I was back in school.

I should've known it was a dream from the get-go, because I wasn't unhappy. But I didn't. I sat there and I watched my substitute teacher as she put on a lab coat. It was chem class, and she looked like she had hair made of the cold fire beneath the Bunsen burners.

"All right!" she said, clapping her hands. "Class, let's get our ingredients ready. We have powder and acid."

We did have powder and acid. I don't think either of us knew what the powder and acid actually were.

"Prepare them so we can mix them together," she said, and all the students around me did as she instructed. But I didn't, because it didn't seem like a good idea. I was afraid of what explosion might come with it.

"Are you sure?" I asked her. "I feel like that's dangerous."

Finally, the substitute teacher met my eyes. And for some reason, this time, I was stuck; I could hardly recognize that I recognized her. It was like she had a spell on me.

"Yes," she said. "That's what the lesson plan says to do. After all, we're learning about the make-up of people, right?"

I was silent, frozen, as she picked up a piece of chalk and wrote down an equation.

"See," she said, "You have a person who's been reduced to nothing. Something lowly, right? Just a fine sand that slips through every crack. Nobody notices her."

As if on cue, I watched as every student in the class picked up their things of powder and poured it blankly into a beaker.

"And when you put it over fire," she continued, "And you let it burn, little by little, things begin to happen. It begins to change."

Sure enough, the powder began to crack and bubble, somehow changing form all together. It was like we were cooking something very illegal.

"But, now all it is is burnt." The woman, the substitute, came out from behind the desk and began to walk between the lab tables, her hands behind her back. She looked at the table in front of me, making sure their powder was burning correctly. Then she stopped before me.

I was the only one without a lab partner.

We locked eyes, and she smiled, but, perky as it was, it did not meet her gray eyes.

"All you need is the right sort of acid to turn it into something sparkling and spectacular." 

She indicated I should mix the acid, and, like a puppet, I did.

And sure enough, I watched as, immediately, the powder shot up. Suddenly the rest of the class was gone, and it was just me and my science fair explosion, a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke. When the cloud dissipated, the substitute hardly seemed affected,  but I was rubbing my eyes.

"And you see what remains?" she asked.

I did. I lowered my hands and looked at the vial. In it was something hung in space and time; I couldn't focus on it entirely, like it was the shimmers when my eyes were closed. But it was beautiful. It was wet and dry and white and black and gold all at once.

"Something special," I said.

The substitute nodded. Then, she frowned. We locked eyes again, and the puppet theater ended. Just for a moment.

"Are you not something special, child?" she added. "Don't you deserve more than just the fire beneath you? You found your camp on your own, your father gave you a sword. You have survived two quests, and yet - no appreciation, no honors, no popularity. Why is that?"

She was right. I - I couldn't give her an answer.

"Answer me, AJ," she said, after a moment.

I was so startled she called me by name that I said, "Yes. Yes, I'm something special."

I saw a small sliver of a genuine smile appear on her face, but it was so conniving that it scared the Hades out of me. And then I woke up.