Ryder looked up into the gunmetal grey clouds as the rain began to fall. She had to fight her instinct to blink as several raindrops found their mark and landed on her upturned face. She breathed in deeply, the cold, electrified air anchoring her to the moment. With that act she realized things were very off. Her eyes shot down to discover she was wearing a ridiculous light blue nightgown with ruffles on the cuffs of the sleeves, her bare feet ankle deep in gooey mud.

What the hell am I wearing? She wondered, as she pulled her muddied hem out of the clinging filth. She hadn't worn anything like this in ten years, and the thought of putting it on now that she was nearly eighteen made no sense. But more important matters began pressing in, like where she was. Her eyes darted around, to find she was in a small, empty valley, with a heavy tree line close behind her.

How did I get here?

The wind picked up and swept passed her towards the tree line, and on it there seemed to be a quiet voice whispering something. Ryder strained to understand the words, but the wind continued on before she could. She wriggled her feet free of the mud and turned to follow the wind. Forgetting about protecting her nightgown from the rain drenched earth, she dropped her fistfuls and her hands reached out to push passed the tree branches. The whisper capturing every part of her, even the dark forgotten corners of her soul.

But as she pushed further into the trees the delicate whispering was lost as the sound of yelling and clattering over powered its bewitching taunt.

The yelling voices were not inviting, and as new waves of the unknown chaos crashed against her, she felt her hair begin to stand on end. All of her instincts urged her to get away from the sound, but for some reason she found herself moving faster towards it. Her feet had ruled against instinct and made the executive decision to investigate. Her curiosity caught up with her feet and she urged her legs into a run.

She was surprised by her own body, the way she moved so fluidly as she ran through the dense forest. She had never felt this way, never felt this connected to the earth, to her own muscles. She began to wonder why she ever wore shoes as her toes gripped the bark launching her over a fallen tree.

The sounds grew louder.

She broke through the tree line without hesitation, nearly slamming into a soldier wildly wielding a battle ax. In a desperate attempt to keep from being impaled she slipped and fell head long into the mud. The delicate lace around the cuffs of her nightgown was instantly enveloped by the grimy earth. She managed to gain control of her flailing limbs and flip onto her back. The entirety of her ridiculous nightgown was now a putrid color and smell.

"Where the hell am I?" She asked out loud. The men and women on the battlefield were clad in tight leather armor, smashing against one another ignoring the heavy rain. Their only desire seemed to be to drive their swords into another's body.

She watched in horror as a man died not twenty feet away from her. It was nothing like movies portrayed. The man's death was brutal and not clean, his shoulder and neck were partially separated, creating the perfect opening for blood to spurt, as if a hose had been turned on. Her stomach rose into her throat, she closed her eyes willing her stomach to settle, fighting the urge to retch.

As she began gain control over her revolting stomach she realized that the battle had gone eerily quiet. Her clenched eyes reluctantly fluttered open, too curious to stay closed. Every soldier staring in the same direction up into the sky. She followed their bewildered gazes; her jaw went slack when she saw what had rendered an entire battlefield to silence. A motionless woman floating thirty feet in the air.

The woman's arms hovered away from her sides, her feet dangling without resistance toward the earth. She was completely dry, untouched by the hammering rain. Her loose linen sky-blue blouse waved gently around her body, as if a soft breeze ran through it instead of the gusts hammering the rest of the battlefield. Her long brown hair floated out around her face like a wispy halo, adding to the sense of divine.

The awe of the moment was shattered with an eruption of a deafening crack, as if a mountain exploded. A huge tornado-like column of energy rose up in the midst of the opposing army's back line.

Ryder couldn't tell what the column of chaos was made of, at times she saw tongues of fire reaching out, smothering people. As it undulated forward it morphed, mimicking the characteristics of water, with jagged boulders of earth swirling within it. The chunks of earth managed to find their way out of the swirling death and were launched onto the soldiers who had been smart enough to run away from the towering column of destruction. A strong inward suction fed the cyclone, the wild winds plucking men and women up like ants, sucking them into the ever-changing vortex where their screams were instantly silenced.

The storm in the sky seemed to be drawn to the event as well, dozens of bolts of lightning connected with the soggy earth and with desperate soldiers. The awe-inspiring display of energy took only seconds to kill hundreds of men and women, none being able to escape the devastating destruction of power.

