Jen's Legacy.

Claire was dazed, still recovering from that dream. It had been too real and too easily remembered in all of its details, unlike most other dreams which she always had difficulty recalling.

One thought continued to rumble around in her mind... time is running out. She had an obligation to fulfill before noon. Except, it had only been a dream. But it had been more than a dream, and more than any dream she had ever had before.

It was also later in the morning than she’d realized but was still early. The storm had passed, and the sun was already above the horizon, but there was also snow on the ground.

She pulled back, closed her eyes and curled up even smaller.

She didn’t feel stiff or uncomfortable from lying on that hard ground, but that was because she had lain for most of the night across Royce, supported upon his body for both warmth and comfort. In her half-sleep she had constantly been aware of that, with his hands holding her close, cradling her, caressing her, touching her. He had encouraged her to lie over him like that so that she could sleep.

He had often touched her and set her squirming in his constant exploration of her body, never able to leave her alone, but especially down there as she relaxed into him, slowly getting her used to him opening her up for discovery, or just holding her between her legs with his fingers always touching along her and into her as they constantly changed position.

They… she… had been so tired after the last two days that she’d neglected everything she had intended to have happen between them before now, happy to let him do everything, knowing that it would soon happen, but that was not good enough now.

She analyzed what she could feel of her body, including a tingling beneath her right breast where Jen had touched her. Or had that been in her imagination; the power of self-suggestion, sympathetic magic, and if… a big 'if'… Jen (if it had been Jen) even had a birthmark where it had been? She would check herself there, or Royce could when she climbed out and sat by the fire and asked him. He would always want to touch her breasts to find out anything and everything, and would then go on to touch her everywhere else as he kissed her.

That dream sequence kept coming back to nag at her as she went over in her mind what had been said, as the proceedings had moved forward. What had the magistrate meant when he castigated her as he had, telling her that she had been entrusted with the task of rescuing that man; meaning Royce, and saving him from what he intended to do with himself in his moment of inconsolable grief?

The subconscious mind was a strange thing; triggering dreams; as long-forgotten memories or shreds of them became reborn. It was also able to blend the real, with the imaginary; to distill monsters from thin air, give life to all of one’s deepest fears (like being completely naked in the midst of clothed strangers, or in front of those you knew or worked with, and somehow they ignored your nakedness and your obvious embarrassment). It was also able to make the impossible, possible; to slow, time… bringing everything from the background to the fore when you were asleep; allow you get lost in a fantasy you were sometimes able to choose.

The mind at that time was capable of bringing the most inconsequential detail into bright focus and magnifying a small problem into a large one, and vice versa.

Except… that dream had been unlike any dream she’d ever had before. Too real. Too much well-remembered detail, not woolly enough.

And Jen had been there, walking with her, conversing with her. Maybe.

Subconscious memories.

Her reading that difficult note that Royce had written to Jen and their baby, had very likely tweaked some sensitivity within her, and had sparked that dream about him and that love he and Jen had shared, and with her, Claire (this one, not the other one), desperately wanting to save him from that, and to step into Jen’s shoes while not displacing Jen at all. Jen was too important a part of his life, and possibly of hers too.

That letter was what must have caused that dream. The reason Jen had been in that dream with her had been because of that letter and nothing else. Claire decided that there really was no deeper destiny here that had been hinted at. She was not on a special mission and had not been given any such task to rescue Royce, as they’d said she was.

She intended to rescue him anyway, but it had nothing to do with destiny, or fate. It had all been happenstance. Serendipitous happenstance. Sheer, bloody good luck that they'd even met as they had.

She had been on holiday and had fallen into the river… and then the rest of it. Nothing more than that.

She paused, remembering how real, certain elements of that dream had been.

Maybe there was an undercurrent of something here that she wasn’t aware of. Maybe all lives were actually being subtly guided in some way by greater forces in the universe, and that those living them didn’t know about. An ordained fate, guided by some almighty hand. The centuries-old love-of-superstitions, determining horoscopes, casting bones, groping in the warm entrails of chickens for guidance, communicating with the dead by way of Ouija boards and through Mediums.

