Dream Defenders

Chapter Two

                                                                                Five Years Later

I wake with a start as the rising sun's glow hits my face, lighting up the entire dull room. Despite my night's sleep, I was extremely tired from the dream I had experienced. It was all a blur starting with her: her violet hair, her slender waist and perfect brown eyes. Freckles dashed like salt and pepper on her cheeks accompanying her perfect rosy lips; the moonlit tattoo on her shoulder. "It's okay," she whispered, her voice as sweet as a song birds melody. "It's okay, you will join us soon enough, young dreamer." She was sitting next to me, the words repeating in echoes. Then the dream always closed the same: a green flash of light and then it would vanish into a blackness; a dreamless sleep for the rest of the night. For the past five years this dream has repeated, torturing my heart and mind. Where did I know this girl? How did she know me? When would I join them? What is all just a dream? If it was a dream, how long could I keep it until it would vanish away into nothingness? As an orphan, sometimes it is hard to know your real friends and your real place in this daunting world. Sometimes your dreams are your only view of escape but for me, they are more than an escape: they are the hope that there is something better out there for me. So there I lay in the warm bedroom, relaxed with my arms behind my head, bathed in the heat of a growing day.

But at least, as an orphan no one cares about you. Not the Warden, not your roommates, not even the scullery maid who wasn't much better off than the rest of us. We were all alone, fending for ourselves and didn't know much better than that. I thought about them a lot though, my parents. I remember my Pa with brown handlebar mustache and matching curly afro-like hair.Being a blacksmith, he always smelt like charcoal and iron dust and his hands never really lost that black tint to them. Though I knew my father well; I never got the chance to know my Mother, she and my twin sister both died the night I was born leaving Pan and I alone. Sad as that might be, from Pa always said that I was that sunshine in his life my Ma used to be. We built a happy life for each other until four years ago this tragic day, Pa died in a house fire leaving me an orphan: unwanted and unnecessary in life, at least that is what I was trained to think. I was useless. So I lay here, in my cotton bed thinking about what it could have been if he were still here. Would I still be in that house I was five years ago or would we have moved on to New York. Paris, even Germany without a care in the world? But no, here I lay in the orphanage, abandoned by lifes' cruel trick of fate.

"Edmund!" My formal name boomed at me from the hallway. I always hated that name and the Warden knew it. It reminded me of some jerk from the Narnia series and that just wasn't okay. Interrupting my thoughts, a large man stood in front of my doorway, the sight of him making me jump. "Edmund! Get up!" Warden shouted as a bucket of water was tossed on my head. "Quit yer' daydreaming boy! Ya got work to do, Sonny! What do you think I do here? Run a Charity? Get up!" Warden was about eighty years old and had a personality as rough as sand paper. His hair... or lack of hair was grey on the sides with a matching goatee and he wore and eye patch over his left eye. "Yer' gonna need to feed the pigs and muck the stables before breakfast if'n you still have the desire to eat, boy!" Warden growled as he approached my bed. "Oh!" he jeered with his two tooth grin, "and you'll need this!" He chuckled throwing the bucket on my lap. "Oh and boy, I'd put that bedding on the porch if I was you. That's the only one yer gonna get." He turned  to leave as I smirked and called after him, making him stop dead in his tracks. "Hey Mr. W! Would it kill ya to call me Ero?" For the first time since I was there, Warden smiled at me. "If it'll kill me... why not!" Then quietly, he left the room shaking his head.

Smiling with accomplishment, I stand to my feet, throw a white tank top over my tanned chest, and wrestle jeans on. Checking to see if I was presentable, I stand in front of the mirror , my eyes automatically flitting over to the dark black tattoo on my shoulder. It was my own defining personality mark in this God forsaken building. That and the matching necklace I wear everyday: both of the sun and moon interwoven and connected as if they were one. Warden said the necklace came with some stuff of my Pa's. No one seemed to know where the tattoo came from, the memory evading my mind. Warden said when I was dropped off, the CPS workers said I fell down a flight of steps trying to run from the burning house, hitting my head and ridding my brain of anything for the past few months. Oh, well no sense in worrying about something I can't remember anyway right?