1-4: Bedtime Story

Sakura turned the page on the first of the novels that she had gotten from Naoko, adjusting the position of her arm to keep it from falling asleep. Lying down on her left side, with her head and pillow propped up against the head of the bed behind her, had seemed to be the best way to allow her new panda friend to read along with her as it sat on the shelf beside her old, Tomoyo-made doll, but it unfortunately came with the downside of making her supporting arm occasionally prone to the tingling loss of sensation. She eventually just flipped around onto her back, while ensuring that she kept the book held off to one side so that the panda could still see.

The music from her laptop's media player, the same laptop that she had destroyed several years ago, now refurbished and handed down to her from her father, started itself up on the next track: a slow, fluidic piano melody that reminded her of Eriol practicing on the school piano. The song itself, of course, wasn't anything that he had ever played, but the skill and emotions that could be derived from the harmonies and notes were easily similar. Placing a finger inside her book to keep her place, she closed it up to put herself within the song, closing her eyes alongside her book to listen more closely to the notes.

The artistic work of the piano glided along with a feeling of peace and serenity, a soft and enchanting flow that spoke of the human heart. She imagined a river within her mind, the music gliding her along within its harmonies and endearing rhythms down the tranquil waters. Once again the notes on the piano began to pick up, this time with a synthesized choir background, and she could feel the emphasis that it placed on The Truth of the Soul, as was the name of the song. She smiled sadly as the song flowed its way into a darker lilt, a somewhat melancholic melody that was attempting to draw the audience into the furthest depths of human emotion. Then, flowing ever on, it picked up in speed once more as an entire orchestra jumped into the mix, giving the song's spirituality a slightly epic feel to it. Her fingers began to tap along with the increased tempo, keeping in time with the light marching drum, the emphasizing pounds of the bass drum, and the trill of the digital bell.

...Digital bell?

She snapped to her senses and shot her eyes over to the laptop's screen. It had switched away from its Bouncing Kero screen saver and was now displaying a small, blue-flashing button on the taskbar at the bottom of the monitor. Placing a bookmark into her novel, she set the book down onto the bed and moved over to her desk chair. With a few practiced keystrokes, she brought the flashing bar up into a full-screen mode, and found that her email program had picked up a new message for her. Using the mouse that was attached to the laptop, she moved and clicked the pointer around the screen until she had the email open and was able to read it:

Something's come up. A family emergency, of sorts, which means that I'm going to be away from any form of internet access for a few days.
If you don't hear something from me over the next week, that's why, so don't worry too much about it.
I'll write you an extra-large email later to make up for it, okay?
Give my regards to everyone, and I'll talk to you again soon. Hopefully within just a day or two if things go well.

Love,

Syaoran Li

Her mood dropped a few notches as she read the first few words, only to sink even lower as she finished reading her love's message. It was bad enough that she had not seen him in almost three years, and quite literally at that. The last time they had physically been in each other's company was the New Year's festival the same year they had captured the Nothing card at the amusement park. Now she would be out of contact with him altogether? He had said that it was just for a "few days", but that was beside the point!

All the same, she managed to cheer herself up as she hit the Reply button, pecking away at the keyboard as best she could until the message, "I'll wait for as long as it takes," came up on the screen. She typed out her name at the bottom of the email, ensured that she had not spelled anything incorrectly, then pressed the Send button on the screen. After a minute of processing, the message closed up, and a new box came onto the screen saying that her message had been sent. Half-smiling to herself, she moved the mouse around some more to close the email program.

Another window popped up on her almost immediately after, causing Sakura's mood to jump right back where it had been before. It was one of her "instant messengers", as Tomoyo had called them. In the window that had appeared, the sign name that Tomoyo herself went by was listed at the top, with a message following it, "Good evening, anyone home?"

Sakura fumbled with the keys, attempting to write out a new message, "Yes, I'm here. Just finished replying to an email from Syaoran."

It took Sakura what felt like a full minute to type all of that, but her best friend seemed to wait patiently for the reply. A few moments after she sent her message through, an indicator at the bottom of the screen noted that Tomoyo was typing up another message. Within another moment, it appeared on Sakura's screen, "Syaoran? How's he doing in Hong Kong?"

"He didn't say. In fact, he actually said that he's going to be away for a few days. Something about a family emergency."

The typing notice indicator lit up again, "I see... I hope he's okay. Anyway, I'm sorry that I had to miss your birthday party today. It's been extremely hectic lately, what with the household staff trying to help me get ready for school and all."

Sakura practically jumped as she realized that she still didn't know what school Tomoyo was going to be attending, and she was now being presented with the perfect opportunity to ask just that. She made to type up the question on her mind, but pulled her fingers away from the keyboard as the typing indicator at the bottom of the screen flashed up again.

Tomoyo's next message came through momentarily, "As it is, I'm waiting for one of the maids to come in and record some tailoring measurements so that the school can provide a proper-fitting uniform."

