Forget Me Not

   Aylwin is floating.

  He is floating in a sea of emptiness. His thoughts are fleeting, drifting out of his head before he can grasp them, slipping away like grains of sand between his fingers. The only thing he can make sense of is the darkness. Pitch black. Everywhere. Nowhere. All consuming. He tries blinking and opening his eyes. Nothing changes.

  Aylwin can feel the darkness pulling at him. Welcoming him. Beckoning him. A small voice in his mind panics. Somehow, he knows that if he goes into that darkness he might never leave. He struggles against the pulling. Its difficult.

He twitches and a sharp pain shoots through his skull, interrupting the call of the darkness. Lights flash somewhere around him. Shadows dance in his vision.  Aylwin’s head is under water. He cant see. Everything’s blurry. He’s cold. The voices are muffled. The pulling of the darkness is getting stronger. He’s getting more tired every second; his limbs growing heavier.

Suddenly, one of the shadows yells. Something angry. He cant make out what. But it causes another horrible pain to shoot through his head. Dazed and in pain, the darkness uses this to its advantage and claws at him. He feels himself drifting farther away from the shadows and the voices.

Everything is silent.

---

    Logically, Aylwin knows he’s dreaming. He knows it. However, knowing something and being aware of it are two very different things.

Its easy to push away the tiny voice in the back of his mind screaming: This isn’t real! Wake up! You need to wake up! It’s easy to ignore how the trees are swaying in a nonexistent wind that he can’t feel. Easy to ignore how the water lapping at his feet is neither warm nor cold. Easy to ignore how despite how his sister’s hair sparkles in the sunlight, he can feel no warmth.

  It's strange. He sees flashes. They’re so vivid and real, they must be memories. He sees his three sisters. Remembers playing with the youngest in the river, worrying his eldest sister and proudly wearing a flower crown created by the second youngest. Aylwin remembers his father angrily pulling it off his head. Fighting with his dad about his choice to pursue art and writing.

Beside him, his youngest sister clings to his side, grinning up at him. "I wish we could stay here forever."

He opens his mouth to respond, but nothing comes out.

    The world around him swims. His vision is blurry. He can hear the clang of metal swords hitting one another. The screams of battle. Someone shouts his name.

    Aylwin shakes his head, trying to clear it. That memory is wrong. He doesn’t know where its from. Things get blurrier. Its getting harder to see his sisters.

    The world spins. He falls.

The dark welcomes him yet again.

---

    Shiink!

The sharp sound of metal being scraped draws Aylwin back to reality. His headache continues to pound. He becomes aware of his scratchy throat and his dry mouth. Multiple quilts and blankets are pressing down on him. His arms are like lead. Sleep is calling out to him. This bed is so soft. If he were to burrow down, he could easily slip back into unconsciousness.

That’s exactly what he’s about to do, when: Shiiink!

He can’t quite relax with the constant sound of scraping metal attacking his ears.

Aylwin slowly opens his eyes and peers into the world, wincing as the bright light streaming in through the window strikes into his head. The migraine worsens. There’s a dull ringing in his ears.

Shiiink!

Okay. That’s really getting annoying, now.

Aylwin groans and swings his arm over his eyes, blocking out the sun. The scratching metal pauses.

“Aylwin?” A woman’s voice asks. It might be his mother. He cant be sure. Aylwin just groans again and flails his free arm in the direction of the light.

The voice huffs. Definitely not his mother, then. His mom doesn’t huff. Maybe Ena, his eldest sister. There’s a clang of something metal being set on the floor, and then heavy, loud footsteps. Okay, maybe not Ena. Enais quiet. He hears a rustling of fabric, and then the evil sunlight disappears.

“Happy?”

“Mmm hmm. T’anks.” He doesn’t like how his voice slurs. Aylwin rubs his face with his hands. Its startling to feel the bandage wrapped around the top of his head, but he guesses it makes sense. Maybe he fell. Then his fingers run over a light stubble on his chin. He freezes. Since when can he grow facial hair? Must have been out longer than he thought. His heart speeds up. “’Ow long?”

“Few days.”

That… can’t be right. Where are his sisters? What happened? Are they okay?

He lowers his hands and turns to ask. The words die on his tongue and his heart slams into his throat.

That is not his mother. And it is most definitely not Ena.

The woman sitting near him looks tired and battle-worn. There are dark marks under her silver eyes. Scars and barley healed bruises cover her face and arms; her black hair is sloppily tied up. Instead of a dress, she’s wearing a black tunic and grey trousers. At her feet sit a chest-plate fitted for her broad shoulders, and a discarded sword with an angled rock sitting on top; she must have been sharpening it.

