After the bird flew away, Reve sat up and planted her bare feet on they ground. Damp dirt pressed against her skin, tiny rocks and stones reminding her of the gravelly road in front of her house. The still silence of the world grew louder, with sounds she'd usually ignore turned to a strange time of music in the night. Rustles of leaves both high and low, birds calling to others in low drones, insects' shrill buzz-- all of it too loud to really be in the quiet.

Her eyes fixed on what she saw as a small garden of flowers. Stems of each plant grew long and spindly, with the petals in jagged triangles like a four-year-old tried to cut it out with a pair of dull scissors. The leaves were shaped in softer circles and filled with the infinite void, though the flower part boasted hints of fluorescent blue.

Her fingers reached for it and while she half expected to go through the plant, she met a solid, velvet-like texture before pulling her hand away. If only something like that existed in the real world. She'd wake from her dream and plant a whole batch of the velvet flowers in her backyard.

It was odd. She'd never felt anything in a dream before, not something that felt physical. It was always how she imagined a touch to feel.

She brushed her hand on her pajama pants as she stood. It'd be her luck this was one of those dreams that turned nightmarish too quickly and poisonous flowers were the culprit.

As she walked through the night she absent-mindedly twirled her necklace. That was another weird thing this time -- she had the exact same clothes as before. The exact same everything as before, really. This dream kept the same pink pajama pants, superhero sweater, necklace, hair, cell phone, nothing changed. Maybe that was because she knew she was dreaming this time?

Still. Weird.

She gave her bed a quick glance before she completely lost it beyond the forest. It stayed there, a normal bed with no hints of purple hues or red holes. It didn't seem it would take off randomly or fall through another hole in the world. It was just a bed that happened to be in the middle of a forest. Completely standard.

Why was she thinking about this so hard? It was a dream. She didn't need to make herself question everything. If the bed vanished it vanished. If she wanted to wake up, she'd simply wake up. As it was, her dream gifted her with an entirely new world to see, so stop being a chicken and go explore.

The insects around her silenced. It took her a moment to realize she spoke out loud.

"Sorry!" Reve held up her hands, a sheepish grin flitting over her mouth. "You can start back up again. I'll stay quiet."

They didn't start again.

She kept going straight, toward where she saw the moon. The woods were so high it covered any way she could catch it again except from where her bed landed. Still, shadows darker than the night sky fell around her, cast by the moonlight somehow weaving its way through the branches. The flowers that lit her path dwindled, growing fewer and smaller each step she took until only single, tiny clover-like plants sprinkled the forest floor. Tree trunks swallowed up almost all light and left only their shadows and dimly lit leaves for her to judge where one thing started and another ended.

Then, the shadows ended.

The giant moon seems to engulf whatever was farther, yet it cast a silvery light to the world around her. Grey lit the grass to deep maroon blades that swayed in the still might air, it showed the forest behind her and how it branched in a giant semi-circle around her. As the grass ended, it showed a place of the darkest black before her that seemed to hold nothing but a forever fall.

Reve looked toward the sky and found a never-ending sea of stars.

She didn't feel anything at first, until layer upon layer of serene calm wrapped around her.

Maybe she was wrong.

In the silence of space, she wondered if instead of falling to Hell like she feared, she dreamed of Heaven.

Her hands ran through the soft blades of grass. At some point, eyes still on the stars, she'd sat. Was this as close as she could get? Her dream, was it as close as she could be to her mother?

The cold linoleum of the bathroom seemed so long ago, but here in the still world she started to feel the same as before, only this time there was a sense of... finality to it. What's done was done.

She still wasn't there.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to the sky. Her voice broke. Wavered. "I'm sorry."

Stars seemed to sparkle in response.

Was she really going to cry, here in this dream? Reve pushed herself to stand, only to find water already falling down her cheeks. The moment she thought of her became the moment she lost.

Lost what she didn't know. But she lost something.

Reve took a long gulp of air and set her eyes toward the space of emptiness where the grass ended. In a world lit by moonlight, the space of nothing was too... wrong. Too dark. It surpassed the void in the petals of flowers and turned deeper, like she truly stared into a place where existence was wiped clean.

