***Author's Notes***
Please, if you are able, play your copy of 'Vertical Horizon's' "Everything You Want" to absorb the most out of this scene.
***Author's Notes***
ACT 02, INTERLUDE 01 (ACTUAL) "Everything You Want"
***
Opening her eyes to find herself on a verdant hillside that rose out of a lake, Agrias knew that she was dreaming. The only sense that she believed that she experienced was sight. Still, it felt real enough to her. Even though she knew it was just in her mind, she wondered if the sensation that she inhaled was actually scent, the ability to smell of the water. As she noticed the aroma of wet earth, she realized that it had just rained.
Finding herself wearing what she normally wore under her armor; a long, off-white linen tunic with a faded-blue skirt, Agrias wondered how she could feel the wet grass beneath her feet, if it was all a dream, her mind active while her body was at rest.
When a breeze, blew, Agrias shivered, covering herself with her arms and instinctively turning away from the coast where the wind approached from.
She wasn't alone.
There was a light grove on the hilltop, a collection of bent trees, their drooping branches festooned with slender olive leaves. Laid against one of the trees, his form silhouetted, was Ramza, his tussled hair familiar as the sun of the orange sky beyond him, bathed him in amber, his shirtless form flickering with the shadows of the branches that sheltered him.
Agrias smiled as she saw the peaceful expression in his face as she hiked up the hillside, laughing at herself as she almost slipped on the moist blades of grass. "Wake up, you!" she called out to him merrily, immersing herself in her fantasy, something at which she was amazed that she could conceive.
As she neared him, she felt suspicion rising. "Ramza..." she said, wondering why he did not wake. Something was indeed, wrong. Curling her legs under her, and tucking her skirt against her calves, Agrias kneeled next to Ramza. His half-lidded eyes stared into nothing, and as she touched him, though there was still warmth, yet his flesh was still, no pulse, no movement, no life.
She did not scream. She could not scream. Her mouth hung open as a repressed croak escaped her throat. Only when the right side of Ramza's mouth quirked upwards into the hint of a smile did Agrias cry out as rivulets of crimson flowed out of the corpse's morose smile.
"This is not real," Agrias told herself, unable to relinquish her hold on Ramza, instead drawing his body closer to hers, the living clutching the dead. Even as a spike of rage built up within her, Agrias curbed herself from inflicting it on the nearest object: Ramza, the corpse she held in her arms, the tender, loving care coming too late.
Another smell assailed her nose asides from the copper of Ramza's blood, his face held close to hers as she held him to herself, distraught.
The saying the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill did not apply for once.
Ramza's corpse was not alone. On the other side of the hill, bodies were strewn about. The metal armor of soldiers mixed in with the dull cloth of peasants, they all shared the fact that their wearers were dead.
"Make it stop," she asked. "Please, make it stop," she repeated, trying to convince herself to awaken, to return to the plane of the conscious, to escape the nightmare that she had created from paradisiacal bliss.
The body she held stirred, and Agrias prayed, pleading to the powers that be that it wasn't just her body shaking as she began to lose control of herself. Ramza coughed, and she released him as he spewed a spray of blood as he convulsed.
Concerned only with him, and ignoring the carnage lower on the hillside, Agrias tentatively touched Ramza, unable to believe, unwilling to trust what her eyes 'saw,' resolving not to let her hopes rise simply to be driven into the ground. The first vocal sound Ramza made was a scream as he tore himself from her grasp and flailed forwards on the group. It only escalated as he placed his hands onto the ground beneath him and tore clods of soil along with the grass.
Agrias could only stare as the flesh on Ramza's shoulder blades at his back began to bulge. He went silent as the protuberances only grew larger, and Agrias watched in morbid fascination as his flesh finally burst. What emerged from the gore was a pair of black wings, somehow unfolding from where they were recessed in his back. They extended, their miniature size dumbfounding, recalling to mind painted icons not of angels, but of cherubs; cherubs with black wings dripping with blood.
Forgetting that she should have been awake, Agrias continued to stare as Ramza passed out from the pain, following his example as both of them lost consciousness within the dream.
***
The second time Agrias awoke in her dream, she found herself on another isle, one that floated on the sky. There were still see clouds above her, yet her viewpoint was also moving as it hovered above the plain. Looking below, she saw images of war from afar. The blackened remnants of torched fields, and the glowing embers of burning towns and torched woodlands. Columns of black smoke rose to mix with the white clouds, and there was a gray haze that came to be between heaven and earth.
