Arcane Guardian ↣ Avenged Sevenfold

5 ☼ selective

December 1996

"Nightmares again?" Brian asked as he saw Ellowyn wake up. She had been having nightmares every night; Brian was kind of the mediator to get her back to sleep. He was the only one of the four men who could manipulate dreams; he had discovered this when she was six and had her first nightmare. She was panicked, and crying and her mom was working the night shift at the hospital. Brian had appeared and pulled her into his arms, and sang her a song. The next morning she told him she had crazily vivid dreams about what he was singing; about a big field full of horses and flowers and dandelions.

They realized as the years went by that no matter how complicated he made them, he could give her lucid dreams she remembered perfectly. So he became night watch.

Brian hadn't left since her fourteenth birthday. The others came and went because of purgatory business, but more often than not Brian was there for her.

"It's always the same one," she said, getting out of bed and drinking the water on her nightstand. "The one where I die like you guys did. I drown, and I feel the water fill up my lungs... I get my arm chopped off, a nun bashes my head in." She shook her head. "I've never been scared of death but...you all must be terrified."

"Well for us we had plenty of time to relive it." He came over to her, sitting on the edge of her bed as she paced the room. "For some reason our deaths sent us to a different place than most people go."

"Is there a good place?" It was the first time she had ever asked if there was a heaven. He didn't know what to say.

"I hear there is." He lies. He didn't want to tell her he was pretty sure purgatory was the only afterlife, and the rest was nothingness. "I hear it's nothing like in the big book though."

"What do you think it's like?" She asked him, laying back down in her bed.

"I think it smells like after rain." He says off the top of his head. "And there's color. So much of it, even more colors than exist here."

"You think my dads there?"

She never talked about her father so it caught him deeply off guard. "He's definitely in the good place. Let's just say I haven't met up with him here."

He sat beside her and took her hand. "How many other people are there with you? Suffering?"

"Thousands." He said, he couldn't lie to her about that. "But nobody new."

"Is the barrier like, an actual shield?"

"It's hard to explain. It's not like in human terms." He tried to think. "Think about what divides you and me."

"We have a connection from my childhood," she replied. "So we can touch each other. And I can hand you things. But you can't touch other people. Or objects I don't give you."

"Think of it as an imaginary border. I'm not flesh, or bone. I'm cold matter that only you can feel." He squeezed her hand. "If that matter gluing us in our dimension breaks, the tear reverses purgatory. The world finds a way to balance itself out. I wish I could explain better but it's hard to even understand myself."

She nodded. "Is it selfish to want you to stay?"

He just stroked her hair in response. "You don't want to lose us. You don't want to lose the memories." He paused. "You want me to give you a dream Ells?"