The Vulcan Changeling Project

Prologue

Prologue

The dream had begun again, the same terrifying dream, which Muriah had trouble with recalling when she woke up. The dream sequence was always the same; it was a hot day, hotter than any she could recall on Babylon 2.

                                    The Dream

A woman hummed softly as she strummed a harp. Lying at her feet was a small girl, whose eyes were closed; yet she was not asleep. The girl shivered slightly as a terrible chill engulfed her. The woman dropped the harp and cradled her child, “What is it?” She whispered.

The child stared up into her mother’s face, “Father is dead,” she sobbed and then fell limp in her mother’s arms.

When the child awoke she was in darkness, the house was still. It was not the kind of stillness that one feels on a lazy afternoon; it was the kind of stillness that was unnatural-evil. “Mother?” The child called out, her call remained unbidden. Ghostly shadows engulfed the once friendly walls and the child could feel her heart pounding as she went the door of her parent’s room. The door was shut and underneath the door a flow of something stained the floor, it was blood. The child bent down and curiously down and touched it and then as if in a trance she opened the door. Blood was everywhere, it was splattered on the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and everything was covered with it. The child kept walking, her heart beating so fast that it felt as if it were going to burst from her chest. Her mother sat in a chair as if she was asleep. “Mother?” The child called out softly and when she got closer she saw the fatal wounds that covered her mother’s body. The child’s fear then manifested itself in sound, as she screamed over and over.

Muriah sat bolt upright in bed, shivering with terror. In vain she tried to remember all the details of the dream, but couldn’t.