A dream:

Its raining, a heavy rain on a warm day, the kind of deep rain that seems like it just might go on forever. All around you flowers in the field and the buds on the trees dance in the flurry of raindrops. The ground and the coastline you are standing on are covered in a light fog that persists in the downpour. The rain causing small streams leading down to the ocean where the fresh water running over the sand encounters the salt water a foam layer builds. You can hear children playing in the rain, splashing, and giggling as they went. A young boy and girl holding hands as they jump into a puddle of mud. A woman standing in the doorway to a small shack nearby trying hard not to smile at their fun, effort to maintain a stern look evident to anyone. Under some trees nearby there is cattle laying down waiting out the storm.

The children continue their merriment and now moved on to running back and forth through the mud laughing at the amount of it that the other would kick up as they ran past. After a short time of this the young boy sat down and began to make small hills out of the mud in a row with tiny stick poked into the top of them like little flagpoles on the parapets on the towers of a castle. The little girl playing with her wicker doll seems to miming out her little friend taking a stroll down the river made of in the streams of water forming between the puddles in the mud.

The woman calls to the children.

“Its time to come inside now, you have had your fun.”

“Be sure to take those filthy clothes off before coming inside”

The children reluctantly make their way over to the door and slowly make their way inside after shedding the required layers and tossing them in a basket next to the house. A moment later you see more smoke than before start to kick out the chimney no doubt the result of more fuel being added to whatever fire was going before. You continue to watch this small house, set on this small hillside by the water. The window open and the woman sets some metal cooking pot on the sill, and drops a few more pieces of clothes into the basket under the window.

The woman looks up and her face turns from the antagonized look of a mother to a look of fear and shock. She stands there frozen for a moment unmoving, unspeaking. Then she quickly calls to her children and tells them to dress, and quickly. She rushes away from the window for a moment then returns and stares out it once more, she has wrapped a leather chestplate around her and is tightening a belt around her waist. The hilt of the sword on one side and the whole of a dagger on the other bob up and down as she hastens to get the belt tightened. She calls to the children again urging them to hurry. She emerges from the door, a round wooden shield in on hand. She steps out into the rain. She doesn’t seem to even notice it but instead her vision is fixed on the horizon. Her young children stand in the doorway, they are dressed differently now than when they had gone in. The woman turns to them and kneels speaks softly to each of them. She stands and tells them, “Run” “Do as your Mother says”

The young boy starts to move off up the road in on direction, then stops, the young girl has not followed but instead throws herself at her mother's waist. Tears flow down the girls face and she starts to scream and cry, begging the mother not to make her go. “Please don’t make me go Mommy, whatever I did, I won’t do it again.”

The mother her voice cracking with tears in her own eyes shouts to her son, “Quickly, take your sister, you must go, NOW.” She tries her best to not look down at the small child now bound to her waist. The boy who looks a year or two older moves quickly under the orders of his mother, grabs his sister by the hand, tugs on her and pulls her away slightly from the woman. The little girl’s small hand gripped tightly on the belt around her mother’s waist. The small form of the girl caught in a kind of tug of war between her own desire to stay connected to her mother and her brother’s obedience to what he was told. The woman reaches down and tugs the young girl’s hand free of the belt and the young girl falls to the ground in a heap screaming, bawling. The brother grabs her at the shoulders and lifts her up, looks her in the face and speaks to her. While still holding her hand he starts to take off, half dragging half running alongside his sister up the road. The woman stands motionless for a moment turns and sees the small figures running up the hill then her hand goes to the grip of the sword and she pulls it free of the scabbard and holds it to her lips whispering something, it seems as if she is whispering it to the sword or maybe to herself.

Your vision turns and you can see on the horizon, Sails, the sails of ships, dotting the horizon. You aren’t sure how many there are in all. With a small strain of your vision you can see the form of an eagle emblazoned in red on the white of the sails. The woman stands on the hillside a shield in one hand and a sword in the other. Laid out before her the sails grow larger in her view.

You wake