Every morning began the same, with fire, blood, and death.
This morning was worse.
Ariyana jolted upright in bed.
“Glacin.”
His name escaped from her lips in a harsh whisper as her lungs constricted and every muscle in her body seized. Frozen in pain, she toppled out of bed onto the soft throw rug. She hit hard on her right side, her arms refusing to move to brace her fall, and air exploded from her lungs. She coughed and wheezed as her lungs fought to get enough air.
She had lit a fire before going to bed, hoping that the warmth that it provided would offer her some comfort when she awoke, but she had not anticipated the differences that this morning would bring. Unlike other mornings, today she woke up before her dream consumed her sleep and now her body lay painfully immobilized on the floor, her eyes staring deeply into the yellow and orange flames. Her face and shoulders grew warm while a contrasting icy throb began to pulse within her chest. Her muscles strained and her bones ached from the contracted grip that they had on her body.
But none of that mattered. He was dead, or more accurately, was about to die again.
She knew what was coming. She could feel it overwhelming her like a rising tide. She narrowed her eyes, trying to will the golden flame in front of her into a turquoise glow. She hoped that she could catch a glimpse of him, unscathed, before she accepted the reality that he was gone, still gone, and worse yet, only existed in her dreams…her only dream.
Most people woke from their dreams with glimpses of events that they can barely piece together or maybe just a feeling that the thoughts that came to them during their slumber were pleasant or traumatic. This was not the case for Ariyana. Her dream came to her every night, unyielding, and tore through her sleeping mind like a cancer bent on destroying her from the inside out. She didn’t get the luxury of fragmented pieces that didn’t make sense. It was a clear event, with a start and a finish, and held more detail than a scripted film.
The dream first came to her in the early morning hours of her sixth birthday and even now, twenty-four years to the day later, each night that passed only brought more pain. It never got easier.
The effects of the dream stayed with her for a while after waking. Her skin burned where she had been injured, her muscles ached from overuse, and her mind was plagued with anguish. She couldn’t control it.
The icy throb inside her chest intensified, spreading throughout her body with each pulse of her heart. It expanded until she could no longer feel the heat from the fire in front of her against her skin. She had never woken up from her dream before and she wondered if this is what happened before her dream consumed her. Her wheezing became worse. She was taking in less air with each strangled breath. The warm air of the room burned inside the cold walls of her lungs.
Instinct urged her to try to pull herself closer to the fire but her body refused to respond. She choked on one last breath before the features of the room around her morphed from wooden walls and a wooden floor to stone. She saw her own breath dance in a small puff of cold air before the full weight of her dream bore down on her.
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