---Raala’s perspective---

  It’s late Spring.

  The weather is warm.

  The Sun is bright and everything is exactly right with the world!

  Every tree bears edible fruit, every bush edible berries, the ground is thick with edible mushrooms and edible rooted plants and fat, docile prey animals traipse through the woods in the distance.

  My belly is full, my body warm, my muscles rested, my clothing light and comfortable and my mind at peace.

  I’ve never felt so happy, so contented, so fulfilled as I do right now!

  I’m also not alone.

  Enclosed in my arms is the slender waist of the man I know is to thank for all the goodness around and inside me.

  I smile up into the clean shaven, brown skinned, flat, baby face of the cutest, most exciting, most interesting person I’ve ever known.

  He smiles back down at me.

  I can’t believe I deserve this!

  I can’t believe someone like me could ever be allowed such happiness!

  Then, the man’s smile goes cold…

  The fruit falls from the trees and starts to rot on the ground.

  A chill wind blows and the animals run away, turning lean and skinny before my eyes.

  The joy I felt is suddenly poisoned with fear.

  “I’m leaving, Raala… I’m going back to the Delta with my people.” he states, matter-of-factly.

  “Whuh… What?” I ask, stupidly “I thought the Delta was impossible to-”

  “Vwoha took it back for us. She just sent word that we can come home.”

  “Oh, I see…” I frown, apprehensively.

  I don’t know why I feel so terrible right now.

  Sure, I’d not exactly have chosen to leave this wonderful place to go to a land I've never been to before but “As long as we’re together, everything will be fine, Ksem.” I smile, vainly trying to ignore the dawning realisation.

  His head jerks unnaturally far to the right, then to the left, before he answers “You can't come, Raala.”

  “What…? That’s not funny, Ksem!!!”

  “I’m not joking.” he states simply, the words feeling crueller than if he’d screamed them.

  “I’m your woman!” I object “Why am I not allowed wherever you go!”

  “You were my woman… and it was fun for a while… but Vwoha will be my woman now. She’s tall, she’s happy, she’s a good student, she makes me a better man than you do. She’s everything you’re not.”

  “But…!” I break from the embrace, realising as I gesture down to my belly “…I’m pregnant, Ksem! This is your baby! We belong to eachother until one of us dies!”

  His head jerks unnaturally downward, then skyward, before he answers “Yes. That would be the case… If you were one of my people. But, because you aren’t… I can leave you without executing you.” chillingly.

  “Ksem!? Please! Tell me this is a joke! I won’t be angry! I promise!”

  Another side to side head jerk, followed by “No, Raala… You don’t belong in my world.”

  “But what am I supposed to do?! My people are all gone! You killed them all! You’re really just going to leave me alone!?”

  “I really am… What to do now is something you will need to figure out… For what it’s worth, I hope you don’t die… Goodbye Raala.”

  Without moving his legs or turning around, he starts moving away from me, fast!

  Panicking, I begin chasing after him as he disappears into the trees!

  Gliding over the ground, he’s easily able to dodge and weave between the gnarled trees and twisted gorse that come up behind him.

  I, on the other hand, am catching every stray thorn in my skin and clothing!

  “Ksem!” I scream “Come back! Stay with me or take me too! Don’t leave me alone! PLEASE!!!”

  He doesn’t answer, only looking over my head with a blank, indifferent expression.

  We emerge from the forest and are suddenly on a vast, featureless expanse of bare ground, stretching away to the horizon with barely a tuft of dry grass poking through it.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  My man extends his arms to the sides, grows to the height of a cavebear and seems to drain of all colour.

  Now that he’s bigger and isn’t having to dodge through the trees, he easily out accelerates me, flying over the ground in his motionless backwards run.

  “Ksem! Please! If you don’t want me then just kill me! I don’t want to be alone!!!” I beg, futilely reaching out to him with my left hand while cradling my baby bump with my right.

  He ignores me, simply speeding up to pull away from me faster.

  I soon lose the ability to run, collapsing to the ground in my tattered clothes, wheezing and gasping.

  Ksem quickly vanishes over the South horizon.

  I start sobbing as I realise he’s really gone.

  He’s gone and he’s not coming back!

  I’m all alone…

  My people are dead and his have gone back to where they came from, just like I wanted them to when they first arrived!

  I have no one now.

  I have nothing!

  I consider whether I could follow him, make my own way to the Delta and confront him as the woman with child he abandoned!

  Maybe I can’t get him to take me back but I could at least shame him into letting me stay among his people?

  Then again, he said I’m not allowed there… he will probably just execute me if I try it and it’s not just myself I need to think of, is it!

  Both my hands go to my stomach bulge and I give a sombre smile at the fact that I won’t be totally alone.

  The man I love may have abandoned me but I will still have this piece of him that he left growing in my belly.

  I feel a swoop of guilt over having asked him to kill me while I still had this baby growing inside me.

  It will be hard to raise a child alone but, if I can just go back and find some small piece of the Forest of Plenty that wasn’t ruined when he left…? Some of my people still alive…? Maybe…?

