Tabun, Yume

She was 17 again and back in the stone forest, that field of decayed sandstone pillars north of the city where she had wasted her youth.

A giant green centipede had swallowed Minas. She could see him floating within the monster's goopy body, surrounded by strange and colorful organs shaped like pyramids and spirals and other geometric contortions she couldn't have named. He was panicking, but seemed to be able to breathe. Uatchita widened her stance and readied her sword. Around her, her friends were also getting into position.

Zaid slowly walked backwards, gesturing with his gloved hands as the air above the creature began to flicker with a heat that could be felt across the battlefield. It suddenly vanished as he stumbled over a collapsed column on the ground. A tiny surprised squeak left his lips. He landed on his back and started flailing around his arms like a flipped-over beetle, unable to get up.

Hamza came rushing in with a war cry, banging the tenderizer they had stolen from their father's shop down on the beast's head. It barely reacted. Its flesh gave way to the hammer, expanding slightly on the sides to compensate for the space it occupied, but it remained ungashed once the tenderizer had gone through and hit the sand. Hamza's guttural scream went up into a question, which answered itself after a moment's hesitation with another scream as they hammered away at the monster with renewed ferocity.

While Hamza was pointlessly clobbering the beast's head, Uatchita tried isolating the segment of its body that contained her brother. His wide-open eyes closely followed her blade as it drew circles around him, but every gap she managed to create was promptly filled by more goop. It was useless. She caught movement in the corner of her right eye and spun around, just in time to catch the beast's tail stinger with her blade and, after a short struggle, wrestle it to the ground.

The pebble Abla had just shot into the creature had struck one of the colorful organs. Still, the creature showed no signs of having been damaged. The pebble began spinning and flung itself from organ to organ, none of them eliciting any reaction from the monster. Minas flinched and closed his eyes as the pebble blew just past his head, aiming for a red, ball-shaped organ behind him. The instant the pebble touched it, the monster's body spasmed involuntarily. 

Even though she had never turned around to see it, Uatchita perfectly knew the expression Abla must have made at that moment. Her dream confirmed her suspicions as it zoomed in on Abla's emaciated face. It was half-obscured by the column, but still noticeably wearing that wry, ever so slight smile of satisfaction she had once found so endearing. 

The pebble began spinning faster and faster, digging its way into the ball-shaped organ. The monster convulsed violently. Its form grew more undefined by the second. Arms of goo struck out from its body. One of them knocked over Hamza, who was still mindlessly hammering down on the beast's head. Finally, the monster exploded, covering all of them in a green goo that vaguely smelled like the dizzying afternote of a soap bath. Minas sat in the sand, hugging his legs to his chest.

Uatchita crouched down and put her hand on his shoulder.

"You alright?"

Before he could reply, Hamza had jumped up and bent over him. 

"What the hell, man!?"

Uatchita glared up at them.

"Hamza!"

Hamza straightened out to their full height, which still left them only about a head above the crouching siblings. They put their hands on their hips and blew a strain of curled red hair out of their face.

"No, I mean it! Why do we have to keep babysitting your little bro? He always gets us into trouble!"

Uatchita scoffed.

"Oh, please! What did you even contribute this time, meathead? How many attempts did you think it would have taken for your head-bashing tactic to start doing anything?"

Hamza's face took on the color of their hair.

"W-well, at least I didn't get swallowed by a monster!"

"That could have happened to any one of us."

"Nope!"

Hamza pointed at Zaid, whom Abla was currently helping up.

"This guy's way too big to have fit in that thing's mouth!"

Zaid nodded sagely. Uatchita rolled her eyes and turned back to Minas.

"Don't let them get to you."

Minas shook his head, still looking down at the ground.

"No, it's ok. I understand why they hate me..."

Hamza raised their eyebrows.

"Wait a sec, 'hate'...?"

Minas ignored them and turned his head upwards to meet Uatchita's eyes, a shy smile on his face.

