A Dazzling Haze

And there's a dazzling haze, a mysterious way about you, dear
Have I known you twenty seconds or twenty years?

The first time it happened I was twenty, spending my summer week between semesters at Basgiath on a school-sanctioned visit to the Barrens Reclamation Area. Archaeology wasn't relevant to my degree at all but I'd been raised by a historian and what's the point of having a parent who teaches if I can't worm my way into his fancy school trips?

"We're pairing you up with graduate students since you're only here for a week," was the instruction, and everyone else got paired off before. For a few minutes it didn't look like they'd have a partner for me, which was only fair since I was the only one here who didn't need the credits for my degree.

"Don't worry, Brandon, we'll find you someone," my dad reassured me as if he thought I was worried about it.

The local woman running the place decided she was completely uninterested in having an undergrad running around unsupervised, however, and she leaned out into the hall and hollered, "Aisreigh! Get your arse in here!"

I was mostly just sitting back, trying to look like I wasn't worth the fuss since I didn't want to make trouble for my dad. Not sure what to expect, I wondered if she had a spare grad student tucked away somewhere or something. The man she'd called Aisreigh walked in the room, laughing and arguing with her at the same time about something he was supposed to be doing, and the air left my lungs so fast Loial must have shot me in the chest with an arrow.

It wasn't that he was good looking- though I should say it wasn't justthat he was good looking, because he wasn't built like a model but I was definitely attracted to him. His hair was dark, his eyes were dark, his skin was a sunkissed brown that was probably normal for folks here who worked in the desert all day but would have stood out back in Basgiath.

He had clearly lost the argument, not that he'd seemed to be seriously arguing with her, and he reached out to take my hand and pull me out of the chair so he could get the tour over with. And then time stopped.

I've heard of love at first sight, sure, and of feeling like Loial's arrow has hit you, but never expected the two to combine so viscerally. Suddenly I couldn't breathe. My chest felt like it'd been cracked open, my lungs torn apart and my ribs sharp inside me. The man I'd just met was holding me and screaming a name, my name but not my name, covered in blood that I knew was my blood. I couldn't breathe and the harder my body tried the more it hurt, fire in my veins and my nerves, everything twisted up and wrong.

The moment, the vision, whatever it was… it passed, and I was just standing there, staring at him. I was back in the conference room full of folding chairs with this stranger's hands tight around mine like he would never let go.

I realized my dad and his colleagues were watching us, and I needed to say something. Anything, really, though my chest stil hurt and breathing was currently about as simple as theoretical physics.

"Naolin," I managed, my throat raw. My stomach lurched even as my brain and my lungs were disagreeing about whether they were working.

"Brennan?" he asked, quiet, almost reverent, and something was very wrong in my head because that wasn't my name, that was the way people mis-said my name all the time and it had always made me feel like my skin didn't fit quite right when they did. But in Naolin's mouth it felt right despite everything else in my body feeling wrong and the room starting to spin around me.

"Are you two okay?" my dad asked from behind me. The woman who'd called Naolin in laughed at us both.

"Oh, Aisreigh has that effect on a lot of the student workers who come through here," she said, winking at me.

"I don't think this is what you're thinking of," I said, or tried to say. What came out was more of a hacking cough, like something was lodged in my throat and my body was trying to get it out.

I doubled over and suddenly my hands were wet and sticky and red, and Naolin was staring at me with pure horror on his face as my blood spattered across his t-shirt.

"Hells, Bran, sit back down," my father said, pushing me back into the hard plastic folding chair. Once my hands had been ripped from Naolin's, the worst of the dizziness subsided. My dad crouched in front of me like I was ten with a bloody nose again, handing me his handkerchief.

A minute later, Naolin reappred with a glass of water and then the woman returned with an older man she said was in charge of first aid for the site. He told me to nod yes or shake my head before launching into a barrage of questions: had a I eaten anything unusual, swallowed anything, had I been coughing before I arrived, did I have a history of this kind of thing? My father answered most of them for me, supplementing my headshake nos.

Somehow I knew Naolin was still nearby, hovering out of the way, and I was glad for it. I drank more water and it helped, because when I coughed again it was without any dramatics.

"Take him back to student housing and have him lie down same as you would if he was drunk," the man finally told Naolin. The promise of laying down made me feel a little better already, even if my head was still spinning gently.

"I'll put him in my room for now," Naolin told my father. "I have a couch in there I can sleep on, and I'll keep an eye on him, and it'll keep the noise down so he can rest."

"If you're sure," my father said, already being pulled in half a dozen directions by paperwork.

Naolin let me lean on his arm as he walked me over to the dormitories. I tried to make words but nothing sensible seemed to come out of my mouth. Certainly no questions. I wasn't sure if I was even managing words.

He unlocked a door that looked like any of the others. The room inside looked solidly lived in, so I could guess he'd been here longer than just a semester, but it didn't tell me much else. My head was still swimming too badly to read the titles on the spines of the books.

"Rest now," he said, setting me down on his bed. Whatever couch he'd told my father about was forgotten. "I'll answer your questions when you wake up."