The girl woke with a start, propelled out of bed by terror and grief. Running to the door she opened it and raced to the small living room. It was only when she saw the neatly arranged furniture and stained blue rug that she calmed enough to think past the vivid images clouding her mind. She searched the room for the source of her terror, but to her surprise found nothing. Arms holding her sides, she sank to the ground in a frightened heap.

"Just a dream," she told herself, but the reassurance felt hollow and did nothing to ease the dread coursing through her. If anything, it only heightened her fear. She had seen them, her mother, and the deformed body bleeding out on the rug she now sat on, but it had all only been a dream. So why then did she feel the need to grieve? Why was she so scared? She had no answers and could not shake the feeling that the things she had seen in sleep had somehow followed her into the waking world.

It was a shift in the shadows that drew her attention. A silhouette of something like a man, its legs bent at odd angles and strange shapes curved out the side of its head. It seemed to raise from the floor beside her. Her heart thundered and sweat formed, making her long shirt stick to her skin. Frozen in place she watched as one long hand reached for her. A shriek tore from her throat when she felt a touch on her shoulder.

"Ira?" The sound of a familiar voice sounding her name made her spin around.

"Mom!" jumping up, the girl buried her face in the soft cloth of her mother's night gown. She could not help the small sob that broke through her words "I saw them kill you."

"Kill me?" gently pulling away from her daughter, the woman gave the girl a concerned look. "What are you talking about? Who did you see?"

"When?"

The fierce intensity with which the women studied the girl made her feel uneasy. Why would she ask that? Why did it matter, it was just a dream? A strange sensation started to grow in her chest. "I don't know, it was just-"

"Ira, this is very important, you have to tell me exactly what you saw and when it happens"

The girl opened her mouth to speak but the fading fear returned now with vengeance. Panic took hold and her lungs refused to inflate. her legs grew weak, and her hands shook. She couldn't breathe, and she fell to the floor as her muscles began to spasm. There were tears in her eyes as the world grew distant and she was no longer in the living room of a small apartment or the comforting embrace of her mother but in the white infinite expanse of nothing.

Then it shifted.

Suddenly she was everywhere. She could see, could feel, everything. Every sensation in the world flooded her mind until it fractured, and she was swept away. No longer herself but a part of each living soul that roamed her world, she knew their pain, their joy, their anger, and their passion.

She knew the flower long after it had turned to dust.

She knew the child before it was conceived.

She knew the world before man.

And the world after.

There was a part of her that was aware. Aware of herself among the vastness of reality, of the separate but connected entity that she should be but was somehow more than. An eternity passed, or perhaps it was only a moment before she sensed another with her. Something that pushed away the Knowing. It picked the pieces of her out of the endless life and gently put her back together. Parts of her resisted. They-she wanted to stay. To wander through the bonds that connected all things, but that presence firmly guided them back, and slowly she became herself. As her mind became her own, thoughts began to form. Her heart began to beat, her lungs to expand then contract, and sounds to quiet.

Complete once more, she took in a deep breath and tried to make sense of where she was. She seemed to be suspended in empty space and after the flood of raw sensations, the absence of such was a relief. When she did feel something, it was a gentle caress, not of her body, but of her mind. She could sense the intention, and the question, it presented to her. Opening her eyes, she saw she was in what she could only describe as a bubble. Outside against an unseen barrier, every color imaginable swirled amongst the scenes that played out before her. All around people walked by. Trees grew, withered, and died. Animals ran wild and free. All while the relentless cycle of seasons continued. As she watched she knew that this had been inside her, or she had been inside it. To her, they seemed to be the same thing.

A dancer spun and arched, her body an expression of longing and loss. Inside, she wept for the one who would not love her and the dreams that seemed to grow farther away with each day that passed, unaware of the new life that grew within her. The life that would become her world.

How beautiful it was.

"Yes, it is" "

The voice that spoke was one made of many.

"Who are you?" she did not say the words but in this place, where all minds were one, there was no need to.

"Everything." The answer seemed to come both from nowhere and everywhere at once.

"What's happening?

"It ...accepts you, Sil'dysa."

Sil'dysa? The word wasn't so much sound as a sensation. She wondered what it meant and why the voices called her by it.

"Listener,

Seer,

Prophetess,

Oracle.

"You child, are Sil'dysa"

"I don't understand."

"We know what you do not. It is time to start your journey, not for you to know, not yet. I will send someone to help you." Again, it brushed her mind in a gentle caress. "Do not be afraid. There are many things we will show you, child. Watch and listen. All will be well."

Then it took something from the swirling mass and placed it in her mind. Like before, information rushed through her, the sensations and images becoming a part of her, but this time it was not infinity that she knew, but only a moment.

A horrible, terrible moment.