Page 3 of Shattered & Returned

The last thing I saw was his face—beautiful, grotesque—warping through the waves above as the abyss swallowed me whole and stole my life.

My eyes flew open.I jerked upright, legs spasming as if still kicking against the phantom tide. My hand, shaking violently, clutched at the pillow until my fingers closed around the inhaler. I exhaled hard, though my lungs still burned with seawater that wasn’t there. A ragged wheeze escaped me. The mouthpiece pressed between my lips, and I inhaled sharply.

Cool relief flooded my airways. My grip on the sheets loosened.Just a dream.Just a dream.But it hadn’t felt like one—it had felt like a memory, like I’d been trapped in another woman’s skin.

I slumped against the headboard, catching my reflection in the mirror across the room. My face was moon-pale, my hair a riot of flaming red against the dark wood.

My frantic pulse finally slowed. I was safe. Home. In the cabin Mom and I had shared before the cancer took her two weeks ago.

The pain of losing her was still raw and sharp, a wound as fresh as yesterday. Nineteen years of love, and now only this hollowed-out ache remained. I clung to it. If I let the pain fade, I’d lose her all over again.

I scanned my room: a table, a chair, a chest, and an open closet, all painted spring lemon. Not my favorite color, but it had been Mom’s. Bleak loneliness swept over me as I looked down at the cotton sheets tangled around my body, damp with sweat.

The dream flooded back. One second, I was having my best and first orgasm, then I was drowning. It had felt so real, and I could still catch his scent in the air: sandalwood and brimstone, and burnt parchment. I could still feel the remnant of pleasure throbbing between my thighs.

I tossed the sheets from my legs and lifted my nightgown. I wasn’t wearing anything underneath. My flesh wasn’t bleeding, but it was reddened. A pinch of pain and pleasure still pulsed from the nerve endings there.

Sudden rage rose alongside the lingering arousal. He’d bitten my nerve bundle, my most sensitive flesh. How dare he?

I shook my head. He wasn’t even real. How could I argue with a godlike male in a dream? Despite the horror of drowning that followed, I wished the sex had been real and the dark stranger wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.

Strong sunlight filtered through the thin curtain. I’d overslept. But who wouldn’t after that kind of erotic dream? If only it hadn’t turned into drowning.

Shaking off thoughts of the stranger, I slipped the inhaler into my nightgown pocket and climbed out of bed. I pulled on the old robe draped over the chair and padded across the room, the worn wooden floor creaking under my bare feet.

A raven flapped its wings, cawing, as it flew between the trees. My gaze landed on the single grave at the back of the garden, protected by circles of stones. An epitaph etched on the tombstone:

SaraAurelius

Walks Among Forgotten Gods

And Never Forgotten Here

Only forgottenwhen I was gone as well.

I’d laid Mom to rest here so she could still look at the garden in the afterlife, if there was one, so she wouldn’t be alone. All these years, it had been just Mom and me.

We could’ve lived in civilization, but Mom had chosen this isolated life at the forest’s edge, miles from the nearest French town, to protect me. She wouldn’t explain why she’d insisted on this reclusive lifestyle, only saying that a goddess had shown her visions of my terrible death if I were found.

“Found by whom?” I’d asked.

She’d shaken her head. “It doesn’t matter, Bloom. You just need to avoid crowds until you reach middle age.”

I shuddered at the prospect of living alone here until middle age.

Mom had sacrificed everything for me. Her entire life had revolved around keeping me safe and hidden by homeschooling me. She wouldn’t have let me go to the small town at all if she hadn’t fallen sick ten years ago. Even then, I’d only been allowed to accompany her to see doctors when her pain became unbearable. Later, she’d had to send me to the town once a week to sell the herbs I grew, trading them for produce and her medicines when she grew too weak to make the trip herself. I’d been twelve when I started going alone, but I’d proven I wasperfectly safe. No one snatched me, even though the other kids called me a freak for living at the forest’s edge with my reclusive mother.

I’d tried to persuade her to move to a city where she could get better care, but she only grew angry and more paranoid about me being taken away.

“You sacrificed for nothing, Mother,” I said, tears rolling down my face as a new wave of grief and loneliness crashed over me. “You worried about things that weren’t there. No one will come for me. There hasn’t been a soul in sight. We could’ve lived better, and you could’ve been cured.” More tears wet my cheeks. “We wasted all those years and then you left. What am I going to do, Mom?”

My fingers traced her name on the tombstone until I couldn’t bear it. Waking up from the erotic dream that had ended in my death, featuring a gorgeous man, only made my head spin and my heart fill with sorrow and loneliness.

I let out a sad half chuckle. Who would I even have sex with? There was no way I could meet a man like that. When I went to town, I’d seen plenty of boys, and none had interested me. I’d never had a sex drive before that dream. And now my core throbbed with the ache and need it had awakened.

I shook my head in annoyance. I shouldn’t go down that path, thinking about something I could never have. Pushing aside thoughts of a bleak future, I walked to the center of the garden to tend the plants. Working in the garden soothed me. It was the first thing I did each morning. I’d always had a talent with plants and potions. Mom had said that all the flowers had bloomed on the darkest winter night when I was born, hence my name.

The herbs I cultivated became our main income. Mom had no longer needed to make crafts once my herbs could keep foodon the table and clothes on our backs. We even had enough to repair and maintain the cabin, until Mom became sick.

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