Author's Note: It makes no since at all until the end, unless you have a vague idea in the back of your mind where it's going, but I warn you, even then it's not clear. Or, rather, clear as mud.
Summary: Sometimes you can't just differentiate between what is real or just a figment...
Just a Dream:
A very confusing drabble
She woke in a sudden jerky movement, panting. Her face was wet and sticky with tears, and more were welling at the memory of the dream, and she sobbed. Looking frantically around her at the familiar room in which she lay in bed, she felt her eyes widen and the tears spill over. The bed was covered in luxuriant silks in bright and beautiful colors, and above her head was a canopy of a thin material, glittering faintly in the last flicker of the candle bedside the bed. The wooden floorboards were covered in rich rugs, and in the corner by the two windows was a ornately carved vanity. Everything looked just as she had left it the night before, or perhaps it was years, she could not know, ago.
The every detail of the dream were so real she felt she could reach out and pluck it from the air before her. Even the horrible things seemed to sparkle in a new flash of reality... but somehow it had not been real. The thickness and humidity of the warm Bombay air woke her from the dream (or was it the reality?) of her mother's death, Spence, Kartik, the realms, Circe... everything! Even though she had always had a very active and detailed imagination, she doubted she could have created such a wild story... perhaps it was the right now that wasn't real? Perhaps she did exist in that universe and had fallen asleep to this, the girl in India who wanted so much to go to London, Europe even, and go to teas and balls and get beautiful dresses and be cold (such a horrible feeling, and yet she knew she had never really felt it except in that dream... or whatever it was.
She jumped from the bed, her feet making a muffled sound on the decidedly warm carpet. Sneaking none too stealthily out of the huge doors and into the hall, she crept straight into her mother, shocked. She burst into fresh tears, collapsing in her mother's arms at the mere sight of her, her amulet glinting in the hushed glow of the candle lit in her room down the hall. Sobbing uncontrollably into her (dead?) mother's arms, wailing at the thought of her dream. Her mother smelled faintly of the rose water Gemma so missed, her hands stroking her hair until her sobs quietened.
"Dear Gemma, what's happened?" Her mother lowered her face to stare questioningly in to her eyes, her lips pursed in worry, her brow furrowed. She pulled away slightly, trying to catch Gemma's eyes as she brushed angrily at her wet face.
"I... oh mother, I missed you so much!" she fell into her arms again, her tears renewed as she told her mother of her dream. Her mother waited looked at her in concern, searching her daughter's troubled face as she absent mindedly stroked her necklace. After a while, Gemma fell quiet, waiting for her mother to say something.
But how could she tell her it was real?