"I know I'm useless. But that's okay. As long as you-"

"Does he need to be patched up?"

Abla was waving her bag of bandages and soothing gels at them. Her chestnut hair framed her long face and ended at her shoulders in a perfectly even-cut bob, which stayed in position even as her head jittered, dragged along by the jerky motion of her shoulders. Uatchita had always found there to be something hypnotic about it. Minas managed to pull himself up on her shoulders and shouted:

"No, I'm fine!"

Abla seemed relieved. Zaid piped up with a high-pitched, whiny voice.

"Alright, let's get moving then..."

His massive body was further puffed out by his bulky clothes, which he had bought from a merchant visiting from the northern continent. In combination with his tired, bright blue eyes and oily blonde hair, they made him seem hopelessly out of place in the desert.

"Please, we've been looking for this thing for two hours already... If we don't find it soon, I'm heading home. I seriously can't stand these clothes anymore..."

Uatchita could empathize. Elemental magic worked by using the presence of an element within the caster's body to manipulate its presence in their surroundings. Fire magicians could raise the body temperature of an enemy to boil them from the inside, turn a simple sunbeam into a death ray, or create frightening light shows. To do these things, however, they had to expend the fire within themselves, causing their body temperature to drop rapidly. There were multiple methods to combat this. Zaid had chosen the most common approach, but also one of the most uncomfortable.

Abla gently patted his back. 

"Don't worry, we're almost there. I'm sure."

He gave her an annoyed look and grumbled to himself.

"You know, you've been saying that for a while now... It's always like this... Next time, I'm staying home. You can beg all you want..."

Hamza laughed heartily.

"Us, beg you? Isn't it the other way around? It's always the same: You cry and complain and curse us out, but once we start planning our next trip, you're the first one out the door! Maybe we should leave you home next time, eh? "

Zaid seemed insulted and opened his mouth to make a retort, but paused. A sheepish smile began spreading over his face.

"Actually, yeah, I guess you're right. Let's just skip all that stuff, then. Wow, guys... I'm super excited for our next trip..."

They all broke out into laughter. This was her group. This was who she had spent the last six years of her life with. 

It would soon come to an end. 

Graduation was drawing near. Hamza had finally made peace with taking over their father's butcher shop. Zaid had already signed up for an apprenticeship at a glassblower. Abla would enroll at the Magician Academy, finally able to fully indulge her bookish nature.

And her?

What was left for Uatchita? Her grades were terrible. Her only saving grace was her skill with the blade, which had taken her to the peak of her school's swordfighting club. The only actual careers that could lead to, however, were in the military, and if she joined the army, her mother would almost definitely have a nervous breakdown. She already broke out into tears every morning when Uatchita left for school, making up all sorts of terrible things that could happen to her. If she actually left to fight in a war... 

No, this was all she had. This, her group, adventuring. Going on little quests after school for any townsfolk willing to humor them. Turning over every last corner of the stone forest in search of anything valuable or interesting, still too intimidated to earnestly investigate the dungeon after 4 years of trips like this. All she had were children's games that imitated heroic fairytales. That was no way to make a living.

Her friends were all still laughing. Maybe if she focused hard enough, she could stretch this laughter out into eternity and dissolve in it, never have to deal with that future she could feel coming at her like a giant white horse with foam at its mouth running at full speed, trampling her without a second thought. 

Her dream didn't grant her this pleasure. 

It jumped ahead... 

skipping over Hamza finding a small pool of black viscous fluid in the shadow of an intricately decorated pillar, skipping over Abla bending down and putting some of it in a vial she stored in her bag, skipping over to the often recalled moment when

She was left alone, standing at the edge of the pool, staring down into the bubbling black liquid. She felt a strong impulse to step in and let it close over her head, become one with it, let it carry her away... After a while, it began staring back at her, staring and smiling: 

a grin of mismatched angular fangs, 
a crooked grimace hovering between arrogance and shyness,
an ever-so-slight smile, certain of having already won.