Crossed Worlds

Chapter 2: Wild One Awareness

There was no time; there was only falling.

  The clouds were a deep, dark grey. It was as though they were mourning the death of their brothers, suffocated by grief, at any moment bound to burst.

  And Jade was falling through them.

  Icy winds rippled through her clothes, creeping into her bones and turning them into glaciers, her blood into ice. Rain droplets dribbled down arms and ran off of her pale fingers. The world was nothing but a winter mist.

  A large body of water emerged beneath her, ready to swallow her up. She began screaming, yet nothing escaped her lips other than empty air. And then, she was sucked in.

  This bizarre ocean was a dark blue, and Jade could barely see her legs beneath her. A void of black awaited under her, as she sank and sank and sank, paralysed and afraid and freezing.

  Kick! She willed herself to do the action. Do something!

  But her body was not listening to her brain. Fear sat in her throat, closing up her airways, and she sucked in the water in desperation to just breathe. Any second she would pass out, she would die in this dark sea of terror. She closed her eyes as everything began to blur...

  Jade woke up screaming.

  Her father was the first to burst into her bedroom, always the one to protect her from the terrors of her subconscious, and her mother followed closely behind, concern evident in her furrowed brows.

  "Jade! Are you all right?" Chris plopped down at the bottom of her bed, taking her hand. She felt it clammy against his.

  "I...I'm fine, thank you. I feel six years old with you two running in here to check on me after a bad dream," Jade sighed, still tasting the vile water of her nightmares on her tongue.

  "You're still our baby," Dawn ruffled her daughter's hair. "You still will be when you're thirty!"

  As she listened to the birds softly singing their morning song, and felt the contrast of a warm, welcoming breeze flow in from the window, Jade began to relax. That was until she noticed her mother share a look with her father, one that lasted a second too long, and made her chest tighten up again with worry.

  "What is it?"

  "Chris, just tell her," Dawn bit her lip.

  "Tell me what? Seriously, Dad, just-"

  "Jade, we want you to start attending this Wild One Awareness group. They hold meetings once a week, informing and reminding young people of our enemy," Chris squeezed her hand and worriedly smiled.

  Jade snatched her hand away from him, now clammy from anger and not the nightmare. After what her Grandmother had told her just the day before, there was no way she could attend this. It was against everything she believed in.

  "No," she said simply. "I won't go."

  "It wasn't a request. You will be going. It's important, sweetheart, can't you see that?" Her Dad was trying desperately to make this an easy conversation.

  "I already hear enough from my friends, from teachers, from the news and you guys. I don't need a stupid group!" Jade raised her voice.

  "Jade, please. It'll put our mind at ease if we know our child is aware of what has happened, what could happen and what is the truth," Dawn pleaded. "I know you have a heart that wants to seek the good in everyone, but sometimes there is no good. Only bad."