Subject: Re: checking in

I will, but I haven't been home for the past day or two. Some time in the afternoon your time I'll write something.

Subject: In Limbo

"Tie her up. She goes to the mountain."

That is the last thing she hears. Her world turns upside down. She gets a quick glimpse of what must be the sky. Then the sudden falling feeling and the crushing pain. The wild cheering of the murrkat fills her ears and their blows rain down on her. One mercifully crashes into her temple sending her into darkness.

She floats in the darkness. She should be feeling the pain but there is nothing. Maybe she is dead. Could this be what death is like? It is peaceful, like lying on your back in a small pond in the middle of summer or under the trees in the fall when the leaves fall.

Then the dread starts; the sense of terror deep inside her. She looks around but sees nothing in the darkness. She can feel the hunger there though. Her hunting senses are burning. There is something out there looking for her. It wants her. She knows somehow that it wants more than just her flesh, that won't satisfy the hunger it has. It wants more. She panics. Tries to run, to hide, to find a spot where she can pull the forest over top of her and disappear. Nothing. There is nothing. Despair.

A voice. She hears a voice in the distance. Almost she recognizes it in her terror. It is familiar to her. She tries to go towards the voice but her feet do not seem to move. They are frozen in place. She tries to bend her body towards the voice and her perception changes. She is flying away from the dark. The voice is getting closer. Chardan!!! It is her brother calling to her. How could she not know his voice earlier? Then he is there.

Her eyes are filled with tears. "Little one, why do you cry?" He is teasing her the way he did when they were children. He would tease her so that she would get mad. He would the use that anger, direct it to the lesson he was teaching her. Focused it.

"I cry because I miss you Chardan. You are dead and we will not meet again."

"Melani, what is death to the spirits? Your spirit came to me. You are close to joining me, but it is not time yet. You have killed the witch. My spirit it free but yours is not. You still have work to do. The great evil has not been defeated. Go back, save our people." With that he is gone.

She continues floating but the sense of evil is gone. Chardan had protected her once again.

She wakes.

Subject: Re: In Limbo

Nice.