To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
–Hamlet
Casey stepped out of the shower and looked around. Aerem said she’d be there, ordered by Kenna to keep an eye on him at night, to watch over him as he slept, to keep the Angel of Fire at bay. He’d had a nice, relatively dreamless night’s sleep the last night with Kenna – who merely sat with him. Casey didn’t even think of her having sexually; hell, she was Nelo’s. He’d had these particular jewels for the past 200 years and had grown quite attached to them.
He went out into the room proper and dug out a pair of boxers to sleep in. This was a habit from his soldiering days; he never knew when he would be roused out of sleep suddenly for some reason, and even if he was comfortable with his nudity, the rest of the crew might not be. He looked around again.
He was half-kidding when he told Aerem that he would want her to sleep with her. How would it feel? She – or he, it really didn’t matter to him – was so ethereal, it would probably be putting his arms around a cloud. She was another that he didn’t think of having sexually. She was too cute, in both forms.
He cranked up the a/c for white noise and climbed into bed. He thought of Cedric, hoping he was all right, and he thought of Alex, who had telepathically “hugged” him goodnight a couple of hours ago. He replayed when they were in his room, and after a bout of hot and heavy sex, Alex had turned to him and said, “Casey, I’m yours.”
Gods, what have I gotten myself into…
The world was afire. Casey’s dreamscape was a horrid place, the smoldering ruins of Krakow. He was in a car, with the men of the Zauberer, and they were all picking off people among the ruins, like shooting pigeons in the park. Casey glorified in this: He was SS. He and his men were beyond the Wehrmarcht, the German armed forces. They belonged to the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, the personal praetorian guard of the Fuhrer. They answered only to him. And he was only doing what the Fuhrer ordered –
The car hit a bump and Casey was thrown from it, cracking his head on an exposed stone. A normal man would possibly be dead. The Zauberer continued on without him, and as he sat up, he saw them suddenly swallowed by a huge ball of fire. He felt its heat, felt it almost reaching for him. He thought he saw flaming eyes before he suddenly saw Kenna standing before him, offering him her hand. He took it, and she easily pulled him up, with strength he didn’t know she possessed.
“Was that–“
“It was,” Kenna said gently. “He will bother you no more this eve.” Then she put a hand to his forehead, and everything faded away…
To a dream with a Grinn that had no commitments, and all was happy with the world again.
Words: 523
Comment: Aerem is supposed to have watched Casey all night at Kenna’s behest.