The bed lay quiet and cold under the moonlight. Alcmene's weight hardly pressed into it. Her heat hardly kept under the duvet. The cotton was thin, but better than any she had felt in a lifetime or two.
The first thing began with a bubble, as most things do.
It started with a 'Pop', as most things do.
Bubbling up to the surface. Bouncing off one another and reflecting the light above onto Alcmene's face as she drifted.
First, it was calm, as all things are.
Alcmene felt the waves of the current above, and the fish swimming around her, bumping into her legs, her arms, her hands, her head, her back- Bump, bump, bump, bump.
She felt one mouth languishly at her fingertips. She felt it tug her deeper. She felt the grains of the riverbed comfort her fall. She felt the surface below her back flip, and she opened her eyes to the sky suddenly above.
Soaked, somehow not shaking in the cold. Her eyes wondered, as her body didn't move.
When she was older, she had been able to get up in these dreams, but right now, she liked to watch the sunset from the shore she had been pulled upon.
The forest around her, the fish swimming through the air over her head, the leaves gently laying upon the tension of the water rippling refracted lights into the sky.
The bubble in her ear burst. She felt a hot rush of liquid dribble from her ear onto the sand, the dust, and she sat up.
Her hands found ear before she could think, and pulled away with a smudging of blood running tracks into the grime across her wrists and forearms.
Then came the yell.
It was less a yell than a scream, but less a scream than a jolting noise of terrified shock.
Seconds ticked past with a speed that Alcmene was unused to. Her fingers dug into the sand, particles sinking into the underside of her fingernails uneasily. A moment of silence passed, as the fish swimming around her head scattered into the bushes and brambles of the spinney.
Then another yelp.
Alcmene stood up, wandering over to the edge of the forest from the river shore to push aside the thrush with her hand.
Behind it, otherwise in a tabula rasa, lay a dead tree still standing at its core. The roots were gnarled and twisted into one another. Branches like hanging limbs jutted out and down upon dead browns and corpses lying at its base.
She couldn't quite see who the corpses were- each cadaver left unendingly mauled by the tree's rotting wood. It was as if the world had become foggy with something other than mist. A mirage or cheap film over the top of her vision as one might add to censor or hide something from someone. Her feet froze before she could overstep into the space.
She squinted, trying to focus, yet the moment that she blinked, the image was gone. Behind the many leaves and plants of the spinney, she instead saw a woman crouched at the base of a dilapidated building. This time, she could step in. this time, she could see.
The woman had deep black hair, tangled and unwashed like Alcmene's had been before it had been cut. Her fingers were pale, her wrists thin, her ribs clear through the stained torn shirt hanging from her emaciated frame.
The woman had a constant thrum of energy bleeding out from her- nervous, audible, visible, pulsing with a heartbeat that Alcmene tricked herself into believing she could really hear.
Like the forest around them, the woman, despite shaking and rocking on the balls of her feet, forced an expansive feel into the world around them. She was a woodland with hollow oaks and foxes and weeping willow trees- and she proved every life form she took to be just as magnificent as the very soil below her bloodied soles. Alcmene thought, for a brief moment, that if this woman really, actually, were a forest, then Alcmene would be a hermit. Lost and blissful at her core. The forest was preponderate.
The forest's eyes looked up, gold and green locking onto Alcmene with a haggard breath. Something squelched disgustingly between her fingers as she stood. She was tall- taller than anyone that Alcmene had seen before.
And the woman spoke with a grovelling, unkempt voice that whisted behind itself like the wind through thistles and weeds.
"I hear your muscles contracting," the forest said.
"Your nerves and your heart stretching and pulsing with every heartbeat," the forest said.
"I can hear the neurons in your brain firing off, the cells in your spine sending signals to the rest of you to run. I've learned," the forest said.
"I've learned how to read those signals on everyone, everything, everybody, and know what every sound means," the forest said.
The forest said, "Every move you make, I hear before you make it."
Alcmene stared at the forest. She stared at the woman, so expansive yet so drained. So large and so small and so tall.
And Alcmene responded, "Oh."
The forest stared. Alcmene stared back.
Tilphousia dropped to her knees before the child. She asked the child who she was as Alcmene faded into waking.
This time, though, Alcmene didn't know exactly how to answer.
The moment Alcmene woke up, she heard scuffles outside her door. Like someone hurrying away.
Her legs felt weak as she stood in the cold night- moon setting in the distance as the sun rose upon the opposing horizon. But still, she trod one step after the other, and opened the door with as much silence as she could muster.
All she heard was a voice, low and distinctive, with a lilt that fogged her brain, talking to someone who sounded suspiciously like Father Arion.
"Is that a demand or an offer?" Father Arion cautioned.
"It's a mercy," responded the voice.
The two voices stopped talking as Alcmene stepped out of her designated room. A pair of footsteps walked away, and another crept carefully towards her.
Hands looped under her armpits as she was picked up into Father Arion's arms daintily- as if she were a delicate flower vase left in the middle of the hallway. Moved, as if she were a minor tripping hazard.
Father Arion had the look Alcmene's mama used to get when she didn't sleep.
"Can't sleep, child?" he cooed. His fingers made to move through her hair as he paced her back in her bed, but paused upon only feeling the stubble.
He didn't mention that it seemed to bother him, though. Alcmene didn't know why it was so strange to him
She shook her head, keeping her lips together as she thought so she didn't say things that would get her into trouble. She remembered when she was older that people didn't like it when other people had dreams.
And the forest looked like she wanted to be left alone.
Instead, when she spoke, she asked, "Do you know what love is?"
Father Ario, rightfully, was incredibly taken off guard by a child asking him about love. Though he supposed that it may be her age, her obvious lack of family, that made her curious.
At first, he answered with a skillful fib.
"It's beauty."
Alcmene stared at him for a while in silence. She shook her head again, and looked at her hands as she whispered between her teeth- so quiet he had to lean in to hear her.
"You're lying," she said.
She said, "Do you know what love is."
This time around, Father Arion let out a short breath, and from the air his answer drifted into her mind like the forest's words had.
"Love is difficulty. Old things break down, they creak, they get rusted and need to be fixed. Love becomes a choice- an action instead of a feeling. That's love. That's the most difficult part."
Alcmene remained silent, then rolled over to go back to sleep. He patted her shoulder, after hesitating on doing so to her head for a split second, and Alcmene bid him goodnight.
The rest of the night remained restless. Remained fitful. Alcmene could feel thin vines wrapping her ankles every time she began to drift off. She didn't sleep for the rest of that night.