The hundred years sleep was not as Claire had expected.

She thought she would fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up a hundred years later feeling no different than if just a couple seconds had passed.

That was not what it was like at all.

There were long intervals in which she was in deep and undisturbed slumber. But other times she slept restlessly, hovering more closely to a state of awakening. Most of all she dreamed.

When Claire first fell asleep, she dreamed of life as if it were continuing as normal. In her mind she would be eating breakfast with her parents as the sun rose through the window. Then she would be trying on new dresses, laughing with her maids, convincing them to put on some of her dresses so they could all look at their glorified reflections in the mirror. Then she would be walking the grounds with Owen.

Whenever she dreamed of him, she was happy at first, feeling as if everything was back the way it used to be. But then she would wake up slightly and remember that things weren't the same. She would remember just how sad they were. She would remember that her dreams were the only place she would ever see him again.

The first few times Claire saw Owen in her dreams, she came near to the point of waking up. When her mind focused, she was almost able to open her eyes. And she did. They could flutter open if she forced them. She could wiggle her fingers once or twice, but then they would lose strength. Her eyes would be weighed down with exhaustion, and they would always close again, pricked with frustrated tears.

"This is torture," she thought more than once in her moments of greater consciousness.

The dreams gradually changed. No longer did her parents' faces float around in her mind's eye. No longer was she at Owen's side in the castle gardens or in a rowboat on the pond. Her dreams wandered back to where dreams belong instead of lingering in the real world forever. Now Claire stood at the tops of mountains that grazed the sky. She could reach up and move her hand through the air, and it swirled around her hand like water. Then she was gone. She was flying through air made of light and stardust. She landed amongst flowers that evaporated into the air. The ground shifted beneath her feet, and she moved with it. It spilled over the edge of the world in grains like sand. Everything dissolved into darkness.

Her eyelids flickered.

Owen...

She was in a meadow, surrounded by flowers of every color and kind. The wind picked up, and as they swayed in its wake, the flowers grew. Their stalks stretched until the petals shaded Claire's head from the sun. The sky darkened. The canopy over her head liquefied and fell upon her in enormous raindrops, big enough to fill the whole earth. She got caught up in the waves.

She rolled over under her covers and settled into her new position with a deep exhale.

Claire was on a country road that extended for miles over wild land. Trees and bushes dotted the way. Strange animals crossed her path every now and then, familiar, but not quite. She felt a sense of importance, like she was supposed to be travelling along this path. She didn't know where she was going, only that she needed to get there.

She felt like something was following behind her. But she never looked back.

The ground flew beneath her feet as if each step took her a mile. The countryside flashed by in a blur of green and brown, then melted into a forest where she stood now.

Claire's feeling of being followed increased as the shadows of the trees spread between the trunks and stretched toward her like the ground was a paper dyed with spilled ink. Although the shadows were a dark, nebulous mass, it had a slight shape that she could sense more than see. She could feel it watching her intently as it moved in. A howl sounded in her ears that rose into a whooshing, screeching, roar as it closed in faster.

Claire screamed and fell to the ground, flinging her arms over her head for protection. But, just when she thought all hope was lost, the blackness shifted away. It turned and retreated through the forest.

When Claire looked up, she saw Owen standing somewhere far off among tall trees. He looked tired.

The shadows of the forest around where he stood started to seep at the edges like they had before. Claire wanted to shout out in warning, and she did. The prince's head turned as if he had heard it, but his eyes never found her.

The shadows grew into their terrifying form and stalked around him. Claire didn't know why he couldn't see it.

The shadow creature lunged, Owen finally noticing it with a look of utter terror. Despair seized Claire's heart. She rushed forward to save her beloved, even if it were all just a dream.

It certainly felt real.