The only people I ever saw were those that came at my Uncle’s command, and they were often too bereaved to sing and dance with me. All they wanted was a drink, and so I dutifully walked them to the flowing river that cut through our grounds and let them gorge themselves with water until their memories washed away with the currents of the smoky Lethe. Then, and only then, would my darling twin brother appear, in all of his somber glory, to walk them back through the land from which they came, back to my Uncle.

I might have mistaken him for a Drinker, except his eyes were unlike any I’d ever seen. Instead of the hollow, soulless gaze of my usual visitors, his eyes were big and bright, a lucid shimmering silver that sparkled— like what I imagined stars would look like, though I’d never seen them. His presence stopped me mid-twirl somewhere in the center of the massive foyer that stretched the full height of the manor. He looked so grand, so epic— pushing through the heavy front doors, sending them flying open with a deafening thud. I was so used to the silence, so used to the solitude, that his very appearance was a thrilling anomaly in my otherwise mundane routine.

“Are you Hypnos, the great daughter of Nyx and Erebus?” he asked, breathless.

“That is what I am often called,” I said in turn, unsure why he was not asleep like the rest of the people beneath the hill, unknowingly imprisoned in theLandofDreams. “My given name is Oneiri, for I am the bringer of sleep and the harbinger of dreams.”

“I am your humble servant,” he said, dropping to his knees before me. I fell back on my heels, stunned.

“How is it that you came to be here?” I asked. Thinking back, I was sure I had never before received a visitor such as this one, as no one but my mother and brothers could get through the dauntingly large horn and ivory gate that closed us off from the rest of the world.

No one entered uninvited, and no one but Thanatos left.

“My dearest love is a distant cousin of your mother’s. She has given me leave to see you.”

“You are from the World Above,” I said excitedly, giving him my rapt attention.

“I am.” He smiled tenderly, so warm it was almost as blindingly radiant as his eyes. “I have come to beg a favor from the child of Night.”

My smile faded. “You must leave soon,” I said suddenly, urgently pushing him toward the doors. “If you are from the World Above then you are not welcome here. My brothers will sense your living soul and they will capture you to steal your dreams.” He must have sensed my horror, for he gently took my hands.

“What I have is not a mortal’s sleep, but something altogether divine, bestowed upon me by Zeus that I may live forever.”

I stared at him in confounded irritation. “If you seek eternal life, why walk among the dead?”

He smiled sadly. “What good is eternal life if I cannot see my beloved? If I cannot admire her beauty? If I am to know only darkness, isn’t that death?”

I frowned, looking out the partially shattered windows at the evergray sky. Morpheus’ tree lay in the far distance, swirled in fog, a sad wilted elm upon which he hung his hand spun crafts—the phantoms he used to haunt the dreamscape, trapped within clear glass balls, hanging from the branches like forbidden fruit.

“Not all of sleep is darkness,” I said, surprised at my indignation. “Some of it is magic and bright. Some of it is blissfully impossible and all the more special because of it.”

“But in the end, a dream is just a dream. And how can that compare to reality?”

I thought for a long moment, my brows furrowed so deeply they hurt.

“I see you have little experience with reality,” he said carefully, when I did not respond.

“My reality is not as yours, for my world is below and yours is above.”

“But it does not change your ability to think. To feel.”

“These are all things you can do in sleep, in dreams.”

“But they are not real.”

I pulled back as though struck. They were real to me. They were the only reality I knew.

“Have you never been above?” he asked.

“I have no need. All that is required of me is here. I work and play within this realm. My mother and brothers return to me at dawn and leave again at dusk, and I am given freedom to roam and dance and sing.”

“Alone?”

“My dear Thanatos often comes to visit.”

“But he does not stay.”

“I prefer the solitude.”

“Or the company of ghosts.”

“They are not ghosts,” I snapped, irritated. “They are just as you or I, only lost and seeking reprieve for their weary souls.”

“So you have never seen the moonlight. Never heard a love song plucked on a lyre. Never had a man touch your skin.” His callous fingers touched my shoulder, slid down my arm. My skin grew strangely warm, the hair lifting on end.

“What are you doing?” I choked out, my eyes wide. My wings fluttered behind my shoulder blades.

“Showing you the true value of reality.” His palm touched mine, bare skin to bare skin. Our fingers intertwined. He stepped forward, solid man, his presence making me shrink back. I was used to broken spirits, their shoulders hunched, and their eyes downcast. But not him. His eyes were intent on mine. His breath smelled sweet, like fresh wine, and it left small puffs of warm air against my face with each exhale.

I struggled to still my rapidly beating heart. My own breathing hitched in my chest. My eyes widened. He was so mortal. I could still smell the grass on his skin and clothes, the musty, strange animal scent below it. Cattle, maybe. Sheep? I imagined him on the rolling green hills, followed by a little lamb trailing his every step. He’d be gentle as he picked it up, brushing those large, warm fingers over its knotty wool.

He grabbed my face, pulling me starkly out of my reverie, and slowly, painfully, leaned in, letting his lips brush mine. A feather light touch.

My brothers had often explained seeing humans kiss among the land of mortals, within their dreams. But I had never understood the act, never made sense of its purpose. To me, a mouth was used for eating and drinking, for speaking and singing. Any other purpose seemed foreign. And yet here I was, with this stunningly beautiful man’s lips imprinted on mine, causing a violent fire in my belly.