This new information made Sakura change up from her original question "This late at night? It's almost ten o'clock!"

Tomoyo's reply took a few moments longer than normal before coming through, "The school's letter of acceptance coming in as late as it did threw off our scheduling rather badly. All of us over here will probably be busy for most of the weekend."

Before she could be distracted any further, Sakura finally asked her question, "Oh yeah, I never got to ask. What school did you apply for, anyway?"

The typing indicator went up as soon as she had hit the enter button to send her long-awaited question. Sakura sat there patiently, watching the screen in a nearly overwhelming anticipation of those words to come through and finally put her thoughts to rest. After more than a few seconds, however, the indicator was still showing. Tomoyo's message had yet come through, and she didn't think that Tomoyo would take this long to type out the name of the school. Wondering if Tomoyo was even still there, Sakura sent another message through to ask just that.

She waited a few seconds more, then noticed that the typing indicator had disappeared, only to have it come up again just as fast as it had vanished. A message finally came through, "I apologize, but the mistress has been taken away for more measurements. I am afraid that she may not be available for the rest of the night."

Sakura's heart hit the proverbial floor, as she read what she could only assume to be the words of one of Tomoyo's maids. Once again, Sakura had missed her chance. It was probably going to be up to a full week's wait now before she could manage to learn which school Tomoyo was going to attend. Mentally picking herself up, she typed a thank you to the maid that had replied, and wished Tomoyo good night through her. With that, she turned off the messenger program, then pressed the glowing button on the side of the machine to turn it off. Folding the laptop in on itself, she stood up and moved to her bed while it powered itself down.

On a whim, she turned herself back around and instead opened the top drawer to her desk. Looking inside, she peered around at the various pens, pencils, and other office supplies that she kept in there, along with the pink book that had her name engraved onto it. After a moment of mindless staring, she picked up the book, closed the drawer, and again moved to sit down on her bed. Snapping off the latch to the cover and opening the book, she ended up just sitting there and looking at the cards. A thought at the back of her mind began to nag at her gently.

There was something she was supposed to remember...

A slight knock came from the door as Kero flew into the room, kicking the door open slightly as he went so as to make room for the small plate of pie that he was carrying. Squeezing through the small crack he had made for himself, he hovered into the room, spinning around to kick the door shut as he spoke, "Sakura, I've got desert for us! It's a slice of apple p... What's wrong?"

Sakura looked up to her guardian familiar as Kero hovered away from the door and landed himself beside her on the bed. He put the plate off to the side and jumped up onto her arm, staring intently at the book of cards that she had herself just been looking at, but he couldn't sense anything wrong with neither the cards nor her. There was also nothing detectable nearby that could have distracted her in this way, though he assumed that Sakura must have had a good reason for whatever it was that she was doing.

He looked back to his mistress, "I don't sense anything out of the ordinary here."

"It's not that I sense something," she told him quietly, closing the book gently, "it's just... I was trying to remember something."

Kero's right eyebrow rose up slightly as a curiosity overtook him, "You remembered something? What?"

"A dream."

Kero jumped away from her arm and landed on top of the closed book that she held, turning to face her so that he would have center stage, "You had a dream? Like the premonitions from when you first started collecting the cards?"

"No, not quite like that," she replied, shaking her head slowly as she attempted to sort out her thoughts, "Those dreams were... vague and hard to remember. I could see every single detail of what was around me, as if I was actually standing at those spots in the real world, but it had taken a huge effort to try and recall them after waking up. This new dream, though? I can remember every single bit of it, without even trying. It's like I had actually lived out those moments. But all that was there were images and ideas, nothing that was overly specific or detailed. Everything else was just an all-encompassing darkness."

Kero jumped up into the air, and using his powers to keep himself afloat, folded his legs up as though he were sitting down. Crossing his arms and bowing his head, he attempted to think up what this could possibly mean. Several seconds passed before he looked back to his mistress to ask, "When you had this dream, what did you see, exactly?"

Sakura allowed her focus to drift away, her eyes beginning to stare off into space as she recalled the events that had occurred within her dream, "At first, there was just the Tsukimine Shrine, except that all I could see was the archway at the entrance. Then my book, this book," she said, holding up her pink Sakura Book, "appeared behind me, but then it turned into the old Book of the Clow. I could hear footsteps, and then Clow Reed appeared from inside the shrine."

Kero went bug-eyed at the mention of his old master, but he held his tongue, allowing Sakura to continue, "He told me something about the sun, moon, and stars, and about some 'ancient adversary', but before I could ask what he meant, both he and the book had split themselves into three separate images. I could somehow tell that the two new images that had come from my book were themselves books, even though they were surrounded in a kind of clouded darkness. I couldn't make them out, but I just knew. Then the two images of Clow – the third one had just disappeared while I wasn't looking. They started to speak as if there were people beside me, but I couldn't hear anything he was saying, and I couldn't see anyone else around me. And then he – they – turned into twin beams of light and just shot up and away into the emptiness."

