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☾ 𝑇𝐻𝐼𝑅𝑇𝐸𝐸𝑁
Vivid dreams were a side affect to Anna's life. She had accepted that from a young age. But the dreams she had were often memories, or just that: dreams that she desperately wanted to happen. Like the dream she had of Josephine and Will, either when they were younger, or when they were older and she would see them again.
Yet this time, although she was sleeping, this vision wasn't a dream.
Anna sat on a bed, it wasn't hers. In fact, the room was unfamiliar, well furnished and decked with expensive features. But it wasn't one she recognised. A fire roared from under a hearth across the room, but a chill still ran up her back, escaping down her arms. A woman stood in front of it, eyes shut, her face a ghostly white despite the golden shadow of flames that flickered against her shape.
She turned, the shadow flinching away. It was only then that Anna noticed the distress in her face, her heart and her clothes. Her hair was frizzy, pushed to the front of her head as if it had been back combed and pinned badly, then clawed through by talon-like fingers. She was pouting, her lips in a frown, wobbling as she tried to keep back tears that bubbled against her red-rimmed eyelids. And the wrinkles that sagged her otherwise pretty skin seemed more pronounced, almost unrealistic as if they appeared only to represent the sadness that aged her, though not like fine wine. Even her dress seemed depressed, sagging her womanly figure and clinging to her in the wrong places and missing numerous buttons.
But it was her look that Anna was drawn to, her eyes unable to look away. So familiar but eerie, cast in a spectral light that shone around her. Like a phantom. A ghost that haunted the night. But for that, the woman would need to be...
Dead. The woman looked dead. Everything about her suggested that she was lifeless. But Anna couldn't allow herself to think so. There was something about the woman that Anna felt drawn to, like a moth to a flame, drawn to her like it was something she searched for, even in the darkest of nights. And the woman looked so emotional, retched by sadness, something that needed passion. The dead didn't have emotions, she believed.
She couldn't get past the thought that the woman looked so familiar either. The woman stepped forward, her shaking hands reaching to slide her fingers over Anna's cheek, her eyes blinking rapidly against the tears. The eyes- darkened to almost black from the shade. The eyes. Her eyes. Anna's eyes.
Anna blinked quickly, copying the woman's movements, as if they could take away the blurry ness that she was sure obscured her view. But her vision never changed, and Anna remained staring back at eyes she saw so often in the mirror, staring back with such vulnerability that she always looked away. But even this woman, the woman who had stolen her eyes- held the same emotion. The same susceptibility that lead her to trusting people. Anna wondered what this woman's weakness was.
