Dreamcatcher

20

Venus screamed. Her wide blue eyes reflected the terrors upon her, the mess of blood and murder and death. All of a sudden she couldn't breathe. She couldn't scream anymore. She couldn't even stand.

She collapsed on her knees, her pants now dyed red from the bloody snow. Words were beyond her. Thoughts were beyond her. All she could do was sit there. Sit there helpless. Sit there still.

She was only a second, a second too late. She saw the figure, the one who did this gone. She saw somebody collapse on the porch from a few feet away. She saw Chase bleed out onto the pavement, dead the moment his head made contact on ice.

Life wasn't fair. Life wasn't ever fair to her. There was no reason for his suffering, for her suffering, for everybody's suffering.

Death was cruel, but life was even crueler.

~~

Wanderers were not always lost. That held true for most, but not the young Dream Catcher who wandered around the dozens of suburban streets, into libraries and churches, out of shops and schools, towards the big cities and the Forgotten, towards streets and oceans and deserts and mountains. She was lost and had been lost for a while. How long? She didn't know. She had lived decades and seen decades, and she had also forgotten decades. Time wasn't of her concern.

So the young Dream Catcher wandered and wandered. Her purpose? To get rid of Dream Catchers. How?

She didn't know. She didn't know anything. Brimming with only self-hatred and denial of her past cruelty and actions, she detested her own identity with every fiber of her being. She wanted to die. She wanted to get rid of Dream Catchers, including herself and the one that had caused the downfall of her old childhood friend, but at the same time she was immortal. She was immortal the second she had an innate hatred for Dream Catchers, for Dream Catchers only moved in purpose to destroy their own kind. This guilt, this pain she carried...she had to forget it all. She wiped her memories, wiped what horrors she had caused and seen, until all that was left was the only thing that made her somewhat human still.

A dream.

Her legs carried her far and wide. Sometimes she hesitated at turns before continuing straight, and sometimes she wanted to turn back but kept walking. Her legs acted on their own, far away from her heart and true desires. The bottoms of her feet were sore, sore beyond imagination, her old shoes now only held together by soles thinner than paper.

"I wish it was autumn again, Mama. There's no butterflies anymore," a boy whined next to her.

The young Dream Catcher looked up. Oh, there she was – Moores Park. She had been here once before, hadn't she? When? She didn't know. She had forgotten a lot of things.

She looked. The fields were barren and frosted despite the coming of spring. Birds began to chirp. Squirrels peeked their heads out of oak trees, nuts raining down on unfortunate passers like the approaching spring showers. The canolas looked limpless, but their yellow color began to fade back in. No people stood in the butterfly field, leaving life to return peacefully without the trampling of children's shoes and mothers' slippers.

Until the young Dream Catcher wandered in.

She heard the crunching of canolas and frosted grass underneath her feet. If she turned back around, she knew there would only be death where she had walked. She hated that. But still, her legs kept walking far into the field without any direction, any purpose. It was too late to turn back.

And there she stood. The young Dream Catcher had finally deemed herself worthy of rest. It would be a shame to not gaze at the view, her legs told her heart.

So she gazed. And she gazed.

And she gazed.

The night went long. Her legs didn't let her lay down, so she stood there looking up at the sky. There were no stars. Everything in the night above was covered by dense clouds and lights illuminating the park, and soon the young Dream Catcher didn't want to look up anymore.

By the time she reopened her eyes, it seemed that she had slept standing up. Odd, she thought. Dream Catchers never needed to sleep anyway – they never had nightmares nor dreams. They weren't even human. But still, it seemed that her legs let her sleep, so she slept until morning came.

And when she woke up, she stood some more. She stood, stood until something else happened, something else in the field that told her that she was not alone in the canolas, in the spring garden.

A tiny blue butterfly fluttered towards her, dancing in the morning breeze like its wings were on fire, like it was truly free in the air. The young Dream Catcher was not a flower, but it seemed like the young butterfly had been lost during late-autumn migration and assumed her to be one. Perhaps the butterfly had made its way back home too early. Perhaps it was not a wanderer, not lost at all. Perhaps it had a dream, a dream that carried it farther and faster than the others.

But somehow it wandered towards the young Dream Catcher, kept wandering, wandered until it came so close to her that it landed on her fingertip, its wings finally settling down after a long moment's flight.

And its wings began to shut closed, its antennae twitching. The young Dream Catcher waited for the butterfly to stop moving. She waited until its wings crumbled to ash and dust, into torn tissue paper, watching and waiting for its moment of death. But the butterfly continued to twitch and open its wings, up until it decided it had rested enough.

And the butterfly left on its own. Alive and free. There was no tear in its wings, no lost antenna, no nothing. It flew up past the canolas, up to the open sky, and away. Far, far away until its wings blended up with the blue above.

It seemed the rainclouds had gone, but Aerial's tears made it feel like it was pouring.