Posy to Abelard

Posy has bad dreams. Very, very bad dreams. Her latest nightmare consists of cannibal teenagers, a burning manor, a Spanish circus and mediaeval Prussia. And everywhere she turns inside of this dream, she hears the name of Abelard. And the more she learns of him, in her efforts to crawl back to consciousness, the more she realises she's not dreaming at all. This is all quite real, and possibly the realest she's ever felt.

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Casimir took a step forward. I took one back.
“Don’t,” I began, and pulled out a knife, which I’d also stolen. “Come any closer.”
He put up his hands. “Posy. We’re here to help you.”
“You chased me through the woods!” I almost shrieked. “You were yelling at me!”
“If you’d just stopped, we would have talked this out. Nice and slow.”
“I don’t know where I am,” my voice shook, and I willed it to stop. “Or what year it is, I don’t know who you are, or what you’ve done to me in the past few days. I don’t trust any of you.”
“We’re not the cult,” the black-haired man said. His brown eyes were firm. “We’re just a circus, we travel and we perform. That’s it.”
“I know how you treat girls in these times,” I retorted. “I know what you do to women. They’re weak and breakable and stupid, and I know what you were trying to do to me.”
The man raised an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”