That was too deep to even want to think about.

Everything had happened by accident. Claire had left her place on the raft to help Elinor. She had gone overboard. She had been rescued. She had fallen in love with her rescuer.

Neat, simple, plausible. And she, and not some trumped-up court of Dynasty Protection (stupid concept) would dictate where it went from here, even if her goals, and the goals of that court were the same (that she would be fucked. She still didn't like to think of that demeaning concept using that word, but that was what it was all leading to).

The cleverest part of that dream had been learning from Jen—her subconscious again—and she would do whatever was necessary to save Royce from his grief, and what Jen had suggest made sense, but had obviously already been lurking in her own desperate mind after so many failures-to-launch properly.

The one thing they had all agreed upon, was that she had limited time to do what was needed. That strange auction still got to her.

She stretched to wake up better, sensing more about her own body. Nothing had happened between her and Royce last night. Damn! Another twelve hours lost.

She was partially dressed again, remembering that she’d needed to go again during the night, not so very long ago, so he had dressed her in her warm shirt, leaving it open on her, and helped her again, with his jacket around him this time, as he‘d stayed with her. As before he'd knelt in front of her, moving over her as he had the first time, to keep the weather off her as he warmed her body with his own, kissing her breasts, kissing her, kissing her everywhere.

It had been easier to pee that time than the time before, but she didn’t remember coming back to where she was now, and she didn't remember if he'd also peed, as he had that first time. She must have been very tired.

She checked herself farther, discovering that her body was still as it had been—another damn!—still unchanged in that one important regard; still tight (she would have known if that other had happened), still unprepared for what she wanted to have happen between them; remembering that he would not willingly hurt her, no matter the forces driving him along.

It would still have to depend upon her.

Jen’s way had been the only way to do it, but it would still hurt… if that had been Jen telling her about that place… Castleton, and the waterproof ponchos, and the way they had done it under there after getting rid of all of their clothes.

She could always ask Royce.

No! Slow-down girl!

That might provoke more than she was ready to deal with. He might snap, and go back to where he had been—that dark place—and she would lose all of the progress she had made with him. She was already walking on a knife edge with all of these new sensations and what she was learning about him and about herself and what she now wanted out of a life she'd suddenly been awoken to. She had to complete what she had begun without complicating it with all of this other crap. It was already complicated enough.

He had to make love to her, and soon, and he would. Only then would she feel that she had achieved that major goal of binding him emotionally to her, inescapably.

They had still come a long way in just a few days. What they had already accomplished together, even without that greater intimacy between them, was shocking for her to contemplate and to admit to. They'd had two full days that had completely changed the last twenty years of her upbringing, and switched it onto a new track.

In her sheer naivete, nothing that had happened between them had been familiar to her, and nothing could have prepared her for it, but what had happened had been necessary and pleasurable in a strangely violent way, especially at the end when he had… ejaculated. And he had done that enough times in his excitement as they'd got ever closer together.

In those intimately heated interactions between them--which would only improve--all emotions were laid bare; as bare as their perspiring bodies moving together; coming up for air and to breath after each heated round of interpersonal combat; but now a new wrinkle had been thrown into this interaction; that dream. She kept coming back to it.

…If what had happened in that dream truly meant anything.

…If Jen had really been the one in that dream.

… if, if, if. Too many ‘ifs’.

She had to believe that it all had meant something, even if she didn’t understand it. It had been too real to easily ignore.

There was a simple test. All she had to do was to ask Royce about Jen and certain things she remembered. That birthmark under her breast for one. Ask if he’d ever been to Castleton.

No. She’d gone over this, a few moments before. She had more to lose than to gain. Let things go where they would and don’t make them any more complicated than they already were.

She reached out to find him (the sleeping bag was confined enough that he had to be close and even touching her somewhere), to encourage him to come close to her again, to kiss each other and… the rest of it.

Nothing. He’d left only a few moments before. Where he had lain was still warm. He could not have gone very far and would soon be back, she knew that, after what they had begun.