Chapter 7: Chapter 7: Weaponsmith Hineni Obscura

Hineni’s sleep is filled with nothing but restless dreams.

 

He’s running through a burning forest and every time he breaches its edge, he finds himself back inside of it again somehow. There is no owl or anything else. There is just him, the forest and the fire. The same dream returns to him over and over, every time that he wakes up, panting and heaving and thrashing around in his bed.

 

He doesn’t manage to buy food that night after all, his body hurting deeply now that it has begun to heal. He’s noticing a rise in his temperature, he thinks the wound is becoming infected.

 

Hineni forces himself to walk to the washroom to wash it out again, before finding his way back to his dirty bed on weak legs and falling back into it. Though, for hygiene’s sake, he does pick up an old, dirty blanket from the floor and tosses it over the dirty sheets, laying on top of it.

 

Hineni sleeps.

 

The next time he wakes, he does so because there is a tapping on his window. He wakes up, his eyes shooting to the side. Groaning, the man sits upright, listening. Is it raining? He turns his head, looking. But there is nothing to see apart from the night. How long has he been asleep? He doesn’t know. He’s hungry. He feels feverish. He needs to go and buy some real food and to see a priest, but…

 

Looking down, he sees that his wound is sealing itself. But the entire area is red and certainly looks to be infected. Gods know what kind of weird, forest gunk that damn bird had on its talons. He hopes he doesn’t die.

 

His stomach growls. Or maybe he does. He could really go for a bite to eat.

 

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