She didn't want to be 'wiped clean,' if that's what it truly was, but she did want to know why there was a hole.

She also wanted to think of anything but that morning.

Reve pressed closer, so close she was only a step away from being right in it. The maroon grass dwindled here and turned to what felt like mud below her.

Mud. That implied water. That meant she could touch it.

Every part of her screamed to not do that, so she didn't. If it was something that swallowed light, what would happen if she touched it? Would she lose that limb? Would it grab her and drag her away?

Would she feel like an idiot if she was overreacting because of water? Yes. But she didn't want to die yet, even if it meant she'd just wake up. She didn't really want to lose a limb either because knowing she luck she'd regrow it on her head.

She pulled her phone from her pocket and shook it, pointing it toward the space of dark. With the shake, the flashlight turned on and send jarring shards of white-hot light into the night world.

That light was swallowed by it too, but not before the dark seemed to ripple.

Reve's heart hammered. The empty space started to fizz wherever her light touched it, to make small popping sounds that grew louder with each passing moment. A strand of dark lifted for the moon, tendrils of it turning to snake-like wisps with the silver light.

Was it water?

Light trained on the now bubbling void, Reve bend to grab a blade of grass, which she plucked form the ground and held out like an offering to the dark. The rip of the blade touched it, disappearing as it did, but when she pulled away it came with her. Intact.

She brushed the part that disappeared. It was wet, though a warmth spread through it.

So it was water.

Then why--

Reve stared at the wisps of darkness that stretched up and listened to the bubbles pop in the water. How the grass was warm where it touched water-- was it heating? Did her cell phone managed to boil water?

She boiled a pond?

What kind of world was this where a bad flashlight could make something so large become steam? It wasn't cold-- she wasn't cold in her bare feet against the ground. If it was chill, that's how she'd expect light to hurt. It was only dark.

Which implied there was no day.

Reve looked at the light. In a world that only new of the dark, what could she do with that flashlight? She held a power to completely, utterly destroy or make in the palm of her hand.

It felt horrible.

She shook the phone again and the light flicked off. With one last look at the moon, she turned to go back to her bed-- or however she needed to wake up. Light boiling water screamed 'start of nightmare ' to her, and no matter if she was lucid dreaming or not, she wanted out. It was just the question of how. The answer seemed simple enough. Just wake up. Yet, even with it crossing the surface of her mind it didn't seem right. She was no more awake than she'd been at the start of this.

Reve barely turned before she pulled her gaze down and was met with a face, light as a ghost, glaring down at her.

She shrieked at the same time another lower sound shot through the air. The thing in front of her flicked it's eyes to the side, the bright yellow irises seeming to leave a trail behind them, and shifted down.

Reve's feet betrayed her and propelled her backwards toward the pit of water. Her cry still echoed in the air, her heart mid-leap from her chest as she started to fall.

Directly into the water.

Pools at home were gradual. Ponds, the same. It was never an immediate drop into nothing.

Here, it was. Here she sank like a bowling ball.

She didn't feel the splash or the heat as she went in. From every rule she knew, she should have been boiled along with the water but it wasn't. It was cool.

Dark.

As dark as it was on the outside, it was even more so in it. Outside it looked like a void. A hole that went straight down into a realm she didn't know, only given glimpses of light through the stars and moon above. Inside was a land of emptiness. Less than nothing surrounded her, the water that should have existed reduced to sluggish movements and an inability to breathe, but not felt. Light ceased with no hints of ever returning.

Here was a world of nothing.

An ever-growing panic lumped in Reve's throat. Down was up and up was down and she was lost in the hole--

Hands seized her from under her arms and yanked her up. Water droplets slung through the air as she broke the surface and ended up face down on the maroon grass.

This time it looked like dried blood.

Reve gasped, trying to catch the breath that left her before. Tangled strands on her black hair fell in front of her face, shrouded her head so her looked like one of those creatures from a horror movie. The water dripped off her to the ground, forming little puddles of void against her clenched hands. Her mind reeled, but before she could form a coherent thought something sharp poked the top of her head.

