Just a quick note before we begin;

Avery, the youngest sister of Sarah, is 20. The year now is 2013, Avery was born in 1992; six years after Sarah's adventures in "The Labyrinth". Currently, Sarah is 41 and their brother Toby is 27.

I did some research before writing to find out the majority of the beginning of the movie was filmed in Nyack, New York, which is where this story will take place as their home town.

Now, let's get to the fun part.

My heart is about to beat right out of my chest. I can hardly catch my breath as I run as fast as I can down the narrow brick corridor. I almost trip over my dress, I'm running so fast. I look behind me and see the barn owl flying faster towards me; I don't know why I'm so afraid of it, I just know I am. Then I fall, down a dark hole but I land, perfectly fine, on my feet in a room of stairs. There's no more owl. Just bubbles. I get dizzy, I feel my chest tighten, I can't breathe, then….

I wake up.

Like every other night in my twenty years of existence I'm plagued by the same odd dream. I can never remember it once I wake up, and I find myself just staring up at the ceiling trying to remember if it was a nightmare or not. The owl, I remember for some reason. I sat up and wiped the cold sweat from my brow and looked at the clock on my nightstand; it's three in the morning.

This occurrence was common but never as bad as the occasions of my visits home. I attended AMDA in New York City, a performing arts school, as a Dance Theatre major. Every other weekend I traveled home to Nyack, New York. This weekend, however, was a rare one as not only myself but both my older siblings would be coming home as well for the occasion of our Father's sixty seventh birthday. It felt odd to think, but something about this trip home seemed worse, dream wise, then ever before. I tried not to think about it.

When I did finally wake up, for the second time, it was around six a.m. I wasn't very good at sleeping in, a habit I picked up from school since most my classes were in the bright and early morning. Both my mother and father were still asleep, so I decided I'd go out for a quick run. I tied up the length of my ridiculously curly maroon dyed hair (I thought the color suited my more naturally fair skin and bright fern green eyes) and tightened my favorite running shoes before I quietly snuck out of the house.

Nyack was a peaceful little village in New York to go for a calming morning run. It was that time of year in-between winter and spring, when it was still a little chilly outside and there was a thin fog as the sun broke out across the sky. I didn't use my iPod when I ran here, not like I did in the city, I preferred to just…listen to the world instead. It was refreshing, really. I ran about three miles out, when I started to feel a little lightheaded. I could hear my heart beating fast in my chest, but not because of my increased heart rate…more like…something was about to happen. Just as I got to the park, I heard a sort of squawk, just before I tripped and tumbled down onto the ground.

I could feel the blood on my knees and on my hands as I caught my fall the best I could. I caught my breath, and looked up to the nearest tree to see a barn owl staring through the soft light of morning at me. I didn't know why, but in that moment I felt terrified. I stood slowly, the owl remained perfectly still. I was afraid to run, I was afraid it would chase me, like in my dreams. So I just stood there, like an idiot, blood on my knees, in a staring contest with a damn bird. Finally, it flew away. It didn't take me much longer after that to turn around and head back home.

By the time I got back, I saw my brother's Toyota truck in the driveway, and Toby himself pulling his suitcase from the back. His shaggy dirty blonde hair was sticking out and in all sorts of directions and his ugly rectangle wired framed glasses falling off the length of his rather narrow nose; he had obviously just woken up not too long ago. "About time!" I shouted to him as I ran from down the street to the house. He turned to me, grinning like an idiot as he held his arms out to catch me in a hug when I finally reached him. "I've missed you!"

"I missed you too Avery." He laughed in my ear before letting me go. "Who goes running without being chased?"

"People who want to survive the zombie apocalypse." I joked.

"What happened to your knees?"

"Ninjas." We both laughed before heading inside, where mom and dad were both up with cups of coffee glued to their hands.

"We thought we heard you pulling into the driveway." Dad said as he came over to hug Toby.

"Sweetheart, what happened?" Mom asked me as she looked down at my knees.

I knew saying "ninjas" to my mother wouldn't grant me the same response as Toby's, so I went with the more realistic answer, "I fell on my run."

"Can't remember the last time I saw a ballerina with scrapped knees."

