The icy water enveloped her like a dark black curtain, swallowing her up, pulling her down into the cold depths. She thrashed and kicked, lungs burning in her chest, but it was useless. The surface was only getting farther and farther away. With open, outstretched fingers, she reached for the stray bits of moonlight that tried to pierce through the inky murkiness of the water. But she could only watch them drift out of her grasp. Panic sunk in its vice like grip as she twisted and writhed against the inevitable.
Nairi jolted from her sleep, greeted with a jarring headache as she did so. A cold sweat beaded across her forehead and down her neck. How many years had it been since she had had that nightmare? And yet all the familiar fear and panic came seeping back in, settling into their old hewn out crevices of her mind. Nairi slowly sank back down, trying to force back the pounding in her head by squeezing her eyes as tight as she possibly could. The dark room swam about her, walls as liquid as the waves from her nightmare.
"Your head is going to feel like someone is banging on it with a mallet for a while longer," a disembodied voice announced, "If I were you, I would just lie there and not move unless you have to."
Nairi, slowly and carefully, turned her head in the direction of the voice, trying to make the hammering inside her skull any worse. A dim flickering light exposed the fact that she was not by herself. Nairi could only make out shadows of a figure on what looked like a sliding wooden frame covered in a long sheet of parchment. However, the more Nairi tried to focus, the worse her head throbbed.
"Where am I?" Nairi asked, her hoarse voice barely making its way out of a dry throat.
"My house." was the answer that she got in return.
"Your house?"
"Of course. I bought you. My house was the most logical place to put you. Besides, I'm sure that you have had your fill of sleeping on dungeon floors and sharing living space with rats."
Nairi tried to remember, but everything was so hard to grasp. She remembered a dungeon and guards dressed in chainmail that had seen better days. But again, her aching head made it impossible for Nairi to navigated the melted haze that was her jumbled memory.
"You will remember soon enough," the person responded, almost as if Nairi's struggle to remember was audible, "I do apologize for your current state. I usually measure sleeping droughts impeccably. However, the clothes you were wearing did not show just how skinny you really are."
Nairi closed her eyes, lying still as her head pulsed like a biologic metronome.There was a quiet scratching noise that could be heard when everything fell silent, like a fountain pen going across parchment. The soft noise outside the walls sounded like rain. Nairi slowly began to realize that she did not recognize her surroundings at all.
"You bought me?"
The words came out of her mouth very slow, as if the concept of such a thing could not be comprehended.
