Ｗａｖｅｓ ▶ JASPER HALE (HEAVY EDITING)

Nightmare.

Edited, 2024.

Nightmare.

Dema struggled to fall asleep that night.

She tossed from one side of the small bed to the other, feeling alternately cold and hot. She groaned as she drifted into a restless sleep, her dream soon transforming into a nightmare.

Dema walked along a dirt path. She was somewhere surrounded by trees—a forest, she assumed. She dragged her hand delicately through a bush of roses. White Roses.

"No thorns? That's weird." Dema thought but quickly shrugged it off as she found each flower as beautiful as the next. The roses swayed back and forth with the wind. They danced around her touch and she kept walking down the dirt path, leading deeper into the woods.

She slowly turned her attention towards her surroundings, noticing that the forest was no longer green but in ashes.

Burned to the ground.

Dead.

She could see the flames eating away the last couple of trees, leaving the roses safe and sound. Dema stood in the middle of the dead forest as emotions flashed through her body. Oddly enough, fear nor sadness were one of these emotions.

Her eyes were fixed on the ashes as she wondered what could have started the fire. She was surrounded by a perfect circle of ashes and just as she reached to touch a small amount of this black dust, the wind blew in her direction, sending the ashes directly into her eyes, blinding her for a few seconds.

She groaned as she rubbed her eyes, frantically blinking a few times before glancing at her surroundings.

Darkness.

She widened her eyes as darkness took over the blue sky, and the roses in front of her slowly became a deep red.

She felt uneasy as all the color slowly drifted away from her surroundings.

Sudden panic flashed through her mind.

Dema desperately looked around for a way out. She panted as she ran through the rose bushes, but there was no use. She kept coming back to the same place.

After a few tries, she stopped. Dema ran her hand through her dark hair as she tried to calm herself and regain her composure. And for a short second, she looked up. Something caught her eye.

The moon. Shining proudly right above her.

Her eyes stayed glued to the moon, chaos was all around but she stood there, motionless. It was as if something lay hidden behind the moon. Something so enticing, so alive, that she could hear it breathing from where she stood.

Suddenly, the flames were reborn from the ashes, taking Dema's full attention. And once again, she was surrounded by a perfect circle of deadly flames.

But this time, something was different.

Slowly, eight wolves, the size of full-grown bears, emerged from the flames. The heat didn't seem to bother them, as they stood proudly between the flames, covering just half of the circle. Right in the middle of the pack stood a black wolf, larger in size.

But fear wasn't on her mind anymore. She felt at peace for a second. Something felt familiar to her. Something about all this madness felt real to Dema. She felt somehow connected to it.

As Dema took a few steps, with her arm stretched out, towards the black wolf in front of her, she heard a loud snap. The eight wolves growled right after and changed positions. They looked ready to attack.