A/N: This will be the last chapter for a week or two. Sorry! It's exam time at my school and I barely scraped together time to write this short chapter. I AM still continuing this, however, just putting it on hold.
Reyna had always had dreams.
They were rarely pleasant dreams. They were often nightmares, gut-wrenchingly sad or heart-stoppingly terrifying. Sometimes, after a noticeably bad day at home, she would have an agreeable subconscious, which made no sense to her. Surely that was when she should be receiving the worst apparitions, but the pattern had held true for years.
So when she opened her eyes to a stormy black sky, she knew she wasn't, in fact, conscious.
She made her dream self sit up. She had that weird feeling, the one when you know that you're dreaming but can't quite grasp the fact and couldn't wake up if you tried. The feeling that you're condemned to act out the dream like reality until you wake up.
The landscape was impressive. She was sitting in a field of tall grasses that seemed to stretch on forever. To her far right a grey river wound sluggishly into an ocean. In the distance, a city composed of grey buildings rose ominously, the Washington Monument stretching toward a dark grey sky that swirled with thunderheads. The whole scene was grey.
Leave, a voice boomed, echoing with the thunder across the field. Leave.
It was a woman's voice, but Reyna didn't recognize it. It didn't seem to be coming from anywhere in particular, but from every atom of air around her. Nor was she able to reply. She stood there, mute, pondering what the voice had said. Leave the dream? Was she intruding? Could one intrude in a dream?
Leave the East. Leave the East.
"Where should we go?" Reyna heard herself ask. "Where should I go?"
West. Go to the West, child of Rome.
A strong wind bent the heads of all the grasses away from the river and toward Reyna, the dry blades hissing and rattling. The river was swirling in a frothy mass, choked with flotsam and sending spray shooting into the air. But the adjacent ocean was glassy and calm.
East is chaos. East is discord. East is traitorous. East is Greece.
The river began to slosh like water in a bowl, spilling onto the banks and spewing all matter of things with it.
The road is in the West. The road is to the West. All roads lead to Rome.
The river was flowing out onto the plains. The horizon was becoming pink. Reyna assumed that the dream-sun was rising and kept an eye on the river.
All roads lead to Rome, the voice boomed around her. All roads lead to Rome. All roads lead to Rome. The grasses whispered it, a thousand echoes of the same phrase swirling around her.
The sun peaked over the horizon and made the clouds shine purple, while the flood of river water that washed Reyna away shone gold.