❖ DISTURBED SLUMBER ❖ (Job/Kaori/Sarah)

The rain.

The lightest of drizzles felt like thousands of little kisses against your skin while the heaviest of storms felt like bullets penetrating your flesh. It was a very innocent, sweet, and yet vile and violating force that he grew to hate and what many others had grown to love. It was always raining during the reddest of days, where the cold, sharp smell of metal was strongest and the smell of rotting, molding bodies was humid. His kingdom seldom faltered against alien forces, but its own battles seemed cruelest as it turned out. The sorts of battles where nephew became nemesis and kinsfolk became competitors. The sort of battles where politics were everything and lives were expendable if it meant defending your Lord's or Lady's ideals. The kind of bloodshed where the common enemy was the common folk. It truly was an awful time to be alive.

But, for some reason, his mind was not plagued by those troubles. His thoughts were not littered with trifles such as combat and betrayal—but instead with visions and images of his Lord, broad-shouldered and mighty, but his face shrouded in darkness and cloaked in mystery. He could not recall his face or even his name, but he knew that he was a very important man in which he dedicated his entire being to. His strength, his skills, his servitude—it was all this man's to command. And he had remembered him to be a very shrewd and dignified man who never quite cared for anyone but himself, and no one serving him seemed to mind. But for Heaven's sake, he could not remember who he was!

His struggle to recall much of anything burdened him the most. But when this burden incapacitated him, which it would often do, he would fight no more and let himself be carried away into his consciousness's deepest and darkest depths, drowning in a heavy slumber that subdued him. He slept and slept and slept until he could sleep no longer. He could feel himself be pulled toward the surface where breathing became easier and the weight of his burden felt featherlike. He was pulled and pushed and snatched and. . .

Snow.

When he came to, his naked body was caked in a thin layer of snow. It was falling down softly and polka-dotted the stormy overcast sky as it did. It was strange since he was certain that it was raining before this. It was cold, but he felt so little that it was but a trifle at this point. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed man lied in the bed of snow with a gaze that struggled to keep conscious, extending his pale arm out into the atmosphere to feel the snowflakes melt at his touch. While he was so sure that it was raining and not snowing, he was even surer of a greater truth. Something that he could not remember vividly, but was still certain of nonetheless.

He was certain that he had died.

He was stiff and couldn't move a single muslce in his body. The only movements was capable of making was, perhaps, tilting his head and moving his eyes. There was no feeling in his fingers or toes and moving them hurt more than keeping them still. If he really, truly was alive, then he would soon be no more than a corpse at this rate.

He couldn't tell how long he had been lying there and never truly mulled over it until the tumbling of feet trudged in the distance. Someone was approaching and surprised him enough that he was able to break his infatuated gaze from the sky and attempt to look for them with what little motion he was capable of. He looked and looked until he had finally saw them. It was a palanquin—something someone would normally see in countries like Desierto, Joya, and even Midi if you looked hard enough. But this snow wasn't a Desiertian or Joyan snow, for those places hardly ever see so much white. But wait—Desierto? Joya? Midi? These were the names of nations! States! Civilizations! And he was able to remember them. The more he was able to make connections to these names, the more he was beginning to wonder just where he was. Suddenly, his urge to call out to these people was irresistible.

"ₚₗₑₐₛₑ...ᵢ...ₐₛₛᵢₛₜₐₙ꜀ₑ, ₚₗₑₐₛₑ...ₚₗₑₐₛₑ..." he called out hoarsely with all energy he had contained within his person. But even then, the voice was dying and whispering, and maybe couldn't have been heard by anyone even if they hovered over him.

When the words first came out of his mouth, he felt how cold the air was and how dry his throat was. It felt raw and devoid of moisture, and his lips felt so dry that they were beginning to crack. His breaths were soft and suppressed, a small white cloud protruding from them and into the chilly atmosphere.

"ᵢ... ᵣₑqᵤᵢᵣₑ... ₐₛₛᵢₛₜₐₙ꜀ₑ... ₚₗₑₐₛₑ..." the man struggled to speak again, pausing in between words to breathe and exhale as if every syllable was taxing, "ₚₗₑₐₛₑ...ₕₐᵥₑ ₘₑ...ᵣ꜀ᵧ..."

While the color returned to his body, the vigor seemed most delayed. Before he knew it, he was inside the very foreign vehicle he was thinking about just moments before, and with a busty maiden to add. He looked down and stared at his lap and—a toga, was it? An article of clothing that seemed even more foreign than the palanquin and sent him further down a spiral of confusion in the subject of just where exactly he was. Regardless, the feeling of the wool against his naked body warm and pillowlike. It certainly made him more comfortable, but somehow he still felt raw and open with it on. All of his senses seemed absent, making him look only more colorful than he was when he was caked in snow. Now, sinking into the seat of the palanquin, he appeared no different than an aesthetically pleasing corpse.

