Today, I walked to Church by myself.

I had a dream where I found a four-leaf clover. (All of the other clovers are really missing their fourth leaf.)

I am in the House (it is not my Home, of course) alone and am allowed to walk to Church by myself. I am normally not allowed to, you see, because the Lady and her Husband want for me to go to a different Church with them. 'We're a family,' the Lady's Husband moralised, as though I did not know nor care what a family was, as though I did not know nor care what morals were. 'We go to church as a family.' I held my tongue (it hurt) because the words I wanted to say would drive knives into the chests of my real brothers and sisters (and myself), spilling blood which is not our own. (Not Mama and Papa, though, as they have no bodies here.) If Elisa can hold her tongue, I can, too; I pretended to have learnt a lesson about the importance of family, trying my best to conceal my resentment.

I much prefer the stained-glass windows and hymns to the featurelessness and the Christian rock songs. I much prefer walking (even though it's hot enough that I could catch an illness which the Lady will not believe I have, disregarding that I've never pretended to be ill) to sitting in that dangerous contraption which was only invented a hundred years ago. I much prefer sitting beside the cool wood and nothing else, alone and not alone, to sitting beside the wicked stepparents who neither know they are stepparents (or, rather, that they are the victims of a Changeling Tale) nor that they appear wicked because they could never replace Mama and Papa (wicked stepparents are such poor souls). Rather than hearing the Lady mispronounce 'Amen' in a feigned southern accent in reply to the most obvious of morals pointed out by the kind but loud-voiced Pastor, I much prefer the quiet understanding in that Church I can walk to. (I'm sorry.)

Even though I am more red than blue now,--though I am really white with patches of purple (as I've always been)--I still treasure the Quiet.

Photo can be found here.

Wendy

"You look so grown up," she said, looking down at me. "You're beginning to look like a woman!" I stepped back, the ribbons in my hair brushing against my ears. "R-really?" My face and voice told her not to say such things, but she didn't hear it. (I really ought to say what I mean. Meaning what I say isn't enough.) I tried to reason her away; She is only trying to flatter me, and she doesn't know that she isn't. Even my friends have noticed it: my face, my size, my shoulders--nothing about me has grown up at all in years. She doesn't go away, though, and she has a grin like a wolf (and not the nice kind).

Illness

Photo found on TrekEarth.

There was something nice about going to a boarding school in an old castle, and being surrounded by children my size was a comfort.

It was night and a plague had broken out--the "Black Virus", a girl called it. Though I was a little girl and a student, I was led into the tower to give the vaccine. 

The children died quickly, like petals from an almond tree battered by rain. Once dead, they were thrown in the fire. I looked around and my shadow in the back of my head whispered that they would all burn, that only I would survive. I continued my work without hesitating, the room spinning and blurring.

I saw a girl grown a bit more than I am--she looked so healthy, but my shadow told me that she would be gone, too. I walked down the stairs to find a little boy (a little bit smaller than myself) who was too ill to walk up the stairs. Too weak to carry him, I could only hold his hand, colder and smaller than my own. I saw another boy his size--even more frail than him and with dark hair and bright eyes--pushed in on a wheeled bed by two boys my own size. He was Simon, and I could have sworn the two boys were Ralph and Jack, but they were only two boys I couldn't recognise, practically faceless. Simon wore a melancholy smile and seemed to see something that the others couldn't, maybe something even I couldn't have seen if I'd looked at it. I sent one of the boys to get some more medicine, but I opened my eyes before he returned.

The Magician and Fireflies

Image found on Google Images.


On a cool, quiet night, I crept outside to meet someone. Everything seemed silent, sleeping. I could not remember who it was I was meeting or why, but it all seemed perfectly reasonable, as most dreams do.

Then, in a sort of forest clearing, I found him. A young man with dark, tanned skin and soft hair the colour of the moon; he stood wearing a long coat just slightly bluer than the evening sky. I have tried to draw him, but, though my memory of him seems so vivid, his image disappears when I try to see him more clearly. Floating around the clearing were what I thought to be fireflies, but not quite what I had seen before. They were much brighter and glowed continuously so that their tiny, insect bodies became invisible. I heard a song I knew, but the words were changed. I cannot recall them either, but I knew somehow that, if anyone else should see him, something would happen...

He spoke to me in a calm, gentle voice, though I don't know what he said. I stood closer to him and watched the strange fireflies; they casted a warm, golden glow about the clearing. It felt as though we were sitting in front of a fire inside a home, and that, at the same time, that the whole world was coldly sleeping--that only we were awake.

In the morning, I listened to the song repeatedly and sung it to myself, vainly trying to find an answer, a reason for the dream.