North Star

Chapter Two: Selene

The dream was unusual, so I was very surprised when I found myself standing on the fringe of a field, a dark forest to my back and an abnormally large moon hanging above my head. The moon cast a silver light to everything, making my eyes hazy as I soaked in my strange surroundings.

As I looked around, I was pleased to find I was wearing a dress. A beautiful white dress, made of cotton that flowed around my thighs and calves in the gentle breeze like water. In fact, everything in the dream seemed to flow like water, even the long grass that tickled my knees, urging me to move.

Suddenly, I knew I wasn't alone in this dream. A sudden presence that made the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck prickle. A need to know this person I was sharing this dream with filled every crack on my body, every blood cell soaring through my veins. A need to touch and to be with. Scanning the field, my eyes found a figure in the distance, but only a figure. A frown creased my brow, and I craned neck and stood on my tip toes to try and get a better look, but even then I couldn't even seem to make out the gender of the person I was sharing my dream with.

As if drawn by a magnet, I began to walk forwards. Making little or no progress I lunged into a run, still gaining no traction against the grassy floor of the forest. A bright pain stopped me in my tracks, or lack thereof as I clutched my wrist, the pain coming from somewhere deep inside me. It burned something awful and I swore in my native language, the words being torn from my mouth as the wind picked up. As my hair whipped around my face, stinging my cheeks, I searched desperately in the distance for the stranger in my dream but found nothing.

Waking up in a sweat, heart pounding against my ribs, I fumbled in search of the time. My cell phone read 10:55pm.

I wondered where my cats had gotten to. As if on cue, one of them jumped up beside me and sat on my legs.

"Crowley," I tisked, glowering through sleep heavy lids at the black hair ball. "What am I going to do with you?" A moment later, a white hair ball joined the black one and they meowed at each other until they could share my legs comfortably between them. "Aziraphale! Not you too!" Groaning I flopped back onto my pillow, sea green hair fanning across the pillow case. At least they hadn't dragged a dead rat into my room like the last time, I thought.

The late nap I took was unexpected, and I doubted I'd be able to fall back asleep again until the early hours of the morning. Trying to think back to my dream, I squinted up at the glow in the dark stickers I had spattered around my ceiling, glowing faintly in the semi-darkness of my room, but I couldn't seem to recall anything overly significant. It was the first dream of many to come, extremely important in the task of finding the person you were destined to be with. But as the sleepiness of my nap wore off, the memory of my dream began to fade with consciousness.

Reaching above my head, I switched on my over head lamp and ran my fingers over the burning seed at my wrist. A burst of something warm flourished in my chest as I traced a small sprouted stem and leaf. The tattoo of a sprout, permanently etched into my skin, twisting its way up my forearm until it nestled there happily in bloom when I found my soulmate, or until I died at the age of 21.

Caught on the breeze coming through my open window, I heard the drunken laughter of the people down my street. Climbing out of bed, much to the protest of my two cats, I made my way to the open window, swinging my bare legs out so I could sit on the ledge.

It was late. The sun had set, but the stars were out and the young people were dancing in the streets, high off the fading heat of the day and the poorly concealed bottles of alcohol shared between them. Although I felt joy watching them happily swing their partners around in song and dance, I felt no desire to join them.