...?

You hear yourself scream as if from miles away. Something flat and solid rushes in and slams itself into your body.

Gasping, you bolt up and stare around the empty room. The first rays of sunlight spill through the open window. No one else is there. Crumpled blankets lay around you on the floor, some still hanging on the bed. You must have fallen.

A dream. You shutter, drawing a deep breath. More like a nightmare.
Since there is now little point in going back to sleep, you get up off the floor and pile your blankets back on the bed where they will remain until you decide to fix them later.

That dream felt incredibly real. You could swear you still feel coldness in your stomach where that thing stabbed you.

You negate this unsettling sensation by reflecting on all of the elements of the dream that certainly weren't real. First of all, you would probably never forget your name, or give yourself such a ridiculous name to compensate for your forgetting. Your name is short and simple enough to reasonably never forget— BRIAR. No last name, just the first. BARDS don't take last names unless they settle down long enough to raise their family, which most bards do not. Your mother was no exception. Not that you blame her, if it weren't for a law requiring all traveling individuals to carry a TRAVELER's PERMIT, you would have packed up the heirloom flute she and your father had made together for you, a little food, and never look back.

As it is now, you have almost enough money saved up to purchase said permit.

Maybe it's just an inherent trait in all bards, which you have no doubt you are destined to become. It would be a waste of what little music-based magic your mother had taught you the few times she ever visited the city if you did not follow in her footsteps some day.