Dreamlike (1)

(Leo)

***

"Apologize now!" a distorted voice shouted, and it rumbled through my veins.

It was answered by incoherent mumbling that skirted past the range at which I could hear, frustrating me.

The first voice asked in breathy anger, "How could you not know what you did? Are you really that oblivious? Did you want to see me hurt?"

There was a distant slapping noise and a harsh cry for help.

I could not move. Though, I would have fallen and trembled if I could have.

I was the sole witness to a fight in some unidentified corridor.

Yet the people fighting were also unidentifiable. They were fuzzy blobs in my vision like amoebas viewed from too far away. They shifted and came vaguely into focus before becoming indiscernible from the dark gray wall behind them. I was unsure if I had ever been to this place—if I had ever seen these people—but all I could do was watch.

My heart—if it could even beat—ached for the person who was being screamed at, but my feet and wings would not move as I wished. There were no ropes or chains fastened to my appendages, yet an invisible weight held me down until I was paralyzed.

Any strength I had was null and void. I could hardly even shift my gaze to examine my other surroundings, instead becoming a voyeur to whatever personal argument took place before my eyes. A certain amount of guilt strangled me because I was useless despite my magical powers.

I heard the faint sound of fabric moving, and one blob fell to the ground with a partially bare torso, whining violently at something.

"Tell me what happened!"

Suddenly, the pained voice became lucid like cleaned glass—so much so that I thought myself to be an idiot for not recognizing it before.

"I told you I did nothing wrong!" the person yelled while trying to cover a whimper as their back faced away from me.

My eyes widened, and somehow, I was able to control my body again.

***

"Sinclair!"

I lifted from lying down on my back, face teary.

However, when I shouted, I met the eyes of my dear unicorn, Froggie, in the Galaxy Meadow. By bunching up thick but soft petals in my palms, I realized I was miraculously situated in the middle of a bed of gigantic flowers—the same way as when I fell asleep.

When my senses came to me, beads of dew from a cold sweat formed atop my skin as if I was a hollow, chilled container, and I revelled in the pounding heartbeat and jaunty breaths that accompanied them as signs I was alive. There was a sense of newfound freedom as I summoned a small flame in my hand. Just to check.

*What the *hell* was that dream?*

The terror had not worn off despite my body adjusting to reality, and Froggie nuzzled my bare side gently, licking some of the liquid off for salt. I was too deep in thought to caress her head in gratitude.

Nightmares of that sort… They were almost unheard of for me. Most of my fears were of the magical variety, but watching the poor messenger get beaten around by an unnamed menace perhaps topped them all.

But the scariest thing was that I could not move in such a situation, which tied back to my terrors about tyrannical sorcery. I had to watch the altercation before my eyes without the ability to do so much as lift a finger to cast a spell.

Had it been in real life, I would have broken down to sob, for I wished blindness upon myself if I had to watch someone I cared deeply for be tortured in front of my eyes. How good of a gift was the mind's eye if it only conjured up images of the horrid and unthinkable?

It took a while for my brain's rambling to settle out and clear my thoughts so that only star-studded flowers and unicorn licks remained. Yet as soon as my mind was empty, it filled with racing thoughts once more like it reached the lowest point on a parabola and then soared exponentially.

The dream—yes, the one that never truly left my psyche.

My eyelids peeled open. It became so clear to me what I needed to do next.

I needed to find Sinclair.