I’m dreaming.

It’s not like other dreams I’ve had. My dreams are normally disjointed things, ephemeral and strange. Things progress from one moment to the next in a way that seems normal at the time but upon waking I realise I have no idea how I went from one place to another.

This is different.

I stand in front of a gate made of the night sky. Darkness holds points of light in a way that lends definition to the whole. I don’t know how I got here, or why I am here, but I can feel something on the other side of it.

Something calling to me.

I reach a hand out…

And I wake up.

“That same dream.”

I’ve been having that dream every night since my birthday a week ago. Each time I try to open that gate I wake up before I can touch it.

I hope it doesn’t mean anything.

I had no reason to stay in bed, and sleeping in always made me feel weird, so I got out of bed and began to get dressed.

My room’s fairly average for a 16 year old girl. A bed, dresser, wardrobe, and desk make up the furniture, with a laptop on the desk and a few posters on the walls I picked up over the years. I try to keep it pretty tidy, so it’s not a complete mess like I see on tv from time to time. After putting on underwear, a t-shirt, and jeans I walked in to the bathroom to brush my hair.

I have something of a love-hate relationship with my hair. It’s gorgeous, given how it stays so smooth with almost no effort on my part, and I do enjoy the length, but the silver colouring, matching my eyes, made things a little difficult for me when I was younger. The other kids all thought I dyed my hair and wore contacts, even when I was 8, no matter how much I told them it was my natural colour.

“Valerie, are you up? Breakfast’s ready!” Mom called from downstairs.

“Coming!” I replied.

I quickly finished brushing my hair, deciding to let it hang loose today, and make my way downstairs.

When I arrived in the kitchen, Mom is just finishing up the pancakes she makes every Saturday. It’s become something of a tradition for the two of us, as she’s usually off to work by the time I wake up throughout the week, so this is one of the few times we get to have together.

A lot of people look at Mom and me together and assume she’s my older sister. It’s hardly surprising, given she looks to be in her mid-twenties, despite being 43. The fact she keeps her light blonde hair relatively short probably doesn’t help much. She’s also pretty fit, which I’ve always attributed to the gym her work keeps onsite. At least, that’s the only reason I can think of for it, anyway.

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“Good morning, Mom,” I said as I took a seat at the kitchen bench. Given it’s just the two of us, Mom never saw the point in getting a table to eat at. Dad’s not around anymore. Mom said he died before I was born, and she doesn’t talk about him much, if at all.

“Morning sweetie,” Mom replied. “Sleep well?”

She passed me a plate of pancakes and took a seat on the other side of the bench.

“I did, yes. I had a strange dream though. Same one for the past week, actually” I said.

“Oh? What was it about?”

“Well, there was this weird gate, and it looked like it was made of darkness and stars. The stars were arranged in a way that made it so I could see the gate, like they helped give the darkness shape. I don’t really understand it, but I could feel something, or someone maybe, on the other side, and it was calling to me. Only, when I tried to open it, I woke up before I could touch it.”

Mom was quiet for a little bit, and when I looked up I saw she wasn’t eating, just looking at me with a look on her face I’d never seen before.

Fear.

She quickly schooled her expression, but for a few moments it looked like she was afraid.

“I know you like to take a walk after breakfast, but I think you should stick around for a bit first. There’s something I’d like to show you.”

“Mom?” I asked, a little worried about what I said that might have affected her like this.

“It’s fine, Val. It’ll be fine,” Mom said.

“O-okay,”

A few minutes later, after we both finished eating and placed our dishes in the dishwasher. I went to the lounge room where Mom said she wanted to talk. She came in shortly after holding what looked like a crystal ball that I’d never seen before.

After taking a seat herself, Mom began to speak.

“These next few moments aren’t going to make much sense, and I know you’re already a little confused, but please just bear with me for a bit, okay? I’ll explain in a bit.”

“Yeah, alright,” I said.

“Good. Good,” She took a deep breath, I assumed to steady herself, and held out the crystal ball, “I need you to put your hand on this.”

Taking a closer look, I noticed that half the ball is coated metal, and Mom was very deliberately touching only that part.

Knowing Mom well enough to know that if she was going to explain any further she would have, I reached out and placed my hand on the ball.

Instantly, it went dark.

A small part of me noted that that darkness was similar to the gate in my dream, but the rest of me was captivated by the fact that the darkness was spreading outward.

Mom wasn’t freaking out or anything, only giving it what I could only describe as an uncomfortable look, so I took that as a sign that nothing overtly bad was happening, and just kept watching.

As the darkness spread, I began to see tiny points of light spread throughout, like stars in the night sky, and that’s when it really struck me that it wasn’t like the gate from my dream, it was the same.

The cloud of nighttime spread out further, until it covered both Mom and I, and now I could see it was slightly transparent. I could see a vague outline through the black of the objects around me, and Mom as well.

“That’s enough, Valerie, you can let it go now,” Mom said, and I withdrew my hand.

The darkness and starlight quickly receded, revealing our living room and Mom sitting across from me. She was giving me that same uncomfortable look, but there was also a hint of appraisal, and maybe pride?

“Stellar affinity, and not a weak one either, possibly even S grade,” Mom said, I assumed to herself.

“Mom, what’s going on? You said you’d explain what all this was about,” I said, beginning to get a bit nervous.

“Right. Well, to start with, do you remember the stories I told you about Aldor?”

She was referring to a world she made up when I was little, filled with magic and adventure. At the beginning, it was fairly lighthearted. She’d tell me about legendary heroes and the monsters and villains they’d face, but as I grew up, it grew more serious, and became about people, just ordinary people despite the powers they wielded, and the choices they made in their journeys. My favourite character was Ariel, the Warbreaker, who was famous for being the deciding factor in seven major conflicts. Mom seemed reluctant to tell me much about her though, which I always thought was weird given they shared the same name.

“Yeah, but what’s that got to do wi-”

Then it clicked.

The weird dreams.

Mom’s strange behaviour.

The crystal ball and the night sky it produced.

And now Mom brings up stories she’d been telling me for years, stories that had a strange amount of detail, but I always thought she was just passionate.

“You can’t be serious,” I said, not entirely sure if I wanted her to be or not.

“Yes Valerie, I am,’ Mom replied.

“Aldor is real.”