Just as suddenly as the vortex had formed, it dissipated. A deafening crash of thunder reverberated through the field with its sudden departure.

Ryder covered her ears, attempting to hold the painful sound at bay. When the tremors of energy subsided, she blinked in shock.

"Where the hell am I?" Fell out of her mouth, as her mind struggled to accept what was happening.

As her body settled from the powerful concussion, she scanned the sky but found nothing. For a reason she didn't understand, she felt panic rise within her. She scrambled to her feet, now scanning the ground. There, on the edge of the tree line, she saw what could be the sky-blue blouse. Ryder pulled her feet free of the mud and began to run. She had no thoughts in her mind, merely the need to get to the woman. She didn't question it, she simply responded to it.

She ran as fast as she could. A stitch began ripping at her side, but she clung to her inexplicable need to reach the woman. She coughed through the pain. She knew she could make it. She had to make it.

Ryder's feet stuttered to an ungraceful stop about ten feet away from the motionless heap of a woman, her back to Ryder. The woman's long brown hair that had once looked like an angelic halo, now lay lifelessly in the rancid slime, some of it clinging to her shoulders and the side of her face like a wet spider web.

A new fear manifested in apprehension as she approached the woman's unnaturally still body. A warning ringing all the way from the depths of her soul. She ignored the warning and forced herself to close the distance and kneel next to the woman, the dirty nightgown gathering under her. Ryder knew she had to do something, she couldn't just sit there and stare as the woman died. She had to do something!

Ryder was nearly hyperventilating as her shaking hand reached out to turn the woman over. Every one of her senses screaming at her to stop. She summoned what remained of her crumpling will and forced her fingers to touch the women's wet shoulder.

At the moment of that minuscule connection, the wind rushed over Ryder. Its voice just above a whisper this time, bestowing one clear word, "Aurora".

Then without warning Ryder felt the horrifying rush of falling into dark nothingness, as if a trapdoor had unexpectedly been ripped open beneath her.

Ryder shot straight up in her bed, the sensation of losing contact with the ground pumping adrenaline into her confused body. Her breath came quick and shallow as her scrambling mind tried to make sense of her surroundings once again. The softness of her sheets and the squish of the mattress greeted her as she released them from her clenched fists.

Her heart began to settle, and her mind became clearer as she looked around her very familiar room. The sage green walls, the large picture window covered by a bamboo shade, all too familiar.

She allowed her body to fall back onto her trundle bed, her hands coming up to cover her face.

"Just a dream." She said reassuringly to herself, trying to take some more of the edge off her pounding heart.

She rolled onto her side to see what her bastard clock had to say, trying to plant herself that much more in reality.

"Dammit." She murmured, as the clock declared the time to be 4:58 AM. The most horrible time to wake up on a school day from a derisive dream.

Or was it nightmare? She wondered. She pulled her comforter tighter around herself, trying to chase away the chill she still felt in her bones from being cold and wet in the dream.

Ryder tried to distract herself since sleep was not an option, her body still on alert from the chaos of the battlefield. She forced her mind to the easiest thought possible, her looming eighteenth birthday. Unfortunately, her permanently bruised ego began to rear its ugly head as she thought about how much older she was than the rest of her junior class. But a bruised ego was better than reliving the craziness of her dream, so she allowed it to taunt her.

She had been held back in second grade when her teacher, Mrs. Concepción, a tiny woman whom seemed to despise the very idea of children, had reached her wits end with Ryder, and her inability to socialize normally with practically everyone. But with some coaching, and switching schools two more times, Ryder learned how to relate in a normal, and constructive way with her classmates. She had even managed to make some real friends. But inside she always felt a hint of denial, because she still knew she was different. She had simply figured out how to play the game.

She let her arm fall off the side of her bed, her hand landing on something furry and warm. Toby's large body moved under her fingers, waking from the touch. She was happy to feel her big golden dog there.

Her attention continued to wander focusing on nothing specific, simply trying not to allow her thoughts to fall too heavily on the woman in the sky-blue blouse. She wasn't ready to start thinking about what her subconscious was trying to tell her with that one.

Then her alarm sounded.