Top 10 places to have the curse broken:
10. In a gaudy temple. The fee was exorbitant for something most acolytes can do, but time was of the essence. The higher quality oil they anoint your face and shoulders with smells nice and the sun shines through a stained glass window that has your favorite color.
9. An inn where you've been sweating into the sheets of a rented bed for a few days. The revelry downstairs makes it difficult to hear what the old woman that freed you told your friends. But they look relieved to have you back and you're relieved to be back.
8. Out in a field, where the wild grasses still benefit from the blood that spilled there a lifetime ago. A spirit that looks like you, in a uniform you never wore, grasps your shoulders. You're told to hold tight as the spirit goes to find aid. They never return. You never tell what happened once the others notice your return.
7. Stuck in the middle of a crowd awaiting an execution. The conflict you felt about the punishment disappeared when the blade met the wood beneath. Around you, others blink and shake their heads as if just awaking, feeling the same release as you.
6. On a slab in a morgue. Your returned breath caused the mortuary assistant to drop her tools. The resulting clatter woke you up. She screamed, you fought to remove the sheet covering your face, and the mortician laughed at the both of you when they made it down the steps.
6. In the space that was once your childhood bedroom. It's not a room anymore, the walls fell away to nature or some other force. The metal skeleton of a bedframe gives a support structure to vining plants that drape around a stone carving of a rabbit. You forget what exactly you placed in front of the carving as you try to find your way back to the road.
5. On the field of combat, sounds of pain, exertion, and metal impacting leather and wood finally breaking through the ringing that's been drowning you for ages. The person you were preparing to swing your weapon at has an open hand extended to you. You take it and help them up.
4. At midnight, sitting in the dust of a rural crossroads intersection. Next to you sits an older man in a wrinkled suit. He glances over at you and smiles, like you're a pleasant surprise. With a chuckle, he claps your shoulder and uses it to push himself up to his feet. By the time you think to ask any questions, he's long gone.
3. In the arms of a stranger on a busy festival dance floor. You return to yourself for the first time you can recall as someone whose name you don't remember teaches you the steps to a dance you'll never forget. Music and laughter and spices and frying batter. The person that stumbles home in your shoes later that night is someone you've never been yet.
2. In the early hours before dawn, sitting in front of a headstone. It's not yours but it could have been. The person who rests under it still owes you money. You are finally realizing that you no longer feel like you would give up the rest of your possessions to bring them back. You can feel them laughing at you for taking so long to get to this point. You didn't bring flowers, but the small pile of plucked grass blades you made while talking to the headstone counts in the only way that matters.
1. Where you are right now.
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