"This is not real," Agrias concluded. "I am not going to let my fears take control of me," she told herself, her words filled with conviction as she made a stand against her subconscious.
Agrias had had enough. Closing her eyes, she vented her rage in the only way she knew how at that point. She screamed, her balled fists causing her to inflict pain upon herself as her nails dug into her palms.
***
She awoke in the embrace of a presence she had no trouble discerning as Ramza's. She was in his arms, her body curled as he carried her. "Don't you dare lecture me," she muttered, embracing him, staring into his face, now animated, those red-ringed orbs that were his eyes soothing her as she stared into their obsidian depths, wondering what she could see through the portal into his soul.
"I shattered that nightmare," she told him, wondering why he did not speak. As he let her down, and she felt her covered body slipping against his unclothed torso, Agrias reached her arms around him in return. His smile did not lose its tender quality even as he chuckled. She felt his wings, and unbelieving, Agrias plucked a feather from him, causing Ramza to grunt.
Giving him a wicked smile in return as Agrias kept a guarded attitude, she brought her prize between their faces, and as Agrias examined the short ebon feather, Ramza blew it from her fingertips, and she was left staring at his same patient, amused, and caring expression.
"You're not a part of that dream?" she asked him, wanting to know what did this all mean.
Abruptly, he released her, chuckling softly.
"What are you trying to tell me?" she called out as he turned from her and began to walk away.
She began to hear voices in the background, and she paid attention to her environment in the first place. It was a realm of darkness where she walked on an invisible plane, and low light came from unknown origins.
Turning his head to the right to look back at her, Ramza playfully lifted his left wing, the black feathers fluffing as if Ramza was displaying his plumage. Lowering that wing, Ramza continued to walk away.
Growing frustrated, Agrias began to follow after him in the path that should not exist where nothing was. As she began to run, a melody began to play. Pulses of sounds begin to assail her ears from her sides, alternating as she raced to catch up with Ramza's fleeting form.
Agrias stopped when she began to see other forms in the darkness. Not forms, but images, and unlike before, they were not nightmares of what may come to pass, but reflections of what came before. They were all of Ramza. Times that she had spent in his company, good, bad, but never indifferent.
The sounds that she had heard was their dialogue from then, and it was when she realized that fact that Ramza –the black cherub in front of her- stopped, and began to sing.
"Somewhere there's speaking," he told her his voice lilted to the music, speaking in quick melody. He elaborated. "It's already coming in," he phrased, and as an afterthought, added, "Oh, and it's rising at that back of your mind."
As she looked on, confused, Ramza continued to sing. "You never could get it," he changed his tone, keeping it gentle, yet firm, "unless you were fed it." He turned to face her, gesturing low with his arms and high with his wings. "Now you're here, and you don't know why..."
A scene was brought into focus of the events that transpired on Bariaus Hill, as she remembered herself there, exhausted, almost defeated.
"But under skinned knees," he pointed out, "and the skid marks," he continued. "Past the places where you used to learn," he highlighted her exposure to the outside world. "You howl and listen..." he paused. "Listen and wait for the..." he stretched, "echoes of angels who won't return." At this, he flurried his wings in humored emphasis, and somehow, they grew to envelop him as he disappeared from her sight.
This was when the Ramza's in her other memories began to sing. "He's everything you want," they chorused, "he's everything you need." It was a gentle accusation, one without barbs, but with feeling. "He's everything inside of you that you wish you could be," they confronted her gently. As Agrias balked as she stood there, mesmerized by what was happening, the voices continued their rhythmic testimonial. "He says all the right things, at exactly the right time," they sang, reminding her of all the times he had pierced her veil with his speech. Smoothly, the voices' inflection changed. "But he means nothing to you, and you don't know why," the voices stretched out.
Another apparition of Ramza appeared beside her, one of him clad in the purple and gray armor and cloth he wore when they had first met. It was he who began to sing, not to the Agrias that watched it all, but to the Agrias he guarded, the one that kneeled in the rain, drenched in anguish as Ovelia was stolen from her ward.