"Don't move, light demon."

The voice was demanding. Hard. Unmistakably female, but full of a power Reve only heard when her father was angry. Chills went up her spine as her body froze almost against her will.

She was right about it turning into a nightmare.

Wait.

Screw that, this was her dream! She didn't want it to be a nightmare, so why should it be. If she knew she was dreaming, then there had to be some way of changing it.

The fear melted away to annoyance. Reve's hands unclenched from the ground. Then, the words the woman spoke blew into her with the full force of a truck.

Did her own imagination just insult her?

She pulled away from the thing poking the head and looked in the direction of the woman who spoke. Reve's lips curled up and nostrils flared with what she could only feel as disgust.

"Excuse me? I'm not a demon!"

She glared up at the one who spoke. She was right about it being female, but the face claimed more around Reve's own age than full woman. She towered over Reve, body built like one of those UFC fighters her dad liked to watch -- somewhat broader, made only of muscle, and exuding the energy of ripping Reve's own kneecaps off to shove down her throat. Every inch of skin exposed was a ghostly pale, bordering on stark white. Silver hair gathered in an elaborate ponytail except for two long, beaded braids on either side of her face, each reaching her knees and tipped with a darker gray blade on the end -- one braid she held pointing Reve.

Reve's eyes trained on the blade wrapped in the girl's hair and remembered the poke at the back of her head.

"Did you stab me with that?" She reached for the place it touched her, only for the girl to shove the blade right back in her face.

"I said don't move," she snarled.

Reve recoiled as the pointy thing came much too close to her eyes. "Could you stop threatening me with your stupid hair toy?"

Still, she didn't move.

Something flashed across the girl's face. Every ounce of warrior vanished for a split second. "Wha-- it's not a hair toy!"

"And I'm not a demon, so get it out of my face!"

"You just created light, how do you except me to believe you?"

Created light? The flashlight?

"You mean my phone?"

The knife got closer to her face. If she were move any closer, it'd go straight to Reve's eyeball.

"You admit to having a weapon, light demon."

Reve really shouldn't have been bothered by the 'light demon.' For one, it was dream. Secondly, she had a little brother. She'd heard and been called worse.

But she was tired. Sleep wasn't working and her dream felt more like reality at that point -- besides the bed falling into a different world and light cooking a pond. She'd had a sucky day been awake for almost the full twenty-four hours of it before being thrust into the most exhausting dream she could be in.

Needless to say, she wasn't in the mood.

Reve slapped the side of the girl's blade out of her face and stood, hands trembling as she did. A pent-up mix of emotions -- anger, grief, anxiety, ones she couldn't grasp -- boiled up inside her until it felt like they were going out her fingertips. Her body trembled, her breaths ragged, and her mouth engaged before her brain.

"I told you, I'm not a light demon," she spat. The strange girl moved to fight and Reve balled her fist. "I'm a human. I've had a bad day. I'm wet. I'm tired. I was having a DECENT DREAM until you came along and ruined all of it. I want to go back to my bed in the middle of the forest and go to SLEEP!"

If someone searched hard enough, they'd have been able to see sound waves off her last few words. Her voice, which was calm for all of two seconds, rose to a scream by the end of her words.

Reve took one step to march past the ghostly girl and found herself flat on her back. Air rushed from her lungs too fast for her to catch that she was breathless, leaving her gasping in the midst of the blood-colored grass.

The other girl held the blade above her head, pointed it straight toward Reve's chest. Her braided hair at the end of it made it look more like one of those leashes that attached to items so they wouldn't get lost. Her black eyes went wide, wild almost, holding no question as to where the weapon was about to go.

"Kala! Wait!"

The voice from before she fell into her water -- a boy's voice -- shot through the night. Intent vanished from the girl's-- Kala's -- gaze, but murder still seemed to be on the table from the way her face twisted and mangled itself.

Reve really just wished she'd get on with it. Then she could wake up and reset.