint sound caught her attention, her ears twitched to better locate it and dislodged the bonnet, dropping it to the floor. Distracted from the sound, she picked it up and started the annoying process of getting her ears to cooperate long enough to get it back on. She had it half on when one of the lord's sons rounded the corner.

His expression was one of utter distaste, as if he had seen a mangled corpse. She did not speak, merely continued to try to get the bonnet on, though she knew it was far too late. There was no point in running, she would just be dragged from her room, it was better to just take the beating he was going to give her and hope she healed quickly. The first blow was painful, dropping her to the floor, at which point a sharp kick to the ribs made it hard to breathe, consciousness faded as she worried how long she would be out of work, increasing the load on her family.

She woke gradually, as if she had fallen in deep water and it was reluctant to let her go, a fog grasping onto her brain and making everything hazy. She was cold, shaking, soaking wet, and nothing made any sense. She was not in pain, she should have been in pain, but there was no pain and the fog in her brain made it feel like she could not even draw breath without drowning.

A hand touched her clammy forehead and an unfamiliar voice spoke, "She stirs, good, I was beginning to worry she had fallen too deep."

"What would have happened?" another voice, one that shook with worry and barely restrained tears, spoke up bringing with it a rush of familiarity followed by what felt like the fog trying to drag her back.

The person that was touching her forehead shook her gently, the action helping loose the grasp of the fog that held her, "She would continue to dream, for how long, we cannot know. It is time for you to wake, little one, you cannot stay in the dreams of the past for too long. You are yet too young for such journeys."

After what felt like an eternity, she was able to open her eyes and look around. The fog in her head, the memories of the dream that continued to try to hold her, told her the room was not right, not hers.

The man that spoke, an older Faelyn with greying fur in his orange, black-striped ears, held a cup to her lips and urged her to drink. The warm herbal tea seemed to finally force the fog to release her, and she remembered who she was.

She was not the maid in her dreams, she knew somewhere deep inside of her that the poor Faelyn maid was dead, that she had never woken from the beating. Tears welled in her eyes as that knowledge bared down on her relentlessly.

"I know, little one, I know it must hurt, you are yet too young for such painful dreams but Reincarnation Sickness is merciless and it crowds those with power, making certain they remember both their triumphs and their mistakes, so that they may continue to grow. Now that we know about it, we can work to delay it until you are ready to face what it will show you." The old man nodded slightly as she finished the tea, "I must speak with your parents for a moment, little one," he stood and looked to the other two people in the room, her parents, "We will give her a moment to sort herself," glancing back at her as they stood and moved to leave he spoke sternly, "Whatever you do, little one, do not let sleep take you again while we speak. You are not ready and the tea I had you drink can only hold off sleep, not dreams."

Her mother hesitated at those words, "Perhaps I should stay…"

"No," the old man said, his voice still stern, "She will need to stay awake herself, your presence will not help and the comfort you bring could even hurt. The tea will help keep the weariness away," he placed a second cup onto the bedside table, "Drink more of it if you begin to feel tired, little one."