"You're waiting for someone," he began, looking upon the Agrias that was torn, "to put you together," and as she rose to meet his supporting hand, hesitation took over and caused her to refuse his support. "You're waiting for someone to push you away," he remarked in the same tone, making it clear who was who. "There's always another - wound to discover," he accused, gently reminding Agrias of all the times that she had made excuses that shouldn't have been. And as Ramza stood there as the anguished Agrias in battle armor glared at him, he confronted her with the truth. "There's always something more you wish he'd say," he concluded, looking resigned and confused.
This pairing disappeared, replaced by the desperate Ramza that appeared before her as she spurned him after he had declared that he would leave her to pursue the Zodiac crystal, galled that he would abandon her for a relic. "But you'll just sit tight," he accused, staring at an Agrias who held herself aloof, ignoring him as she tried to stay in the distance. "And watch it unwind," he finished the statement with audible frustration. "It's only what you're asking for," he commented sadly as that Agrias' façade began to crack and her troubles showed on her face. "And you'll be just fine," he continued as the Agrias that divided them began to lose control of herself, "with all of your time," he pointed out, letting her know what he believed. "It's only what you're waiting for," he finished bitterly as the two of them faded away.
The night spent atop Dorter's roofs was brought into focus, and as the Agrias then stared into the cobalt evening, her Ramza gazed at her, singing. "He's everything you want..." he sang, ignored by the woman he serenaded. "He's everything you need," he pressed, trying to get through. "He's everything inside of you that you wish you could be," this Ramza repeated. Reaching forwards to take her hand, he sang softly into her ear. "He says all the right things," he paused, "at exactly the right time..." a sigh, "but he means nothing to you," he crooned, "and you don't know why," he told her as she turned to look at him, confused herself at what he confessed.
The demonic angel that Ramza had become in her dreams reappeared, as he summarized for her. Approaching her rapidly, he sang, "Out of the island," he reminded her of where they first met, "and into the highway," he indicated the invisible path she had traveled, the collection of her memories, "past the places where you might have turned," he clarified, indicating the faded paths she could have taken in life. "You never did notice," he sighed, "but you still hide away," he accused her. "The anger of angels who won't return," he finished, his wings fading away as he took her into his arms.
Agrias felt herself falling into the feeling of Ramza's cot, and when she blinked, it was she who stared into Ramza –her Ramza- as he sat on the floor beside the cot he had given to her, looking down upon her. He was whispering to her in the darkness, illuminated by the same light that came from nothing. "I am everything you want," he sang in that sad melody, "I am everything you need," he continued. Pausing as he sobbed, he followed with, "I am everything inside of you that you wish you could be..." he whispered, broken. His voice was lost as he continued the song. "I say all the right things..." he hesitated, "at the right time," but he concluded, his voice becoming more morose, "but I mean nothing to you," he spoke to Agrias as she stared into the source of his voice in the darkness, "and I don't know why," he seeped out, anguish filling his song.
"And I don't know why," he repeated as he pulled himself away from her, and slipping back into his stone mattress. "Why.." he trailed off, lost, his voice losing energy as his voice faded away. "I don't know," he finished, and he was gone.
The silence reigned as the melody she had heard in the background went away. She lay there, wondering what would happen next -what apparition- nightmare, fantasy, or memory would confront her next.
As the seconds accumulated into minutes, and as more and more she felt uncomfortable, feeling an itch from the covers in the parts of her legs that her silken nightgown did not cover, Agrias came to a conclusion:
She was awake, cast out of the realm of dreams.
Acting on her emotions, she slipped herself off her cot, and into the floor. Finding the table, she groped for the matches and a candle, and the room was lit in burgundy. Setting the candle and its stand back on the table, Agrias curled her legs beneath her as she settled in besides Ramza, staring into his features.
The confidence and satisfaction he had shown her before was tainted with sadness and hurt. Joy mellowed and tempered was no longer joy, having been hammered into another emotion. Looking upon the one who cared so much for her, Agrias felt a trickle of tears flow from where they gathered at the sides of her chin onto his hand as she took it in hers. Words were not enough as she searched within herself to answer his questions –and hers.
Morning would find her laid out on the floor beside him, her sleep devoid of dreams and thought, overflowing with emotion as her awareness drowned in oblivion.
***
***Author's Notes***
Dreams, the realm of the surreal.
***Author's Notes***
***Readers' Response Corner***
In dreams, fantasies, or reality –in which do you revel, trust, or deny?
