(continues from Memory’s Shell Game)

Gray waves rolled onto a pale shore.
Not Tenerife sea for sure.
I’m heartsore
hurting evermore
from the confusion and more. 

Fiona cursed. The sky cracked and rained glittering pieces to float in the heaving surf. Ice frosted the waves curling ashore freezing them into drifts. “I can’t hold it.”

Farther ashore, a city crumbled. Skyscrapers leaned into each other, drunk on the chaos.

“You can’t hold what?”

“This—” She gestured to the world breaking down around us. “This world isn’t real.”

“Then what the hell is it?”

“A fantasy obviously.” Fiona bent, her hand compressed a gushing wound in her side. “I needed somewhere to stash us all for a little while.” She dropped to one knee, her hair darkening to black.

She was the woman I’d watched die earlier tonight. Her tears had tasted like desert wine and chocolate. Her eyes were cold chips flashing like dying strobe lights. With one arm pressed into the shaking ground, she held herself up. But it wasn’t enough. The world cracked away revealing a snowy field littered with dead and dying men.

My body lay among them, and it pulled me back to it. Darkness sucked me in. Memory clobbered me, and I remembered it all: the betrayal, the usurper, the attack—the maiden screaming and the spell she wove.

 Find the earlier parts of this series here.

For the November Notes Writing Challenge hosted by  Sarah Doughty of Heartstring Eulogies and Rosema of A Reading Writer.

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In a world where enchanted trees kill, nothing is what it seems. Can Sarn protect his son, keep his masters happy and solve a mystery? When secrets threaten, murder is only the beginning.