<strong>Mary's Dream</strong><br/><br/>The book had told of an empty tavern where Joan had grown up, where she had huddled in the snow-laden fields after one of her terrible battles against the demons.  In the novel, she'd met up with Pierre, one of the few people who had always accepted her.  Joan had already known that she was going to die; the voices had blessed and cursed her with that foreknowledge, allowing her to get her affairs in order and give her all to the cause of saving France.<br/><br/>It had never bothered her that she would be scarred, beaten and eventually even die, but by the end of the novel, what had ached in her most of all was that her death was so meaningless.  She would have been happy to die against the demons if it meant that the war would still be won and others would take her place, but to defeat them only to be killed by those who feared her later seemed so meaningless to her.<br/><br/>Pierre didn't seem to be in the dream.  It was only Joan, oblivious to Mary's presence within the dream and weeping softly as she considered her coming fate.  Her wounds still showed crimson; she did everything she could to dress them, but medieval medicine was not a talented art.  The bottle of wine which she was supposed to have shared with her lover had been drained dry.