***Readers' Response Corner***
Please, if you are able, play your copy of 'Vertical Horizon's' "Everything You Want" to absorb the most out of this scene.
***Author's Notes***
ACT 02, INTERLUDE 01 (ACTUAL) "Everything You Want"
***
Opening her eyes to find herself on a verdant hillside that rose out of a lake, Agrias knew that she was dreaming. The only sense that she believed that she experienced was sight. Still, it felt real enough to her. Even though she knew it was just in her mind, she wondered if the sensation that she inhaled was actually scent, the ability to smell of the water. As she noticed the aroma of wet earth, she realized that it had just rained.
Finding herself wearing what she normally wore under her armor; a long, off-white linen tunic with a faded-blue skirt, Agrias wondered how she could feel the wet grass beneath her feet, if it was all a dream, her mind active while her body was at rest.
When a breeze, blew, Agrias shivered, covering herself with her arms and instinctively turning away from the coast where the wind approached from.
She wasn't alone.
There was a light grove on the hilltop, a collection of bent trees, their drooping branches festooned with slender olive leaves. Laid against one of the trees, his form silhouetted, was Ramza, his tussled hair familiar as the sun of the orange sky beyond him, bathed him in amber, his shirtless form flickering with the shadows of the branches that sheltered him.
Agrias smiled as she saw the peaceful expression in his face as she hiked up the hillside, laughing at herself as she almost slipped on the moist blades of grass. "Wake up, you!" she called out to him merrily, immersing herself in her fantasy, something at which she was amazed that she could conceive.
As she neared him, she felt suspicion rising. "Ramza..." she said, wondering why he did not wake. Something was indeed, wrong. Curling her legs under her, and tucking her skirt against her calves, Agrias kneeled next to Ramza. His half-lidded eyes stared into nothing, and as she touched him, though there was still warmth, yet his flesh was still, no pulse, no movement, no life.
She did not scream. She could not scream. Her mouth hung open as a repressed croak escaped her throat. Only when the right side of Ramza's mouth quirked upwards into the hint of a smile did Agrias cry out as rivulets of crimson flowed out of the corpse's morose smile.
"This is not real," Agrias told herself, unable to relinquish her hold on Ramza, instead drawing his body closer to hers, the living clutching the dead. Even as a spike of rage built up within her, Agrias curbed herself from inflicting it on the nearest object: Ramza, the corpse she held in her arms, the tender, loving care coming too late.
Another smell assailed her nose asides from the copper of Ramza's blood, his face held close to hers as she held him to herself, distraught.
The saying the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill did not apply for once.
Ramza's corpse was not alone. On the other side of the hill, bodies were strewn about. The metal armor of soldiers mixed in with the dull cloth of peasants, they all shared the fact that their wearers were dead.
"Make it stop," she asked. "Please, make it stop," she repeated, trying to convince herself to awaken, to return to the plane of the conscious, to escape the nightmare that she had created from paradisiacal bliss.
The body she held stirred, and Agrias prayed, pleading to the powers that be that it wasn't just her body shaking as she began to lose control of herself. Ramza coughed, and she released him as he spewed a spray of blood as he convulsed.
Concerned only with him, and ignoring the carnage lower on the hillside, Agrias tentatively touched Ramza, unable to believe, unwilling to trust what her eyes 'saw,' resolving not to let her hopes rise simply to be driven into the ground. The first vocal sound Ramza made was a scream as he tore himself from her grasp and flailed forwards on the group. It only escalated as he placed his hands onto the ground beneath him and tore clods of soil along with the grass.
Agrias could only stare as the flesh on Ramza's shoulder blades at his back began to bulge. He went silent as the protuberances only grew larger, and Agrias watched in morbid fascination as his flesh finally burst. What emerged from the gore was a pair of black wings, somehow unfolding from where they were recessed in his back. They extended, their miniature size dumbfounding, recalling to mind painted icons not of angels, but of cherubs; cherubs with black wings dripping with blood.
Forgetting that she should have been awake, Agrias continued to stare as Ramza passed out from the pain, following his example as both of them lost consciousness within the dream.
***
The second time Agrias awoke in her dream, she found herself on another isle, one that floated on the sky. There were still see clouds above her, yet her viewpoint was also moving as it hovered above the plain. Looking below, she saw images of war from afar. The blackened remnants of torched fields, and the glowing embers of burning towns and torched woodlands. Columns of black smoke rose to mix with the white clouds, and there was a gray haze that came to be between heaven and earth.
