It did not swim: it glided.
A singular body, elongated and gleaming, cutting through black waters that reflected neither the sky nor anything belonging to the waking world.
The river of the dream was too silent, too deep. And, within it, the fish advanced with a natural sluggishness, as if it knew exactly where it was headed, driven by a will that Heridor could not fathom. The two heads moved in slightly different directions. One gazed forward. The other, at times, turned back. Its eyes were small, opaque, and luminous, like coins abandoned in a well.
Heridor felt, in the dream, an unease difficult to name. It was not pure fear. It was more internal and intrinsic. The creature seemed divided between two callings whose logical reason he could not yet interpret.
The fish rose in the center of the dark waters without truly breaking them, merely pressing the surface, and the river itself seemed to yield to its extremely slight weight. Then the two mouths opened simultaneously, without a sound, and from within them issued a pale, brief flicker, akin to the reflection of the moon on freshly washed metal.
Heridor attempted to approach, but the ground beneath his feet vanished. The black waters gaped open into profound layers, and the fish sank without a trace, as though it had never existed.
Still, the image remained vivid within him for an instant longer than the dream permitted: the silvery shimmer, the duplicated movement, the sense that something was watching him from a place prior to memory.
When he woke, the night was quiet, but not at peace. There was a tense pause in the air, the kind of silence that settles before the world begins to move again. Heridor lay still for a few moments, trying to wrench the last edges of the vision from his mind.
But he failed. The fish still "swam" behind his closed eyelids, insistent, silver, divided into two intentions. He turned his face toward the dark ceiling, unsure why that nocturnal mirage troubled him so deeply.
Black water.
Two heads. A single body.
A sensation there that would not leave his skin.
— — —
Heridor was afflicted by insomnia—the dream had left a strange disquiet, making him feel the dampness of the dark waters still clinging to his human skin.
After a while, he rose silently, made his way toward the riverbank, and followed through the pre-dawn gloom with slightly hurried steps. The river was close enough that the sound of its water reached him even before his sight could distinguish the dark gleam between the trees. The bank was humid, cold, and almost motionless beneath the sparse light.
Heridor paused upon arrival, scrutinizing the river's surface. The water flowed slowly, but there was an alien sensation in it that struck him—perhaps it lay beyond the reflection of the sky, who knows?
He took a deep breath, trying to dispel the feeling that pursued him. Nevertheless, the image of the silver fish persisted there, at the edge of his thought, divided into two heads looking in opposite directions. It was then that he noticed the movement overhead.
He sensed that someone was spying on him from a nearby tree. Someone who was probably stable among the branches, their body nearly merged with the shadow of the canopy. Their eyes gleamed in a frightening way in the darkness, fixed on him without blinking.
Heridor felt the terror of that surveillance even before he understood the source of his discomfort. It was not just the creature's gaze. It was the impression that something, at that moment, might be outside the normal order of things. He remained stationary, feigning composure, but with his muscles slightly tense.
The creature did not stir. The bend of the river seemed calmer, as if the night had compressed itself around them. Heridor glanced away for a moment, trying to identify if anyone else was near.
That was when he heard light footsteps behind him. He turned around.
Falazahr emerged from the gloom with the naturalness of one already belonging to that place. She approached without haste, but with focus, her eyes turning first to Heridor and then to the animal in the tree.
— Did you sense it too? — she asked in a whisper.
Heridor did not respond right away. He kept looking at the probable creature that maintained a fixed, predatory posture, like a sentinel.
— I sensed it — he finally said. — Something is wrong here. If there's an animal nearby...
Falazahr moved a little closer, stopping beside him on the bank.
— I knew it wasn't just my imagination. — She stated. — I want to believe that only that stone-scaled monster could be hunting us.
— Those two bodies we found didn't look like they were murdered by that rock-made animal. There were no marks from stone teeth on them. — Heridor pointed his chin toward his amputated arm, where only the shoulder remained. — Do you forget what that being did to me?
Heridor felt that unexplainable strangeness again, as if the river, the tree, and the animal were connected by an invisible thread that he still could not see. Falazahr also wore a tense expression, although she tried to conceal it.
The pre-dawn hours remained suspended for a few more hours, and the world awaited the next move or the one who would decide to act first.