Disclaimer: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin, but this was a dream of mine and it belongs to my subconcious. My poem at the beginning belongs to me as well. Tell me if I should go on with this story. Fantastical Reality of Nightmares "I'm living through my waking nightmare I'm slipping through the years without an action. I'm pantomiming my duties and everyone around me is a jumbled mass of laughing faces and flesh. All I can do is think my thoughts all the time without care. My soul has hardened and my heart is icy, but my brain is racing. The essence of creativity possesses me. I'm wooden in my movements. It drives me to constantly scrawl meaningless words across infinite sheets of paper. I'm going insane and suddenly I'm seeing through both sides of the lookiing glass. Then I stop and lay down on my soft bed of lies and know tthat sleep shall never come and I don't deserve it. I'm so dead tired, I can't do this anymore. My frenzy has ended and I no longer care." By Areka Tyliss

It started out a strange day. Looking back now, Kaoru realized that her problems hadn't actually begun that day, they'd been brewing for awhile, but that day was reallythe turnabout.

It was the first in a series of two weeks of a reaccurring dream. Kaoru was running in a dead panic. She was exhausted, but she couldn't stop moving. No matter what. She was passing through unknown streets, but she knew the way. Eerie houses leered at her. She ran up to every front door. There was a handprint, red, and a note. The words were incomprehensible.

She came to a final door and moaned without fully knowing why. Checking the door, she saw the handprint and paper tacked to the door. Unsure of what to do, she glanced down at her hand and screamed. Her hand was red and smelled coppery.

In the waking world, she'd have been able to identify the foreign substance covering her palm in a heartbeat, but here she still didn't know. She looked around the neighborhood and noticed again that it was barren of any life rather than hers. The lack of sound closed in on her and she started babbling to keep the silence away.

Her heart thudded like thunder in her burning ears. Turning quickly back to the door se raised her hand and saw that it fit the handprint exactly. She felt dizzy like a bout of deja vou. Finally recognizing the blood all over her she struggles to read the note.

'I will revolutionize the world in its entirety.' She grabbed the door to shove it open and gasped. Flames rose up and licked her body, but she felt nothing but icyness. Shrieking she fle through the doorway and looked up, not believing what she saw. The bodies of her friends, parents, Kenshin, were all burning in a funeral pyre.

In a fright she attempted to tear her eyes stinging with tears away. Unconciously she wiped her eyes, but the gruesome horror ensnared her mind. Shifting her gaze to the top she wasn't surprised. She might have been confused, dreams very rarely have any semblance of sense and this was no exception.

The girl on top of the pyre was laughing insanely. Her head had the appearance of that it had tried to be chopped off but the executioner was clumsy. Kaoru locked familiar blue eyes with Kaoru. The other girl stopped her madness and repeated over and over the phrase burned forever into her soul.

Blazing words ecoed from a mouth not supposed to exist and the voice emitted was so terrible to behold that Kaoru knelt on the ground but could not block that voice. No human on earth was meant to listen to the voice of a demon and nothing could have prepared Kaoru for meeting herself and her inner thoughts calmly screaming words she needed to ignore at her.

The flames were consuming her and finally the immense heat shattered her protection of ignorance and cold. No longer could she avoid it. Truth was shinning too brightly for her to look and she was going blind with the pain and agony of the lies wrapping and constricting around her already weak and miserable body.

"Nothing is eternal."