Who- How did she get in my room? The thought flies through Aylwin’s mind. His eyes dart around the room, a throbbing pain in his temples making itself known as his eyes struggle to adjust. His heart speeds up. This is not my room.

Aylwin’s bedroom is large and open; it has ginormous windows on every wall with fancy curtains he helped his mom sew when he was little. His bedroom has shelves with so many books that he can barely see the walls on most days. His bedroom has a long desk with hundreds of papers messily scattered on top.

This room has none of that. If he stood up in the center of this room, Aylwin could reach out and touch each wall. There is a tiny window to his right, hardly any larger than the size of his head, with an old, ratted cloak hung up to block out the sun. The only furniture in this room is the creaky bed he’s laying on and a wooden chair a few feet to his left. A chair with a strange woman whom he has never met before in his entire life.

Aylwin blanches as he notices the gleaming axe tied to her belt and the hilts of hunting knives poking out from her large black boots.

Aylwin slowly opens his mouth to speak and closes it when he realizes he has no words. He opens his mouth to try again. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

The boy’s eyes dart from the woman to the door. Taking another look around the room, Aylwin would guess he’s in an inn somewhere. He can hear the rolling of a wagon and people chatter as they pass by under his window, their voices growing fainter as they get farther away.

He takes a deep breath. “Where?”

“Talkative today, I see,” she says sarcastically. He turns back to look at her. She crosses her arms and tosses her feet up onto the bed. “Killed it.”

His heart skips a beat. She said those words so casually, as if she were talking about the weather. Killed? Killed what? “What?”

“Killed the were. No thanks to you.”

Aylwin frowns. She makes no sense. What is she talking about? How hard did he get hit? “Where am I?”

She shrugs, looks at the covered window. “We’re in the town. Had to drag you back here after the hunt. You’re repaying me for the gold I gave the healer to fix you, by the way.”

He blinks. “I don’t like hunting.”

She snorts again. “Yeah, so you’ve said. I told you to stay at the camp while I dealt with the were, but we both know how well you listen. It’s your own fault it smashed the side of your head in, really.”

Ah. So that explains the horrible pain in his head and the bandages. It got “smashed in” by a… were?

Aylwin pauses for a moment, racking his mind for anything to help him. Anything familiar. He comes up with nothing. “Uh… what’s a were?”

She looks at him from the corner of her eye. “Not the time for joke, Ayl.”

Ayl? “I’m not kidding.”

The woman frowns. “It’s a wolf.” She holds her hands as far apart from each other as they can go. “A really big wolf.”

“Oh. Why not just say that?”

She goes back to crossing her arms. “It’s a special type of wolf.”

Aylwin feels like there’s more there, but he chooses not to push. The tall lady is now staring at him with a mixture of suspicion and concern. He pushes himself into a sitting position, ignoring how his headache gets worse when he moves and nervously eyeing her sword. After a few seconds of silence, he asks: “Are you a knight?”

She looks startled for a second, but her face goes back to suspicion. “Am I a what?”

“A knight?” Aylwin points to where the sword and chest plate sit. “Do you work with my father?”

Now the woman stares at him as if he has grown another head. “I’m not... do you… women aren’t allowed knighthood.”

“Oh. Yeah,” he nods. Looks back around the small room. “Where are my sisters?”

“What?”

“My sisters. Where are they?”

“How should I know?” she says defensively. “You told me you haven’t spoken to your family since you were a kid.”

Aylwin sighs. “This one of my father’s games, isn’t it? Is he paying you? Well, tell him I’ve learned my lesson, whatever that is. Or, better yet, I’d like to speak to him.”

She blinks. Slowly rises to her feet. “I should… go get a healer,” she says slowly.

“I feel fine,” Aylwin argues. His head does not feel fine.

She hesitates. Something in the back of his mind sparks. Something is warning him that if she of all people is hesitating, then something is very wrong. But that doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t know her.

“Do you really not recognize me?” she asks.

“Should I?”

She pauses again, and then says: “My name is Jo'an.”

“Well, Jo'an. I can’t really say it’s nice to meet you, with you speaking nonsense and all that. I’m Aylwin.”

“I know.”

Aylwin forces a smile. The alarm in the back of his mind starts ringing louder. “How, pray tell, would you know that?”

Jo'an’s brow furrows. She grabs her sword and sheathes it, still staring at him, concerned. “Because we’ve worked together for the past twelve years.”