And So She Burned

7. Eden, Shattered

And if you are to love, love like the moon loves. It doesn't steal the night, it only unveils the beauty of the dark. ---Isra Al-Thibeh

My dream started out perfectly normal. I was skiing with my mom and sister, and the snow was magical snow that made us levitate while we skied and we were ooh-ing and ahh-ing over it.

But when the wolf attacked, it changed.

The wolf was snarling and snapping, and it had the same black and gray streaked hair as Mr. Greysen, and the same eyes as well. But it was still an animal like any other, for a while. Not for long.

Everyone else was screaming, but I just stood there and stared. The wolf, which I somehow knew was Mr. Greysen, leaned forward, crouching to the ground. I trembled, the terror streaking through my veins.

Watch them leave you, watch all of them decide you aren't to be loved, are a twisted version of nature.

In the dream I clutched my head, finally realizing that it wasn't real. Wake up, I tried to tell myself. Wake up.

But before I could force myself into jolting awake, the wolf lunged.

I screamed, my voice far too quiet. But that was probably because it was only a thought, and I wasn't actually screaming.

I wanted to move, but I was frozen in the way dreamers usually are. Why can't I control it?

But I had no need to worry for myself. Mr. Greysen leaped straight over me, and I heard the all too real scrape of snow on claws and a wet thunk.

I hesitated before turning around, knowing that whatever I would see would be horrible and would probably wake me up. My wraith-like dream form felt tense despite its lack of reality.

My breath escaped my lips in a small puff before I whipped around to find out the inevitable truth of my dream. If I don't finish the dream, how can I be expected to wake myself up?

I screamed again---blood curdling and loud. In the back of my sleep-fogged mind I thought that I must have yelled out loud that time.

The sight in front of me was pure gore.

The wolf form was gone, and it was only Mr. Greysen. He stood over the body of the girl---the hiker. He had a bloody knife in his hand, and her body was mangled, stabbed over and over and over again. Mr. Greysen let out a dull laugh as I watched, and then he disappeared into a puff of dark smoke. At least, that was how it seemed to me, the watcher.

I rushed for the girl, even if I knew it would only bring myself more pain. I had to wake up.

I knelt in the snow beside her, brushing her long curtain of hair from her face tenderly, as though a mother to a child. I knew it was a dream, but still I couldn't bring myself to treat her with any disrespect.

She had dark brown hair and green eyes. Those eyes may have been emerald bright, shining and happy once, but her life, her spirit, the thing that made her her, whatever the right term was, it was gone. She was young, but not enough so that I knew her from WESD. Yet I felt as though I knew her.

I stared at her some more, before I realized that her blood, bright as rubies, stained my hands. My breath came faster, and I tried to shove the girl away, but she stuck to me like velcro.

I couldn't move, and I couldn't wake up.

The blood was everywhere, just like when I was little and my dad was still home---

The dream suddenly deteriorated, disappearing all around me as though it were a hologram. It was like the illusion had fallen apart, and I was back where I truly was.