Ellaria's life isn't all she wants it to be.
She works too much for too little pay, lives with her sister who doesn't care for her and who has a boyfriend that preys on Ellaria, and on top of that, she's starting to have weird dreams.
She tries to...
A single word, uttered on a breath, echoing in the black fog of the dream.
Eden...
in the fog, a white face appears. White, with three sets of black eyes, and a strange design across it.
Eden...
The mask is surrounded by a thick black hood, low over the forehead, but the figure moves closer.
Eden...
The figure moves closer. The design on the mask is fully visible, slanted lines for eyebrows, three lines down to the cheeks, an arch with a coronet on top, and a single X going through it all.
Eden...
You have been chosen, the voice says. Come back to Eden...
My eyes snap awake, my heart pounding. My alarm is blaring in my ears, and in a fit of frustration, I slap my hand on it, knocking it from the small table beside my bed to the floor. I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes, rubbing them.
The dream.
The dream, which was quickly departing my brain. I shuffle off the sheets, soaked in sweat now from my restless night, and pluck up the journal. Every single detail I can remember from my dream is recorded on a clean page, and then, like the seven pages before it, I scribble the symbol across the mask onto the page.
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I stare at the symbol for a good five minutes, letting my bed sheets dry. The sun is already blazing into my room through the curtains, and the sounds of commuters have already begun; tires on pavement, the honks, the rush of cars. There are no birds chirping, not even the rustle of wind through leaves.
I peek out through the curtain of my room, down into an alley, where the garbage is already overflowing, flies hovering around it. I close my eyes, and pinch the bridge of my nose. I hate this place, but it's the only place I can afford that doesn't have bedbugs, or bars over the windows.
My eyes shift to the page, the symbol on it. I have had the same dream for seven days in a row now. Always, the same floating body, the same disambiguous voice, the same shadowed mask covered by a hood. I drag my thumb down the page where the symbol is, and close my eyes-
"Ellie!" I snap my journal shut, and stuff it under my pillow as Inara knocks on my bedroom door. "You are going to make me late if we don't leave, like five minutes ago!"
Yup. My dream home. Renting a room from my sister. My sister who is boisterous, where I'm meek. A sister that brings countless guys over and I... don't. A sister that would invade my privacy for any reason.
I toss open the door and run to the bathroom, where I complete my morning routine in three minutes flat, and return to my room, closing the door to change into my work uniform.