Kero sighed noisily. If Clow had been a part of her dream, then this was no joke concerning what she had witnessed. The big thing, though, was that he didn't have a single clue what it all could mean. A set of books could have meant anything, as Clow Reed had left behind an untold number of texts on magic and the occult. The presence of Clow Reed himself usually meant trouble enough, anyway, to say nothing of whatever this "ancient adversary" was.

When Sakura started to speak again, however, he sensed something within her voice, and he knew that this would be more trouble than was normal. Her voice began to tremble slightly as she continued further, "Then, a little white bird flew in front of me, and the both of us were soon pulled into this massive, black whirlpool that a set of dark orbs had created. I can't remember very much beyond that. And you know, in all of my other dreams, I have never felt scared or wanted to run away from what I was seeing. But this time, I had wanted to wake up so badly and just forget the nightmare that I was watching..."

He was afraid of that. Sakura's dream had provoked an emotional response, something that spoke volumes as to its intent. It was a warning, clearly, but for what?

"But there was one thing I heard, before the dream went away. Clow's voice came back to me, and this I remember the most clearly. He said to me, 'When the Seal on them is released, a catastrophe will befall this world.'"

Kero's head darted up Sakura's quotation, catching her gaze as he spoke, "That's what Clow warned me about before I was sealed into the book! The catastrophe of the cards... that should the Cardcaptor claimed by the Selector fail against the Judge during the Final Judgement, the seals upon the cards would be released and all memories in relation to them would be erased. But what does that have to do with anything? All the cards have been reborn under your magic, so they can't possibly be re-released now."

Sakura sighed quietly to herself and looked back down at her book of cards. Opening it again, she placed her left hand upon the top of the deck, feeling a warm embrace as the power of the cards extended out and encompassed it. She drew up the first card, which ended up being the Create card, and wondered if it could actually be possible for her to lose her magical friends to some unforeseen event.

"In any case," noted the small orange guardian, unfolding from his mid-air contemplative position to land on the desk across the room from her, "you should start carrying the cards around with you again. I have no idea what we should expect to happen, so it would be best to remain prepared. A dream with Clow in it could mean anything, at the moment."

Out of the blue, Sakura changed the topic, "Hey, Kero... why would my dream be so different from before? Even with the few minor dreams that I've had over the previous few years, I've been able to recall my surroundings in full, but usually I can never remember the smaller details of the dream, unless it's the Dream card showing it to me. This new one is the exact opposite... I can remember the entire dream, as if I had actually been there, but none of the few images that were there made any sense."

Kero folded his arms together again, and sat himself down over the edge of the desk, "It all has to do with how certain the outcome of the prediction will be. In the past, you've had full recognition of locations and people around you, even of of those you hadn't even met. Even if you couldn't immediately identify some of them, you still felt that you knew who they were, right? Well, those situations were guaranteed to occur, because they were fully pictured. Some had even been preemptively planned by Clow Reed and Eriol, so it was easily predictable stuff. But as the scenery within your dreams become more and more unclear, or rather, as there becomes less scenery to witness, the certainty of its outcome also becomes equally unclear. It's almost like walking through a room with or without the lights on: either you know what to expect in front of you, or you don't. As for not being able to remember, chalk that one up to Eriol and that strange, shrine-maiden teacher of yours interfering with your magic, so that's not an issue this time.

"But that's not the part that worries me the most. You mentioned that you'd heard Clow's voice, and that he told you of the catastrophe of the cards?" Sakura nodded to confirm Kero's question, "Well, whenever a prediction is prompted to be written down like that, or in any other way brought to words in such a cryptic form, it can often be interpreted as a 'prophecy'. Meanwhile, predictions like visions, dreams, or card-reading are more akin to fortune telling, since they can more accurately predict the future. Where fortune telling brings us accurate outcomes of the near future, prophecy can rather be interpreted either several times throughout the entire course of time, or never mentioned ever again beyond its initial telling.

"Prophecy can also hold several meanings within one singular sentence. The fact that Clow himself brought up the catastrophe of the cards within your dream must mean that this is a very serious matter. What's more, from how you quoted it, Clow went and generalized what the Seal is supposed to be sealing, so there's no telling on what to watch for, either. I have no idea of where or when this catastrophe could strike, or for that matter what is supposed to be its trigger. I very much doubt that the cards will just go haywire on us, but this is Clow we are talking about."

Kero broke eye contact with her, choosing instead to stare out through the room's window, "Anything could happen, so I feel that this makes it all the more important that we stay on our guard over the next few days."

While listening to the miniaturized guardian's confusing lecture on prophecy and fortune-telling, Sakura had begun playing the dream over once again in her head, trying to make out some sense of whatever it was supposed to mean. As Kero's words began to sink in alongside the mystery and fear of her memories, she instinctively tightened her grip on the book that she held.

Through the rest of the night, and even as she slept, she made certain that her precious book never left her embrace.

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