Before she started dreaming about a cave, spinning dolls, and a woman with compelling, lavender eyes, she had three nightmares.
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The first one happened when she was around twelve years old.
A dark haired man was trapped in a creepy hospital room. Strapped down tight on a gurney, he's begging to someone to let him go. To not hurt him.
Another man, she couldn't tell if he was a mad scientist or an evil wizard, he kept shifting around the way dreams do, had a metal stick that fired lightning and kept waving it around like he was just waiting for an excuse to use it on innocent people.
The poor, trapped man was crying as he pleads.
The evil man held up his lightning weapon and fired it at the poor man.
Who screamed and screamed…
And then was turned into a scarecrow.
She had severe headaches for at least a month afterwards. And a strong unease of hospitals ever since.
Whenever she came across a problem or some form of difficulty in her life, she silently vowed to never whine about it. There are people out there who have endured and survived horrors that would break her. She's never going to waste her life grousing or acting like life isn't fair. What she's will do instead is figure out what can be done to fix the problem and not dwell on how 'impossibly doomed' it seems.
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The second, and the worst one, happened roughly a year later.
A man trapped in near darkness.
He can't move his arms, legs, anything but his eyes.
There are screams around or outside of him; it's hard to tell where they are coming from.
People crying in pain and fear.
And he can do nothing but watch.
He used to scream. All the time.
Make it stop! I'll kill you! Leave them alone! Kill me, please!
He doesn't scream anymore.
He can do nothing but watch.
He slowly dies inside as he can do nothing but watch the pain and fear.
She woke up screaming. Partly for herself, but mostly because he didn't anymore. She woke up with a terrible pain inside her chest and tears falling from her eyes.
Her parents took her to one of the emergency counselors at the local hospital for the next couple of months. The counselor never entirely figure out why she had such a nightmare, but just talking about it helped her a great deal. He informed her that it's always healthier, mentally and spiritually, to never keep ones' hurts bottled in tight. Many people would have had a much more fulfilling life if they found a way to open up when they needed to the most.
As she slowly got better, she silently vowed to never just stand around when someone is suffering. She took CPR and basic first-aid classes and a friend taught her a few self-defense moves. She always donated her older clothes and things to the Salvation Army and the local homeless shelter. She convinced Carter (a miracle in itself) to regularly donate some of his excess food inventory to the shelter around the holidays where she also volunteered some of her time.
As the years passed, she started to ease out of that. She still donated and got the college to start food and clothes drive, but as the years passed, she kept feeling more and more ill at ease. A strange restlessness that just would not let go. Like she needed to get away and find her place in the world.
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The year she turned twenty-one, she had the third nightmare.
A man, or is he something else, she honestly can't remember when she wakes up, is running away. From everything that scares him.
All the strange noises, all the unfamiliar sights, at this point even a ladybug looks threatening because he's never been this far from home before.
He's running because he can't slow down even for a minute.
There is a sharp pain inside him. His head hurts from outside sensations that won't ever go away. And his heart hurts because his family will never forgive him or ever take him back.
For the first time in his life, he's all alone and that terrifies him more than anything ever has.
She stayed up for the rest of the night with all her lights on and her iPod playing her 'cheer myself up' playlist on repeat.
A man, who smelled of questionable substances, was doing free 'aura' readings during the community college's spring festival. And she had nothing better to do till her bus arrived in twenty minutes. He told DG that she had a green aura which meant having a strong degree of empathy and kindness to her fellow being. Her compassion will help her forge very strong, long lasting friendships that will withstand any disaster thrown at them.
She knew he was high! The longest friendship she had lasted eight months.
He also said that deep down; she will find she has the courage to face the dangerous unknown!
Despite his pot induced melodrama, DG had to concede one point he made. It won't be that much longer till she has enough money to go to Australia. But even though she wanted to get out of Kansas really bad, it doesn't change the fact that she has never even left Crawford County, let alone been away from Franklin for more than a week. She'll soon be going to a foreign country half a world away! There's a googolplex amount of ways for this to turn into a catastrophe, and deep down she is petrified of drastically changing her life to this extreme.
But that strange feeling of not belonging grew stronger and stronger with each passing month till it was all she can do to not scream into her pillow every night. She has to leave, to find herself.
She needed this more than she needed to breathe!
Maybe once she gets to the land of koalas, rock art, and Uluru, she'll finally find what's missing from herself. Once she has that, then maybe she can work on those alleged long lasting, disaster-proof friendships.
Because despite the aura-man giving her false hope, she can't help but wonder what it would be like to have die hard, true blue, "All for one, etc." friends like he said she would have.
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A few months after the third nightmare, after all three slowly faded away from her memories, she started to have recurring dreams of a cave, spinning dolls, and a woman with compelling, lavender eyes.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: My very first posted fanfic!
Franklin is a real town in Kansas. The 1985 "Return to Oz" shows Dorothy and Aunt Em riding thru their main street at the beginning of the film.
Tin Man is property of Steven Long Mitchell & Craig W. Van Sickle which in turn is based on the works of L. Frank Baum. I own the dvd, the soundtrack, and the plot of this story. That's it.