Fanfic:Hope and Dreams
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The woman who had once been Amora slumped against the wooden wall of her room. Her emerald eyes that had once glittered with purpose now half-closed. Her raven black hair that had once been long and finely trimmed, fixed upon her head with firedrops, moonstones, and pears now was cut raggedly short to her jaw bone and brushed with wings of white above her ears. Although her face was forever ageless, she could nearly feel where the wrinkles would have left traces across her forty-two year old skin. She no longer noticed how her family rings were missing from her fingers, or thought of where her clothing had been sold to years ago. Those were irrelevant thoughts that she had long dismissed with futile concepts such as family and friends. The thick dark gray dress of a damane covered her body now roughly scratching against her skin. Her neck bore the callus of a damane where the a'dam rubbed with every turn of her head. When she was ordered to speak, she had managed to haltingly mimic the slurred Seanchan tongue. It had been years since she had adapted to these changes and years since she had thought of her past before this life as anything more than a dream. This . . . dream, that must be tightly controlled.
The renamed Cassandra lifted her eyes up to the small circular porthole window where the stars shone like diamonds in the sky. She made no effort to stand and look outside, knowing that the a'dam would prevent her from reaching the wooden boundary. Outside was only an endless expanse of sea reaching forever into the horizon. And yet, even as she leaned against the wall like a rag doll, she watched the stars. They glittered distantly; if she focused on them she could find a brief moment of peace. She traced the seams between the floorboards absently with her fingertips.
Her blinks became more frequent and lasted longer. She shook her head sharply to stay awake. But eventually she submitted to sleep and a dark curtain pulled over her eyes.
Her past was a dream, yet her dreams were always of the past. Long ago she had begun to look to the past, not the future, for hope; always and only in dreams. For even as she was property and fulfilled the wishes of her sul'dam by day, at night she could recall the woman she once was and even assume her form. At night she saw old friends, family, in safe and familiar places. She held her babies again and embraced her husband. She drifted now between sleep and awake as the wooden floor beneath her swayed like a cradle . . .
She drifted between slavery and freedom.