"Oh, they exist." I reassured her with a smile. Technically, I wasn't even a ballerina, it wasn't the only style of dance I was training in, but it's the one she was fond of the most. In her mind I was the next "Black Swan"…minus the mental instability and border line suicide at the end. "I'm gonna' go shower, let me know when Sarah gets here." I kissed my mother on the cheek and left them alone to play catch-up with Toby while I went to clean myself up.

There was almost no greater joy in this world than a hot shower. At school, the water barely stayed hot enough for my standards more than five minutes; and what girl on this earth can properly bathe in just five minutes? I let the water beat down on me, just standing there for a moment and enjoying the heat as it wrapped around me like a blanket. I stood with my back to the shower head, letting the water run down my back and soak my hair, and I closed my eyes as the water started to run down my face a bit. There was no noise other that the water beating down against the empty tub. It was peaceful.

But then something happened; something odd. As I stood there with my eyes close I started to see things. I had never seen these things before in my life, yet there they were so vivid in my mind. Large stone wall, dead grass, odd looking creatures, and a man. A tall man with white blonde hair and striking eyes that almost scared me half way to death. Then I saw the owl, and then I saw myself running through the woods. It was my dream. My head was pounding, heart was racing. I opened my eyes and there it was- the owl. In my shower.

I screamed and my first instinct was to back up away from it as it just fluttered in my showered. The moment I tried to move I slipped and fell backwards, and hit my head on the tub foist. The second I hit my head, the owl was gone as if it had never even been there. "Avery?" A voice screamed at me from the bathroom door. It wasn't mother, it was Sarah. "Avery, I'm coming in!" I heard her feet rushing into the bathroom and she drew back the shower curtain.

My sister never seemed to age, I thought that as I looked up at her for the first time in a while. She still looked like she was in her early thirties, if that really. The small hints of grey roots fighting her brown hair dye gave a little age away. Her eyes had lost their shine, but her skin was still so young looking with barely a wrinkle in sight. I always thought my sister had such simplicity to her beauty, never needing makeup because naturally she was so well kept. "Oh my god, Avery you're bleeding!" She kneeled down and pulled me up before turning off the water.

"Sarah, Avery, is everything ok? I heard shouting?" Mother called out to us as she came into the bathroom.

"Avery fell and hit her head, could you grab a towel?" Sarah asked as she helped me up onto my feet. Mother came around and her eyes glanced down at what I was sure to be a rather impressive little puddle of blood, being carried slowly down the drain from the water. Mother wrapped me in a towel and her and Sarah both assisted me out of the tub. I was dizzy and felt like at any given moment I would throw up.

Mother and Sarah patched up the cut on the back of my head then instructed me to lie down. Mother brought me some hot tea and an orange to get something in my stomach. Sarah stayed with me, even after mother left, and there was something about her expression that concerned me. Mother was worried and all but she knew I'd survive; yet Sarah was acting as if I was in a deadly car crash.

"What made you fall?" She finally asked, a question mother didn't even bother with.

"I was startled." I answered her with a soft breath.

"What startled you?"

"Nothing, really, I was just being paranoid."

"You've been having those nightmares again, haven't you?" I didn't answer her, just stared forward. "Avery, you told me you stopped having those nightmares years ago."

"It's not that big of a deal Sarah." I was short with her. I knew she didn't really care as much as she let on. Her acting like this was most likely just overcompensation. Sarah and I were never really close, after all by the time I was born she was already out of the house and moving on with her life. I grew up mostly with Toby, until he graduated and went off the college that is. Still, I was closer with my brother than with her, and she knew that.

"I'm just trying to help Avery." Sarah sort of snapped back at me.

"I don't need any help." I snorted, looking away from her.

"You're impossible." She offered me that one last comment before she left.

It wasn't a true family gathering unless there was some sort of tension between my older sister ad myself. We rarely ever saw eye-to-eye, I blamed the age gap r that mostly. Still, that didn't seem to explain why she always seemed so distance, withdrawn, from me. It was like she was avoiding me on purpose, but I couldn't recall ever doing anything to earn such treatment from her. Toby used to always tell me she was just a bothered woman, always with something on her shoulders and no time for any extra worries. Was I an extra worry? Her own sister; an impossible one, apparently.