"This is not real," Agrias concluded. "I am not going to let my fears take control of me," she told herself, her words filled with conviction as she made a stand against her subconscious.
Agrias had had enough. Closing her eyes, she vented her rage in the only way she knew how at that point. She screamed, her balled fists causing her to inflict pain upon herself as her nails dug into her palms.
***
She awoke in the embrace of a presence she had no trouble discerning as Ramza's. She was in his arms, her body curled as he carried her. "Don't you dare lecture me," she muttered, embracing him, staring into his face, now animated, those red-ringed orbs that were his eyes soothing her as she stared into their obsidian depths, wondering what she could see through the portal into his soul.
"I shattered that nightmare," she told him, wondering why he did not speak. As he let her down, and she felt her covered body slipping against his unclothed torso, Agrias reached her arms around him in return. His smile did not lose its tender quality even as he chuckled. She felt his wings, and unbelieving, Agrias plucked a feather from him, causing Ramza to grunt.
Giving him a wicked smile in return as Agrias kept a guarded attitude, she brought her prize between their faces, and as Agrias examined the short ebon feather, Ramza blew it from her fingertips, and she was left staring at his same patient, amused, and caring expression.
"You're not a part of that dream?" she asked him, wanting to know what did this all mean.
Abruptly, he released her, chuckling softly.
"What are you trying to tell me?" she called out as he turned from her and began to walk away.
She began to hear voices in the background, and she paid attention to her environment in the first place. It was a realm of darkness where she walked on an invisible plane, and low light came from unknown origins.
Turning his head to the right to look back at her, Ramza playfully lifted his left wing, the black feathers fluffing as if Ramza was displaying his plumage. Lowering that wing, Ramza continued to walk away.
Growing frustrated, Agrias began to follow after him in the path that should not exist where nothing was. As she began to run, a melody began to play. Pulses of sounds begin to assail her ears from her sides, alternating as she raced to catch up with Ramza's fleeting form.
Agrias stopped when she began to see other forms in the darkness. Not forms, but images, and unlike before, they were not nightmares of what may come to pass, but reflections of what came before. They were all of Ramza. Times that she had spent in his company, good, bad, but never indifferent.
The sounds that she had heard was their dialogue from then, and it was when she realized that fact that Ramza –the black cherub in front of her- stopped, and began to sing.
"Somewhere there's speaking," he told her his voice lilted to the music, speaking in quick melody. He elaborated. "It's already coming in," he phrased, and as an afterthought, added, "Oh, and it's rising at that back of your mind."
As she looked on, confused, Ramza continued to sing. "You never could get it," he changed his tone, keeping it gentle, yet firm, "unless you were fed it." He turned to face her, gesturing low with his arms and high with his wings. "Now you're here, and you don't know why..."
A scene was brought into focus of the events that transpired on Bariaus Hill, as she remembered herself there, exhausted, almost defeated.
"But under skinned knees," he pointed out, "and the skid marks," he continued. "Past the places where you used to learn," he highlighted her exposure to the outside world. "You howl and listen..." he paused. "Listen and wait for the..." he stretched, "echoes of angels who won't return." At this, he flurried his wings in humored emphasis, and somehow, they grew to envelop him as he disappeared from her sight.
This was when the Ramza's in her other memories began to sing. "He's everything you want," they chorused, "he's everything you need." It was a gentle accusation, one without barbs, but with feeling. "He's everything inside of you that you wish you could be," they confronted her gently. As Agrias balked as she stood there, mesmerized by what was happening, the voices continued their rhythmic testimonial. "He says all the right things, at exactly the right time," they sang, reminding her of all the times he had pierced her veil with his speech. Smoothly, the voices' inflection changed. "But he means nothing to you, and you don't know why," the voices stretched out.
Another apparition of Ramza appeared beside her, one of him clad in the purple and gray armor and cloth he wore when they had first met. It was he who began to sing, not to the Agrias that watched it all, but to the Agrias he guarded, the one that kneeled in the rain, drenched in anguish as Ovelia was stolen from her ward.
