Her nerves were frayed and deep circles were under those cornflower blue eyes. No one had helped her through this, and that was because she didn’t know she was cursed. She was too proud to seek help and didn’t want to admit she was plagued by nightmares.
The Emperor was too busy, and she wouldn’t go running to tell him of her nightmares, but her belief in her god made her wonder if he knew what was happening to her. Even the temptation to go to Barador the savage was resisted. The independent bard knew how powerful he was and how he helped her in the past.
Sleep was becoming a temptation, and she was becoming weak without it. Yet that very tempter led her back up the palace stairs where she crawled into bed fully clothed. Craving the embrace of a good night’s rest her eyes closed drinking in the darkness like a veil closing over her mind.
Soon enough the crooked finger of the tempter had her drifting off into slumber, and instead of the embrace of sleep she fell into the nightmarish hell of S`otanath's curse which took over once again.
Blue ocean waters showed off the new palace from the sea. She could see the ship sailing with the Emperor and his slaves. Bennu’s dark hair blew in the wind and laeral served wine, bread, and cheese upon the deck of the ship. The Emperor’s strong arms were around his slaves, and the ship sailed smoothly through the water.
Tehya wasn’t on the ship but was in the water swimming furiously and getting nowhere to catch up, each stroke in the water kept her in the same place. It was tiring and she began to lose her strength even though she was a good swimmer. Gigantic waves crashed upwards and swallowed her whole.
Sinking into the water she gasped and spit out water when she could manage to get to the surface. Her arms ached and she began to sink underneath, frantically moving her arms to only find herself captured in the crawling dark green seaweed.
Trying to hold her breath was becoming less and less likely, and she felt her lungs filling up with water. The seaweed was a menacing jailer keeping her underwater as she began to drown. Beautiful sea creatures swam around her, and she could see herself in the nightmare becoming blue and discolored. Those pretty blue eyes grotesquely protruded, and her mouth gaped open for one last attempt to breathe.
Tehya’s body was wound up in the seaweed, but became different, instead of legs she had a mermaid’s tail and her breasts were much fuller with dark blue nipples. The ship she had watched sailing to the new palace was overhead, and the rudder under the ship snagged the seaweed only to drag her along. Her body slammed into every large fish and plant life in the sea, and those bulging blue eyes of death could see everything around her.
When the ship reached shore somehow she was dragged along with the people getting off the ship, but way far in the back. Sand and flowers were plowed with her lifeless mermaid body until she was lying in the courtyard where the real statue of the mermaid was going to be placed.
Instead; the dead body of the bard decorated the courtyard, seaweed still clinging to her, and the stench of death the only thing portraying the mermaid was not of stone.
Choking and holding her throat she woke up from the nightmare, drenched in sweat no doubt, but she was wringing wet upon her bed becoming extremely weak without the rest she needed.