The Nightmare

A bit of pre-writing from a book I am working on. An excerpt, though I'm not sure I'll be keeping it in the book itself -- hence, posting it up.

The heat from the red-hot fires of the forge burned against Reese's cold forehead, but he hammered away at the steel ingot upon his anvil regardless. It was tiring work, and it seemed like his strikes weren't quite hitting their mark, as though they were colliding with an invisible barrier an inch above the orange metal. He looked around, but his surroundings were blurry. The only clear objects were his anvil and the forge.

He turned at the sound of a door opening behind him, and he saw a man standing in the doorway with a bottle of fire-water. The man's face was blank, as though Reese's mind had blocked it out, but somehow he knew who it was. His father stepped forward and started to speak. His voice was murky but loud, and there was anger seeping into the gibberish he was spouting.

"Leave me alone," Reese heard himself say as he turned back to his anvil. "I know what I'm doing."

"You're doing it all wrong," his father said more clearly. "Why aren't you doing it like I taught you?"

The ringing from his hammer against the hot metal escalated from a soft ping into a sharp clang, and continued to crescendo. His ears were beginning to hurt, and he had to shout in order to hear himself over his father's yelling. But he couldn't make out what his father was saying, and he no longer knew his own words. He dropped his hammer and clapped his hands to his ears with no change in the clanging or the shouts from behind. Everything blurred further and further, with the noise piercing his ears and shaking him to his core.

Then something hit him across the back of his head like a sledgehammer and he spiraled forward into a black pit. He squeezed his eyes shut and let himself fall, until he hit the ground.

The noise had stopped. He opened his eyes and looked up. There was light everywhere. Blue skies and puffy white clouds floated high above him as he lay in a sea of green grass. He stared into the blue abyss and felt himself drifting away.

Then, Veroni's face appeared above him. His heart jumped, and he could feel his pulse in the back of his head. She smiled down at him, her brown tresses tickling his face as her eyes, as bright blue as the sky, stared into his own. His head was resting in her lap, her hands over his ears. She laughed, but he couldn't hear her voice. He reached up and touched her face, and she lifted a hand from his ear to press his hand against her cheek. Her mouth moved.

"Wake up."