It was always the same dream, and Ilene could never remember what happened in it. The most she could figure out about the dream was that she always woke up at the exact same time. She looked over to her clock; two minutes until the alarm went off, as always.
Ilene had devoted as many minutes as she possibly could to divining what happened in her dream. Even before she knew how to read, she would ask adults about the strange disappearing vision in her head. About five years prior to this particular incidence of the reoccurrence, Ilene had been struck by brilliance and decided to write down every minute scrap of detail she retained about the dream. The only details she had been able to write down for the first four years were that she woke at the same time and had the same dream every night without fail. A year ago, real details started to worm their way onto the page. Ilene wrote down a fresh detail from this night and reviewed previous details.
The first one described the location, "A beach next to impossibly high mountains covered with trees larger and more diverse than found on any one specific location. The water was clear, and it was possible to see for miles into it. There was a cliff with a bit of an overhang next to the shore."
The second entry was about companions, "Me and thirteen others, but I can't figure out what sort of relationship we have to each other, and I couldn't say what the others looked like."
The third entry was written hastily and barely legible, but it was still there, "We were all running for our lives, but from, or to, what?"
The fourth entry seemed a bit dramatic to Ilene, but it was a dream, "Fire and death raining from the sky."
This last entry seemed the strangest of all, "There was a tall, well-muscled, blonde man with a beard and he was very sad. I was talking to him." Ilene had seen that man before. Sometimes he had his beard, and other times he didn't, but other than that, he always looked the same. When she was a little girl, Ilene thought that he was her guardian angel, but her family never seemed to notice him. He was always just around the corner in public places.
Ilene scratched her chin for a minute, pondering this latest development, and then she jumped up and went to go start the coffee. As curious as she was about her mysterious late night adventure, she was in college and had other things to deal with.
She got dressed and checked the time. It was one in the morning on Thursday; time for astronomy class. Leaving the building, Ilene thought she saw the large man again, but decided it must have just been some trick of the light. Her childhood phantoms couldn't stalk her here.
Author's Note: Very short chapters so far, aren't they? They're going to get longer. This chapter is hugely overdue, its incredibly short (read "just a filler"). Moreover, it's bizarre. Don't jump ship and leave this story just because of Ilene. It will get more Tolkein-y later, after intoductions to characters and such. Basicly, don't quit reading.
I'll try to be a bit faster on my next update.
Can't believe I forgot this in the last chapter! Disclaimer: All belongs to Tolkein. Yes, including Ilene; she is derivied from one of his own (cough*hint*cough)