"You're waiting for someone," he began, looking upon the Agrias that was torn, "to put you together," and as she rose to meet his supporting hand, hesitation took over and caused her to refuse his support. "You're waiting for someone to push you away," he remarked in the same tone, making it clear who was who. "There's always another - wound to discover," he accused, gently reminding Agrias of all the times that she had made excuses that shouldn't have been. And as Ramza stood there as the anguished Agrias in battle armor glared at him, he confronted her with the truth. "There's always something more you wish he'd say," he concluded, looking resigned and confused.
This pairing disappeared, replaced by the desperate Ramza that appeared before her as she spurned him after he had declared that he would leave her to pursue the Zodiac crystal, galled that he would abandon her for a relic. "But you'll just sit tight," he accused, staring at an Agrias who held herself aloof, ignoring him as she tried to stay in the distance. "And watch it unwind," he finished the statement with audible frustration. "It's only what you're asking for," he commented sadly as that Agrias' façade began to crack and her troubles showed on her face. "And you'll be just fine," he continued as the Agrias that divided them began to lose control of herself, "with all of your time," he pointed out, letting her know what he believed. "It's only what you're waiting for," he finished bitterly as the two of them faded away.
The night spent atop Dorter's roofs was brought into focus, and as the Agrias then stared into the cobalt evening, her Ramza gazed at her, singing. "He's everything you want..." he sang, ignored by the woman he serenaded. "He's everything you need," he pressed, trying to get through. "He's everything inside of you that you wish you could be," this Ramza repeated. Reaching forwards to take her hand, he sang softly into her ear. "He says all the right things," he paused, "at exactly the right time..." a sigh, "but he means nothing to you," he crooned, "and you don't know why," he told her as she turned to look at him, confused herself at what he confessed.
The demonic angel that Ramza had become in her dreams reappeared, as he summarized for her. Approaching her rapidly, he sang, "Out of the island," he reminded her of where they first met, "and into the highway," he indicated the invisible path she had traveled, the collection of her memories, "past the places where you might have turned," he clarified, indicating the faded paths she could have taken in life. "You never did notice," he sighed, "but you still hide away," he accused her. "The anger of angels who won't return," he finished, his wings fading away as he took her into his arms.
Agrias felt herself falling into the feeling of Ramza's cot, and when she blinked, it was she who stared into Ramza –her Ramza- as he sat on the floor beside the cot he had given to her, looking down upon her. He was whispering to her in the darkness, illuminated by the same light that came from nothing. "I am everything you want," he sang in that sad melody, "I am everything you need," he continued. Pausing as he sobbed, he followed with, "I am everything inside of you that you wish you could be..." he whispered, broken. His voice was lost as he continued the song. "I say all the right things..." he hesitated, "at the right time," but he concluded, his voice becoming more morose, "but I mean nothing to you," he spoke to Agrias as she stared into the source of his voice in the darkness, "and I don't know why," he seeped out, anguish filling his song.
"And I don't know why," he repeated as he pulled himself away from her, and slipping back into his stone mattress. "Why.." he trailed off, lost, his voice losing energy as his voice faded away. "I don't know," he finished, and he was gone.
The silence reigned as the melody she had heard in the background went away. She lay there, wondering what would happen next -what apparition- nightmare, fantasy, or memory would confront her next.
As the seconds accumulated into minutes, and as more and more she felt uncomfortable, feeling an itch from the covers in the parts of her legs that her silken nightgown did not cover, Agrias came to a conclusion:
She was awake, cast out of the realm of dreams.
Acting on her emotions, she slipped herself off her cot, and into the floor. Finding the table, she groped for the matches and a candle, and the room was lit in burgundy. Setting the candle and its stand back on the table, Agrias curled her legs beneath her as she settled in besides Ramza, staring into his features.
The confidence and satisfaction he had shown her before was tainted with sadness and hurt. Joy mellowed and tempered was no longer joy, having been hammered into another emotion. Looking upon the one who cared so much for her, Agrias felt a trickle of tears flow from where they gathered at the sides of her chin onto his hand as she took it in hers. Words were not enough as she searched within herself to answer his questions –and hers.
Morning would find her laid out on the floor beside him, her sleep devoid of dreams and thought, overflowing with emotion as her awareness drowned in oblivion.
***
***Author's Notes***
Dreams, the realm of the surreal.
***Author's Notes***
***Readers' Response Corner***
In dreams, fantasies, or reality –in which do you revel, trust, or deny?
***Readers' Response Corner***