  I feel my belly cramp and instantly know that what’s about to happen is not right!

  I cry out in pain and fear as I lie myself down on the barren ground.

  The Sun dives beneath the horizon as these wrong feeling contractions put me through agony!

  I howl to the stars above and they begin to swirl around like water in a bowl.

  Forming themselves into the shape of a mammoth, they look down on where I lie with a moon for each eye.

  I reach up and plead “Mother! Help me! This isn’t right! I’m scared!!!”

  Speaking in my own mum’s voice which I haven’t heard since I was little, Mother Mammoth contemptuously answers “This is exactly what you deserve, child… My son’s maw is too good a fate for you. You will stay here in this waste, cold, hungry and alone, for the rest of time.” before turning around and sinking into the darkness like a stone in water, leaving the sky bare of stars, lit only with a murky, dim, brown light.

  “Mother! Please! I’m sorry! Forgive me!!!… At least spare my baby! They’re innocent!” I beg.

  No answer comes.

  I scream and sob as the pain rises to become the most excruciating thing I’ve ever felt!

  Sharp points stab into my soft insides as I sob in agony.

  Then, all at once, the pressure gives way.

  Rancid blood splatters all over my inner thighs as a pile of bones clatters onto the ground.

  In despair, I push myself upright and reach to pick a tiny, round skull from the puddle of gore I’ve just ejected.

  I turn it to face me and wipe off the rotten blood, my lip quivering, my heart pounding, my breaths fast and shallow.

  I stand up and walk a few paces, still cradling what was my last chance to be happy, to not be alone…

  As I walk, the skull grows in my hand, not maturing, just gaining a little spike of bone at the bottom of its chin, mocking me by showing me the life it never got to have, the one I never got to give it!

  “This isn’t fair!” I cry South “My baby was INNOCENT!!!” I shout at the sky “Don’t punish me by punishing THEM! That’s not FAIR!!!”

  I fall to my knees, tears running thick down my face.

  I hold my child’s skull to my head, take in a deep breath and scream!

  ---Ksem’s perspective---

  A bloodcurdling scream makes my eyes shoot open and my hand fly to my knife!

  Without fumbling, I draw my meagre weapon and hold it between me and the door, ready to fight, fire in my breath and lightning in my muscles!

  There’s nothing there.

  The door is closed, the tent is warm enough to let me know there’s not a hole elsewhere, there are only familiar smells.

  I briefly try to listen for any threatening sounds outside the tent but immediately recognise that I would never hear them over Raala’s caterwauling.

  I frown and finally look across the glowing coals at the woman whose wails just roused me from my sleep.

  She’s sat bolt upright, wide eyes fixed on nothing and making no move to fight.

  I realise at that point that there is no danger… at least, not to our lives or limbs.

  She’s had a nightmare and it seems like it must’ve been a pretty bad one!

  I put my blade away and get up, the creakiness of a body that’s just woken asserting itself as the fear drains away.

  Her screams give way to heartbreaking sobs as I round the back of the tent to approach her from behind.

  I consider whether what I’m about to do may make things worse but quickly realise that that’s not really possible(!)

  If she reacts with anger, that will be an improvement on her current state…

  Kneeling down, I bring one hand to her upper arm, the other to her opposite shoulder and pull her back to rest against my front.

  I try to ignore the intoxicating scent of petrichor that wafts from her curly hair to fill my nostrils!

  She flinches slightly at my touch but doesn’t otherwise react as she continues her sobbing.

  “Sssssssshshshshshsh! There now…” I soothe in her language “…it was just a bad dream… You’re safe… It wasn’t real…”

  “It was… It was horrible!” she blubs “You were gone…*sob*… my people were dead… the world was barren and the Sun, Moon and stars had left the sky! I was going to be alone forever!”

  “Well…” I smile “…I’m still here, aren’t I? And…” I look up through the smoke vent “…I can still see stars above us… Stands to reason that the rest of your dream wasn’t real either, right?… I wouldn’t let you get rid of me that easily(!) You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid(!)”

  Her quivering breaths slow as she calms down.

  Her head lolls back to *thud* into my chest.

  I keep stroking her arm and shoulder, reassuringly.

  “Could…” she shudders before seeming to reconsider.

  “Ask, Raala… I’ll do anything I can for you.” I encourage.

  Another few heartbeats before she finishes “Could you… sing to me?”

  “Oh… well…” I hesitate, awkwardly “…I’m afraid I don’t know any of your people’s lullabies by heart.”

  “Then sing one of your’s?” she suggests without hesitation.

  I’m immediately carried back to the Delta, hearing my mother sing me and my siblings back to sleep when one of us had woken up sad and afraid in the days before I slept alone.

  I remember every word of that song.

  “Alright, Raala… Here goes…” I say, uncertainly.

  I clear my throat and start to sing

  p?Oh little one, hear my voice

  I’m beside you, oh child fair

  My beloved one, come and see

  The dawn that’s rising out there?p

  Dream | | | |