Prologue

She was no one special; just another face in the sea of mediocrity. “Not even a particularly pretty face,” she thought to herself as she stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. But she couldn’t look away from the reflection of her eyes. She had always believed the eyes were the window to the soul, but she didn’t understand how she could be lied to by her own. In them she saw fire; the strength of a warrior, the power of an ocean, the wisdom of the moon and all the stars…she sighed. “But all of that’s just in my dreams. I’m no more a warrior than you are,” she said to her reflection. “It’s cruel of you to flaunt my dreams to me while I’m awake.” The mirror girl made no response but to stare sullenly back.

 

Sighing, she turned out the lights and went to her room. It was small, but she’d made it cozy over the years. Her chinchilla ran up to the top of his cage to stick his nose between the bars in greeting. She rubbed his nose with a finger and gave him a raisin from a bag on top of the cage. “At least you’re always happy to see me,” she said as she opened the cage door, “Though I suspect it’s only for the food.” He jumped out of the cage onto her open hand and promptly ran up to sit on her shoulder. He stuck his nose in her ear as she went to sit on her bed. “You won’t find anything tasty in there,” she laughed as she sat cross-legged against the wall. He jumped down into her lap to nestle in the crook of her knee. She stroked his back as she looked at all of the things around her.

 

“No,” she quietly said to no one, “They’re all a part of me.” Every thing had meaning, from her collection of dragon statues, whose likenesses she sometimes rode in her dreams, to dried flowers from both of her grandfathers’ funerals that she kept not only to remember them, but also to remind her that no one lives forever and that everything fades in time. The bulletin board on the wall behind her chilla’s cage held ribbons, pictures, and mementos from when she was little. The top shelf of the desk across from her held more recent things: various ceramic pieces that made her remember her art classes with good friends, a gear her father had given her when he still worked at a gear cutter in the city, painted rune stones given to her by a friend…

 

Then there were more mystical memories attached to other items. An Egyptian blown glass perfume bottle with gold leaf and the golden sphinx figurine resting beside it were from her dream-kingdom in Egypt, various goblets were from her visits to medieval England, a feathered raven figure made her yearn to fly again…

 

“Why are we cursed to dream such impossible things?” she asked her chilla, though he seemed to have fallen asleep. She leaned back against the wall - or more accurately the posters and pictures that almost completely covered her walls - and sighed. “Maybe an entire lifetime is just a nightmare of normality, and we only truly wake up in our dreams.”

 

She looked at her fingers and could almost feel forgotten magicks flowing through them. And she was sure that if she opened her blinds once in a while, she’d see a lost city hidden deep within a forest. But alas, her fingers held no more magic than her golden sphinx or medieval goblets did. And she knew that her window only showed a backyard and a street with more houses beyond it. Such was the nightmare of normality, as she’d come to call it.

 

Well, to be quite honest, the first time she’d said it was a few seconds ago, but it seemed an accurate description for life.

 

Over the years she’d learned that nothing was as it seemed, and that nothing could be trusted. She’d seen how so many people would charm you with a song and a smile while rummaging in your pockets to take anything they wanted. She saw how governments kept their people ignorant by cutting school funds, and passing bills to limit freedoms more and more each year... Not even out of high school yet and more jaded than most adults.

 

But yet fiction was the exact opposite of reality; everything was just as it seemed. She’d given up on most movies and TV shows; no matter what the plot, story, or theme, she could always pick out who would betray who, who the killer was, when the wife would walk in on her husband with his mistress, when someone was walking into a trap... Everything was predictable. Books were much the same in their predictability, but she still preferred them to visual media; there was an innate beauty to words committed to paper, and no matter how much or little the author described something, the imagination always took over. It was one thing to watch a fake battle on a screen, but quite another to imagine yourself fighting alongside, or as, the people battling. It was one thing to watch fake swords spill fake blood and send men to their fake deaths, but quite another to feel cold steel in your mind’s hand, to feel the impacts of blows caught on your shield.

 

Words were not only beautiful, but they held real power. Mere words could invoke tears, anger, happiness. They could make people nostalgic over memories never experienced, or move people to abandon old beliefs and adopt new ones.

 

Actions could suppress the imagination, but words could set it free.

 

She sighed in frustration as she felt herself growing tired. Her clock showed 4:35 am, but she had no desire to sleep, however tired she may be. She hated sleep for two reasons: the lesser, it was a waste of time that could be better spent; the greater, with sleep came dreams, whose temporary respite only made each passing day in reality more unbearable.

 

She got up and put her sleeping chilla back in his cage, then got ready for bed. It was no use fighting off sleep. She’d tried completely wearing herself out during the day in hopes of dreamless sleep, but only achieved that the first night. Not sleeping at all made her dreams cross over into her waking hours by way of unintentional lapses into daydreams. Sleeping pills just made them more potent.

 

She took her mp3 player from the desk, turned off the light, and laid down in her bed. She’d found music helped her block out her restless thoughts each night and fall asleep quicker. And the faster she fell asleep, the faster morning would come. She closed her eyes and soon felt herself drifting off to the sweet, mournful sound of cellos and drums, wondering what tonight’s adventure would be, and when her recurring nightmare would end it.