She was flying.

Soaring was more like it. She was shooting like a star across the sky. The breeze whipped up her ebony hair like the tail of a kite. She dared not look down, being scared of heights and all.

But that particular phobia didn't matter now. She felt another fear present. Not her own, but around her. Trepidation, terror, shocking silence. She felt it in the air. Fear.

…of her.

Suddenly, she stopped mid flight. Didn't slow, but simply stopped unnaturally fast for the speed she was going at. There was something below she had to get to. She wasn't sure what it was but it was incredibly important. Shen tilted foreword and nose dived straight down. As she breeched the clouds, she was met with an unfamiliar landscape.

Ice. An island completely covered in ice. It had a very peculiar shape…

That's not right she thought through the haze of her mind. Then where is the source of the fear?

Suddenly, a figure appeared at her right, matching her decent evenly. A figure she had known her whole life. It should have surprised her but for some reason, it was almost expected.

Even though they must have been going fifty miles per hour, neither mother nor daughter were watching the ground and instead were watching each other. Hay Lin's eyes always full of life were hard and demanding. She shook her head slowly, a warning.

A warning that apparently didn't register in her mind. She spoke her own:

"A COLD WIND'S COMING OFF THE NORTHERN SHORE"

Suddenly and violently, she pin wheeled straight into her mother. The impact was the last thing she felt before she woke up in bed in a cold sweat.

Shen Jay sat up and flipped on the lights quickly and her eyes darted everywhere around her room. From her collection of glass dragons to the sky her mother painted on her roof. Everything seemed to be in order.

She shuddered at the eeriness of it all in the dark early morning hours and flipped the lights off again. She huddled beneath her covers.

It was suddenly freezing.

Quick as lightning and slick as steel, she tore through thick deep ocean water as fast as she could. She was power. She was fear.

She was on the hunt and nothing could get in her way.

She saw through the darkness as if there were none. As if the sun shone brightly through the waters even where she lurked. Movement above her stopped her trail and swiftly, she went swimming straight up.

Her teeth dug into human flesh before her mind completely finished comprehending what was going on. She jerked downwards, dragging her victim with her. Her prey did not fight and in her heart it disappointed her. She wanted a challenge. She wanted to prove that she was the strongest, the fastest, the predator.

"THE TIDE'S PULLING DOWN TO THE OCEAN FLOOR"

The words were spoken with her voice but they didn't come from her mouth. It was almost as if the ocean had spoken her thoughts.

A very interesting concept… she thought as she dropped lower and lower. As she thought that, though, her victim kicked her in the nose and suddenly, all the air left her. She found herself drowning. She released her victim and caught a glimpse of a tattoo the person had on their ankle. It had a very peculiar shape…

That's not right, her mind thought, panicked. I can—

"Breathe!" Aspen said the last word as she woke up in her bed.

"I'm breathing, I'm breathing" her sister mumbled from the bunk above her. "Pet the rhino and go back to sleep"

Aspen couldn't help but snort. Luzy was so funny when she sleep talked.

"All right" Aspen teased, "But where's the rhino?"

"In the paint can, stupid" she responded, shifting. Aspen felt the bed creak as she moved.

Aspen snickered and reached for the glass of water beside her bed only to find it empty.

"That's funny," she thought aloud, a habit. "I thought I filled it up when I went to bed. How weird"

She shrugged her shoulders and went to their bathroom to get some water. Then she dove back into her bed and fell asleep in her ocean of sheets to the sound of Luzy's snoring.

Chaos was her inspiration. Chaos and fire.

The city was burning. Her city, Meridian, was burning and she was standing in the center of towns square watching it all.

And writing poetry.

"Kogoi trentam pot hellena saje"

She traced the Meridian words through the air, the fire trailing behind her fingers, carving the letters out of smoke and inferno.

"BLAZING FIRES LIGHT A SOUL TO ITS CORE"

She repeated the words in English but didn't carve them out. Instead she found herself drawing something out of the smoke. Her senses were coming alive as she drew.

She felt the fire's warmth. Dangerously hot but soothingly warm to her skin.

She smelt the fire's destruction. Burning maple and roasting meat.

She tasted the smoke in the air. So thick, she could drink it.

She heard the fire singing. It's crackling and popping and roaring was music to her ears. A symphony to accompany the screams she heard around her.

She finished her fire painting and observed it closely. It was a very peculiar shape…

That's not right she thought. The music is so beautiful, why would there be screaming?

Instinctively, both her fists clenched and miraculously, all the fire around her vanished from her sight and the screams stopped.