His throat still felt raw and swollen, but his words no longer felt suppressed. "Where. . . am I?" he sputtered quietly. It had been clear that introduction never seemed to cross his mind. He never asked himself who he was or why he was out there and instead seemed plainly fixated on his location and his surroundings. The snow, his senses, his vigor—they all trumped over formalities at that moment.

The man found it difficult to muster up the strength to sustain eye contact with the busty maiden. His eyes kept opening and closing until he had finally decided to keep them closed. His breathing was deep and silent, inhaling the warm air of the palanquin. The disparity of temperature between the palanquin and the mountain seemed insurmountable, leaving him to almost let himself get carried away in the palanquin's warmth. The way his chest would inflate with the warm air, pause, and deflate was cutely reminiscent of a unfortunate soul finally finding relief. He looked. . . at ease.

Mt. Hakobe rang no bells and there was no such mountains of that name in Pergrande, or as far as he was aware. This must've been some other land, far, far away from his own. Without urgency, he murmured to the busty maiden once more. "Please tell me. . . what country is this. . .?" he spoke weakly. While conscious, the man did not seem completely present. There were sporadic pauses in between his words in order to muster strength for the next, and he reclined into the seat with acute weakness. His blonde hair was unkempt and wet with melted snow, his voice dry, hoarse, and throat devoid of moisture.

"No position"? What was this maiden on about? Was a bewildered man saved from the wintry hazards of the mountain not entilted to at least that much? Whatever her reasoning might've been, it obviously didn't seem to quite register with the blonde-haired man as he went on again over the same question.

"Is this not. . . Pergrande?" he queried again, seeming to not having heard the busty maiden's question. The main waited patiently for his answer as he continued to mull over nothing and indulge in his sense now having returned. He was beginning to realize how terribly famished and thirsty he was after being saved from the cold. His head thumped and ached and he could hardly focus on anything but his location, so he continued to ask, adamant in receiving an answer.

"Your ignorance caused your death. Even in such a weak and feeble state, you will notice my beauty or be punished."

The words rang in his ears for many moments as the busty maiden threw him and one of her slaves from the palanquin and back into the snow to freeze. Having his senses returned, it made the cold all the more unbearable. After just having found relief in the warmth of his vehicle was he cast away back into the wintry torture. He would burn the woman's face into his memory, and not by his own volition.

In these compromising circumstances, there were a great many things that one could be feeling after being rejected relief in such a way—the woman beside him was weeping horribly. It was all that she could do, after all. She suddenly had no interest in him as her sympathies dissipated, and the terror in her eyes spread into her expression. "Oh, I'm going to die up here!" is what she was thinking. It's what anyone would be thinking if they were tossed away like that. But he was different—his question still had not been answered, after all.

The blonde-haired, toga-dressed man let his face sink into the snow and his blood run cold again, succumbing to the mountain's bitter temperatures amidst his bewilderment. The slave was no longer there when he looked to see her and probably left to find shelter, and he was left whispering to him like a madman on his deathbed.

"Wₕₑᵣₑ ₐₘ ᵢ....Wₕₑᵣₑ... ₐₘ...ᵢ...? Wₕₑᵣₑ...Wₕₑᵣₑ...ᵢ..."

"Wₕₑᵣₑ...Wₕₑᵣₑ...ᵢ..." the frozen man continued to mumble gibberish, his voice so wry and quiet that it was muffled silent by even the softest of breezes.

Something hot. Something hot began to caress him.

. . .

. . .

. . .

And yet again, something hot warmed his core and elevated him to a brink a step further from death's unfriendly but welcoming gates. His eyes were open but saw nothing. Nothing but an open sky overcast with snow clouds, that is. So maybe in that way, they saw something, but his neck was too weak, too stiff to turn and see anything else. The frozen man let the snowflakes fall and melt on his pale flesh as it slowly regained some of its color.

. . .

. . .

. . .

Someone was holding him. He didn't realize it because of how the snow froze him numb, but someone was holding him. It was a gentle, maternal embrace, a sort of gesture that even the death-stricken man could register. It was an embrace so warm and comforting that he felt like falling asleep right then and there, but it was so pleasant that he felt compelled to keep awake through it.

The blonde man's body continues to warm and regain some small, minute amount of color. Enough for the words that slipped through his throat no longer to sound parched and dry, but quiet and struggling instead. Enough for his eyes to move to the very brink of the sides of his socket to behold the embracer, but not enough for his head or neck to move with it.

He could hardly see them, and not knowing what to say, decided to continue babbling his earlier question with an amount of strength greater than before. "Where. . . am I. . . please. . . where. . . where. . . I. . . where am I. . . please. . . please. . . please. . ."