The Dreamwatch

Prologue   A Reflection   Clock hands wind round time’s fixed path. An unchanging circle of ticks and tocks. Yet revolution signals alteration. Transformation. Coalescing a solitary ideal. A strange, wonderful thing.   Impetus to alter balance. Might to challenge glorious fate. Opportunity to conceive the perfect vision, and make it manifest.   Dreams are a dangerous thing.   ---   The empty sunset cast its dusty light across the pale cobblestones, only brushing the almost iridescent skin of the bleeding woman. Her face contorted in a strange balance between fear and comfort, confusion on what expression should manifest. Her sharp, blue eyes, stood frozen in a look of confusion and betrayal, pleading for answers but receiving none. Her limp body swayed slightly in its graceful fall, as if it were a puppet come to life just moments after the strings had been cut. Her long, golden hair splayed out like wisps, blanketing her visage as the darkness below consumed her. A solitary arm stretched out towards a figure nearby as if to pull it down alongside her.   A touch of the dying light revealed the a knife in the hand of this figure. A solitary drop of blood slid sinisterly down its curved edge, hanging at the tip. It clung to the edge, almost waiting for permission to fall. Another mote of light caught the smiling mouth of this figure, a crazy sense of pride for the work it had completed.   Blood poked through the falling girl’s white dress, droplets poised outward as if stretching to connect back with its brothers on the knife. But the darkness was too much, it swallowed it up. The light lost the girl for a moment, and then was completely devoured by the deepness below.   She had been my only sister. Now she was gone forever, lost to the dark sea below. Never had I envisioned this day.   ‘Eternal.’ A title we were blessed with by birth. We were the balancing mechanism that would keep humanity safe. And here I was, witnessing her end, unable to express even the subtlest emotion.   I was told once, “Dreams are a dangerous thing.” It is only now that I have come to realize the wisdom inherent in this saying. Change is coming to this world. I pray I have the strength to face the trials before me and save mankind…from itself.