But the fire hadn't vanished at all.

She still felt it's warmth as she slowly unclenched her fingers. She still smelled the maple and tasted the smoke and heard its song.

And in every reflection of broken glass or puddles of god-knew-what, she saw warm red light.

Meridian was no longer on fire.

But she was.

"Not what I had in mind when I suggested a candle lit evening" came a voice from behind her.

Before she could even spin around, the butt of a sword struck the back of her head and her eyes flew open.

Moze was standing in the large corridor which led to her parents' room. The Meridian sun was coming in through the archways hard and bright. She knew that she sleep walked but didn't understand how she had made it all the way to this corridor without being spotted.

"Princess Mozembeeq?" came a timid voice from behind her. She shook off her surprise quickly and put her hands on her hips. She turned around, speaking in her most royal voice.

"Yes Famew?"

"My sincerest apologies, your majesty" the Murmurer bowed. "I was unsure if I was to wake you or not"

"I wasn't asleep" Moze responded quickly, embarrassed. She hardened her features. "I was simply on my way to um, see my mother"

"Of course, your majesty" Famew replied with another bow. "Shall I alert Queen Elyon?"

"Actually, just forget about it. I-I changed my mind" Moze turned back around and headed back for her room, avoiding eye contact with Famew and staring at the floor still flustered by the situation and her dream.

Never looking around her to notice every candle in every holder along the corridor was burning bright despite the sun.

Trees were growing tall as the eye could see and as far as the eye could see.

She didn't like the city or cars or beds. Give her a sleeping bag on a hard dirt floor or hard packed ice and she'd be the happiest girl in the world. It was something one had to grow accustomed to. The daughter of adventurers would have to.

She lay down beneath a tall oak and hummed something. She wasn't sure what it was but it was very catchy and it was joyful. The canopy of trees had an opening in them that let light stream down on her. It had a very peculiar shape…

That's not right she caught herself thinking as she continued humming. The song was giving her a sense of deja vu that wasn't deja vu. It wasn't feeling that she had heard it before exactly.

It was feeling that she would hear it again.

Deja entendu.

She sat up when she couldn't hum the next part of the song. No longer beneath the oak tree, she stood in the center of four different trees. Getting up on her feet, she kicked some dirt with her toe on a patch of parched ground.

"EARTH LIVES LESS THAN IT DID BEFORE"

It was more of a warning in the way she said it than a comment. Either way, she felt the weight of it. Almost as if the trees around her had shuddered at her words.

She bent down and touched the dead ground. She didn't know what she expected to happen when she did but she spread her fingers out and touched it anyway.

Like a rock falling in the middle of a pond, the ground seemed to ripple out and everything green around her withered until it died.

She was torn between feelings of nonchalant, desire, and amusement. Part of her expected it, part of her wanted it.

Part of her found it extremely funny.

But the wave of destruction kept flowing outwards and outwards until she could see the horizon through the stumps of dead trees.

She heard rustling and looked around. The four trees around her were black and dead but hadn't been reduced to stumps.

Three spoke to her.

Don't make so much of me…

I don't remember asking you…

Forever love, say you love me…

But the last tree remained silent.

Her curiosity being what it was, she walked up to it in annoyance but before she could take action, it swung one of its branches to hit her in the face. She dodged it quickly enough.

Something along the lines of Is that the best you got? almost made it past her lips but another branch swung to hit her in the gut.

Everest slowly opened her eyes and looked out the window of the boat as it rode along the waves to Heatherfield Bay. Its rumbling had become her lullaby for the last seven hours and the taillights of some of the other boats looked almost like strobe lights. Why couldn't her parents drive like normal people? She let out a loud yawn.

"How much longer until Heatherfield?" she grumbled.

Her parents who had been sitting next to the captain of the transport boat broke into wide grins. "Glad to see you're finally looking foreword to our new home, Ev"

"I'm 'looking foreword' to seeing ground under my feet" she muttered. Now awake, Everest realized how queasy she was.

"Shh!" her dad whispered, "You'll wake Dole!"

She glanced at her baby brother. He was sleeping like a log.

"Don't make me go to school tomorrow!" Everest whined in a slightly lower voice. "Can't you explain that we were delayed?"

"We keep our word, Honey" her mother chimed. "We said you'd be there tomorrow so you will. Try to get some sleep"

Everest grumbled something but made no clear response. She glanced out to the lights of Heatherfield from the window of the boat.

Suddenly, the captain took a rather sharp turn to avoid an underwater hill that he could've sworn hadn't been there before in the other countless trips he'd taken to and from Heatherfield Bay.

