"If I fall, will you catch me?"
The question spiraled around her as she stood poised on the pinnacle. Bare feet clutched at the rough wood beneath
them as a panoramic view of the barn floor below swam in and out of focus.
"If I fall, will you catch me?"
Weakly, her hands grasped at the beam beside her. But as always her foot slipped and she felt her weight shift, plunging to the side…and the hard floor below. Her mouth opened under it's own will, and a banshee like cry issued from it. Then, seconds before the terrifying impact, the floor ripped in two, splitting into a gaping gash, a ginning mouth swallowing her whole.
"…will you…"
And as always, before the blackness could envelop her completely, there was a touch. Familiar, yet foreign. Blindly she groped for the strange comfort it offered, but it was ripped from her grasp.
"…catch me?"
Lost, and alone, she tumbled into the darkness of the abyss once again.
The combination of pain and fear woke Chloe in a cold sweat, gasping in the tangled sheets that littered the floor around her. Her hip and right leg throbbed from the tumble off her mattress, but the fear in her heart was move overpowering than any pain she'd yet to experience. Slowly, her vision cleared and the blackness receded to the blinking blue of her digital clock and the dim gold of the bathroom nightlight down the hall. 3:08 am.
Quietly, she listened, praying that her fall hadn't woken the house's other two occupants. She didn't want her father to be concerned, and she wasn't up for a dream-defining, heart-to-heart with Lana. When she was positive that both people were still asleep, she threw her comforter back onto the bed and, jumping the creaky board in the hall, made her way to the bathroom.
The rush of water and billowing steam offered little comfort, but Chloe would take what she could get. These early mornings were becoming a regular event. As the scalding water cascaded over the shoulders, easing the tense muscles in her neck and the dull ache of her right side, she tried to reach back into the dream. Back to the meaning and the details, but both of them eluded her. Slowly the dream receded from her memory, Fading, as it always did. And as usual, it led her to a place that she could almost see, but couldn't. Voices that almost made sense, but didn't. And a memory that she had almost remembered…but hadn't.
A/N: Hey all! So I decided I'm going to wind down a little bit what with my sport season kicking in and homework getting harder. You know, no new stories, trying to wrap up the old ones…or at least get them to a good stopping point. But then, my stupid muses decide that I don't have enough to do. *Throws a book at the stupid, chittering flock of Fire-Lizards perched about the room * They had to send me this fluffy and rather poetic idea. So, naturally I had to write it or it would keep haunting me. "Stupid brown menace!" "Idiotic greens!" "Unfit blues!" "Ruddy bronzes!" "Leave me alone!" *Entire flock disappears between, laughing madly. * Yeah, so that's my story…so enjoy. I have to go kill my muses now…