Her vision shifted and it felt like a drum pounding directly behind her eyes. While she was still in the same room, she was aware that she saw what happened through the eyes of another. Sometimes even felt their emotions. She had had these kind of strange and frightening experiences two or three times already in her life and everytime it had just brought her trouble. No one had believed her the first time when she had been only 7 or 8 years old and told that she saw her uncle as a kid while his house looked so different, and their chocobo stables hadn’t been build yet and a kid next to her younger uncle curiously had the same bright green eyes like her father. It felt like a painful dream. Like a straining reverie. Young Thera feared she had gone mad. Adult Thera knew that this was still a possibilty after all she had seen. Like all the unwelcome fits before, this one came in the matter of seconds, as if one word had triggered something in her mind.

“Sae.”

She heard the word spoken by a young voice. A very frightened voice and as the drumming behind her eyes found its rhythm, the scene cleared and she saw a Miqo’te Teenager rolling on the floor clearly in pain. Both of his hands clawed on his throat and his eyes were blootshot, his whole body trembling.

“Rish…ka’sae…run… just run. Please.” choked the boy on the floor, directly and full of fear looking up to her while she felt her body shaking and a drowning flood of emotions that where not her own filled her so deeply that the vision shortly darkened on the edges. The choking boy was lying on the cabin floor near the kitchen. Inside the kitchen, infront of the newer looking countertop stood a Miqo’te woman who snickered and laughed in hideous sounds, her bushy unkempt tail shaking wildly. There was nothing pleasent about her. She laughed while her son died on the floor. The knowledge that the poor kid on the floor was her son was so clear and doubtless in Thera’s mind as if it had always been there. When her vision shifted more closely to the laughing woman, the smothering emotions shortly blurred everything to a deep, dark gray.

”Run! Run! Ahahaha!” just came manically from the woman while the vision moved closer to the suffering Teenager on the floor again. Thera’s own knees, or rather that of Sae came into view as he knelt down beside his brother and just placed one hand clumsily and shakingly on his shoulder as if that would bring him any comfort. Rishka’li clawed at Rishka’sae’s shirt while the poison had already made his whole face blue, his eyes even more red.

“Safe y-yours-self. Get…aw..ay… Rishka’sae.”

His young face was so close. His strained voice nearly a whisper with every word.

“Rishka’sae.”

It was his last word, accompanied by the hideous laughter in the background coming from the kitchen. The vision became blurry, the emotions a nearly unbearable storm she couldn’t control. They grabbed her, shook her, slammed her painfully back into her own body. Into the here and now.

She woke with a painful gasp as if she had been under water too long. Her body hurt where she had hit the ground but even more did her heart hurt. She felt desperate and angry. Helpless and devastated. Her eyes were wet and sore as if she had cried for hours. How much time had passed she didn’t know and when she sat up straight she quickly realized that she was lying on the matress again, the daylight was unchanged from how it was just moments before… and the tall Keeper was still there, standing in the middle of the room with that scowl of his.

“Rishka’sae.” she breathed out that echo jumping around in her ears and mind. She remembered that this must be the full name of the Keeper man. Had she just seen his brother die? And had that manical woman been his mother?

She didn’t have time to think much about it because Sae stiffened noticably and took a step towards her.

“What did you say?” he hissed, so that she almost didn’t understand him. In his eyes was something frightening.

Confused she looked up to him. What was happening here? Please, Rhalgr, just let all this, her flight from the kidnappers, this strange hut, the forest, this pawed man be a stupid dream or a special kind of prank from her brother.

“Rishka’sae… that’s what h-he called you.” she stammered.

That small sentence changed everything. From one second to the next the Keeper’s face became a mask of hate and fury as he bared his imposing fangs, the ears laying so far back into his wild gray hair that they were barely visible anymore. Quite fast he took another step towards her, grabbed her left upper arm and pulled her half up while turning around at the same time and half dragging her to the door. She felt his nails… or claws painfully break her skin through her shirtfabric. This was it. He was going to drag her outside to kill her, Thera thought desperately. She tried to wiggle free but after the door opened, Sae roughly just pushed her outside and gave the lowest, drumming growl she had ever heard from a Miqo’te.

“I don’t know what you are! Stay away!” he hissed furiously at her before he slammed the door shut.

What she was?! Said the guy with pawed feet! For several seconds she didn’t know what to say or do.