Dashyl’s Quest

Dashyl opened his eyes. He was incredibly thirsty. His tongue felt swollen and his head hummed with the hammering of bells. The boy immediately wanted to die. A raspy moan escaped his lips. He blinked his eyes rapidly. The room was spinning and he couldn’t focus on anything.

“He’s awake,” he heard another voice say. A concerned voice, one he didn’t know. Dashyl closed his eyes and waited for the one who spoke to say more to him, but there was nothing more said. The boy fell back asleep.

He awoke again, this time to darkness, still with his head hurting and his throat parched. At least his vision wasn’t spinning. Phaeton’s greenish-blue light cut squares into the floor where it came in through one of the windows in the room. In the darkness, through his blurry vision, Dashyl figured out he was lying on one of many beds in long corridor of a room. The bed next to him didn’t seem to have anyone in it. A figure in robes looked to be sleeping on a chair next to the doorway on the other side of Dashyl’s bed. It was quiet. There was no one stirring, no carapids singing in the night. This unsettled the boy. It had been quite some time since he had slept where he couldn’t hear the familiar chirp of carapids calling back and forth.

Where was he? He had no memory of this place. He felt like he hadn’t even dreamed in a long time. Dashyl tried to gauge the time of year from Phaeton’s phase, but what the small planet-sized moon told him only confused him. Could he really have been asleep for so long? It was hard to think, his head rang. Next to his bed was a cup of water. His throat scratched each time he swallowed, but the water tasted so good.  He felt a little relieved and relaxed enough to drift off again watching the squares of light move slowly across the floor.