Dissonance

The chessboard was crystal and set on either side with clear and white frosted pieces. The board itself mirrored the crystal of its pieces and sat upon a pedestal of black and white, stark and clearly out of place in the middle of the sands that stretched for countless miles in either direction.

So bright was the sun that she could barely see beyond the chess board. It became the focal point of her world and she approached it with all the uncertainty that had long ago taken over who she was, that had smothered who she had been.

She looked to the frosted pieces, but she knew that that was not her side of the board. Not anymore.

She looked to the clear pieces and found the direction she desired, but her gaze inevitably turned to the center of the board. No move had yet been made, the pawns lined up pristine and waiting upon their individual squares. It seemed right that it be thus, though she could remember the last time she had seen this chessboard.

The pieces had been lying upon the ground, scattered in an apparent rage.

She blinked, her eyes stinging in the light, and beheld again the chessboard as it sat before her, its pieces arrayed and prepared for battle. She reached forward, impulsively, for the clear Knight nearest her but when her fingers closed on nothing she drew her hand back.

There was no clear Knight.

...though the opposing white Knight had drawn forward, to sit alone in the middle of the board.

* * *

She awoke with a start, though it did not hold the same sort of violence that accompanied her typical nightmares. She had long gotten used to them, used to waking in such a manner, though it never became any easier to find herself alone at such times.

The difference, this time, seemed to lie in the air.

The desert was there, dry and warm, instead of the empty hallways. There was no rain pattering upon her window, no forest scent, and though the chill that had long ago set its claws in her remained an ever present sensation, she dared to hope that the desert might help banish it. That it might return color and life to her world.

She slid from the bed and padded across the room, grabbing up a light robe to drape around herself as she did so, and listened at the window without surprise to the sounds of a kingdom at war - even in the dead of night.

It was one thing to witness it in Verminasia, the dark city never seemed to sleep even when war was not on the horizon, but in New Thalos, it struck her as out of place.

A dissonance in paradise.

It was no wonder she was dreaming of chessboards, though the connotations of her dream left her feeling restless.