It hadn't been.

Jenna woke up.

She stretched in her bed, her slender body arching like a cat. No, the alarm clock hadn't rung. And the sun wasn't even out. But she had somewhere to go. Someplace to be.

She took off down the hallway, her body not responding to her mind's commands. She ran like a tiger and made just as much noise as one. She stopped at her mother's door.

Up until now, she hadn't formed a conscious thought, functioning completely and totally on her instincts. But now, pushing the door open to enter the room, she thought,

Something's wrong

She walked to a side of the bed where her mother and younger sister slept. Tamaran looked like a spitting image of Cornelia, Jenna did not.

She caught a glimpse of her reflection in her mother's mirror on the wall. With her brown, wavy hair and sea green eyes, she didn't look like anyone in her family.

Wait a minute, she pondered, that's not right

She was blonde haired and blue eyed. She did look like her mother and sister.

Didn't she?

The chaos in her mind didn't seem to stop the movement of her body. She hovered above her sleeping mother and inspected her closely, almost touching noses. She literally hovered above her but to her it seemed the most natural thing in the world.

Without warning, Cornelia's eyes snapped open in fear and suddenly glowed green.

Move! she commanded her body but it outright refused. A beam of light shot out of her mother's eyes and Jenna's head snapped back. Literally snapped.

The shock of hitting the floor woke her up.

She panted heavily as the bed sheets finished falling on top of her. Her black and white cat meowed from her windowsill.

"Sorry if I scared you, Panda" she addressed her cat as she got up from the floor. She went to pet him. "I scared me too"

Panda let her pet him once and then backed away to the opposite side of the window sill, his black fur blending into the shadows while his white fur lit by the moonlight. He arched his back and hissed at her.

"What's wrong hun?"

She reached out for him to pet him again and caught sight of her hand. Her nails weren't that long. Nor was her hand that slender.

She panicked and quickly spun around to her mirror.

There she was again. Brown haired and green eyed. But she was taller, curvier, and downright older and it scared the crap out of her. Her reflection wore her pajamas and her rainbow socks but her reflection however, wore something else she did not. She tentatively stepped closer to the mirror to see. Around her neck hung an object, a very peculiar one. It was a small glass ball encompassed by a curly bit of metal.

To her surprise her reflection moved when she didn't. It removed the necklace from around her neck and held it in her palm. Then her reflection smirked at her shocked ecpression.

She delicately enclosed the glass ball with her fingers and squeezed until it cracked and blinding pink light was shooting out from the cracks of her fingers.

"AND SO THE HEART SHALL BEAT NEVERMORE"

Her reflection's voice wasn't her own. It was lower, darker, twisted.

Stop! Jenna wanted to cry out in alarm. But her mouth refused to form the words and her body refused her mind's commands.

Suddenly, a face appeared behind her reflection. She didn't dare turn around to see if the person was really behind her or simply in the mirror. It was a boy. Something about him was deathly familiar but his features like her reflection's had aged. He leaned his head over her reflection's shoulders and turned his mouth to her ear to whisper.

"Don't loose the light"

Her reflection didn't react but she herself heard it right in her left ear in a voice so firm, so damn convicting, it shot shivers down her entire body at the speed of light.

"JENNA!"

For real this time, Jenna shot up in bed, throwing off her little sister who had been perched on top of her.

"Jen-na!" Tamaran exclaimed, getting back on her feet with five year old agility "Your alarm's been ringing for the last three hundred seconds!" She still didn't know how to tell time so she made up her own. It could've meant anything from two minutes to half and hour.

Jenna looked at her clock.

"Oh my Godzilla! I'm going to be late for school!" she shrieked, throwing off her covers and throwing out her sister. She also picked up Panda and tossed him out gingerly with her sister. Running to her closet, she stripped down to her panties before she even got there.

"You could've said sorry!" Tamaran reminded her from outside in a pout voice. Panda seemed to meow in agreement.

"Sorry, Tammy!" she shouted absent mindedly, fastening the belt on her jeans. She turned around and bent over to get her flip-flops when the air from the air conditioning hit her back and sent a chill up her spine.

She cautiously turned around to face her mirror, expected to see her alter ego or something out of the ordinary. But no, she was small, flat, blond haired and blue eyed with major bed head.

Her outward sigh of relief didn't quell her inward paranoia though and she resolved to throw her covers over her stand up full length mirror as she finished getting dressed and sped off for the first day of school after Christmas break.

Can't promise updates but what do you think? Worth continuing?