I was dizzy with emotion, with sensation, a dizziness completely unlike the first stages of slumber or the quickest pirouette. He released me and I stumbled back, my eyes struggling to focus on the spinning room.

“That is reality,” he said quietly, a gentle smile spread across his full lips. “And those feelings, though easily replicated, are never quite as thrilling within dreams.”

“If you do not seek the oblivion of sleep then why have you come to me at all?”

“I am a man in love,” he said simply, shrugging his shoulders. “I ask only that I be allowed to sleep with my eyes open, upon the grassy fields ofAeolis, that I may gaze upon my beloved and her glorious beauty.”

“But if you sleep with your eyes open, you cannot dream.”

“Selene is the only dream I need.”

I angled my head, examining his earnest expression. I knew the wrath I would face from my brothers’ depriving them of the energy of his dreams, an eternity of them. But I didn’t care. I could not say no to this man, who came into my world with his bright passion lighting the way like a flame.

“What is your name?” I asked him, eager to let it touch my tongue.

“Endymion,” he said, bowing his head slightly.

I nodded. “You may gaze upon the moon during your eternal slumber, my beautiful Endymion,” I said, touching my hand to his cheek. “For you have brought with you a priceless gift in my honor. Up until now, I have thought myself ruler of this land, but I have been just as much a prisoner of its walls, just as much a dreamer in its slighted reality. Thank you, Endymion.” I smiled widely, my wings ripping open behind me. “I believe you have freed me.”

He hugged me tightly and rushed back out the doors toward his great love, leaving me once again to the darkness, the silence, the solitude. I stood in the center of the large foyer for a long time, debating what was to come.

My brothers could not feed without me and so they would not let me go. Unless…

I walked out into the wilted garden, past the rows of flowers and picked a blood red poppy, the only vibrant color in the monochromatic landscape. Suddenly, I yearned for the sight of green grass and blue sky, for the lively scents of earth and life. All that surrounded me was Death. Glum, gray Death that stretched as far as the eye could see, across the grounds, down the hill, past the river.

Maybe in Elysian Fields… but even then, wasn’t that just a semblance of the life they left behind?

I twirled the flower between my fingers as I watched the souls walk the grounds, tortured, hopeless, seeking direction. Some still mumbled under their breath, holding on to that last thread of life, as though it hadn’t already been clipped and tied, as if repeating names or places they once knew somehow kept them human.

But it was all an empty façade of humanity. It only served to cause them more pain in the long run. It was why they always came to me. Why with one drink of water I brought them relief, watching as their cloudy eyes cleared and made way for a new future. A future where this dark, grey sky was all they knew, and so they couldn’t miss the old one.

Before I knew where I had gone, I looked down at my reflection at the river’s edge and imagined the handsome stranger’s beaming eyes. He was everything I wanted, everything I could ever dream of, and he was gone- in love with someone else in the vibrant world above.

I would never escape this place. And once upon a time, that did not bother me. Now I’d tasted the World Above and I craved its intoxicating sensations, craved more than this dark, dank place could give me.

Tossing the flower into the flowing river I bent down and cupped a handful of the smoky water in my palm, bringing it to my lips.

I’d rather have the oblivion of dreams than the awful pain of reality.

When we were seven, it was the names of boys we thought were cute. We pinky swore to take the names of each others’ would-be future husbands to our graves.

When we were ten, it was words we weren’t supposed to know. After we got to the worst ones, you started making them up.

When we were fourteen, it was the worst things we knew about every other girl in our grade. We didn’t keep those secrets—we filtered them into the student body and made sure they couldn’t be traced back to us.

When we were fifteen, it was keys to liquor cabinets.

When we were sixteen it was how we got your maid deported, just because she ruined your $1200 dress.

When we were seventeen, it was how we started that fire at Jessica’s. And how we missed her after her parents sent her to boarding school.

We’ve shared so many secrets over the years, we don’t have much choice to be friends forever. But now I have a secret from you, and I don’t think you’ll ever forgive me if you find out. You said you were probably going to dump him after we graduated anyway, right? But that didn’t mean I could have him, did it?

The funny thing is, that’s not even my secret. Not the real one—the one I could never tell you. It’s just a correlary.

The secret is that you were just a stepping stone to me, when all these years you thought it was the other way around.

Another secret: so did I.

And one more for the road: I’m going to make you feel it every day of your life from now on.

Because I learned from the best. Or should I say, second best?

Here’s the truth. I’m a mistake. An accident.

A girl like me should not exist. Not because it’s impossible, (although let’s face it, it is) but because I’m just not cut out for the job.

I had a crappy childhood, like most of those nobody girls in fairytales who end up marrying princes. But I didn’t get a prince. I just became a freak. Or more of a freak than I already was.

The therapists called it pyromania. They tried to explain to my father that my setting fire to the mattress was an accident of euphoria and not a suicide attempt. It didn’t quiet his wailing cries, his insistent begging that I snap out of it. That Mom was never coming back. These shenanigans didn’t change anything. She didn’t love us anymore.

“Get a grip, Dad,”  I’d say, thumbing the lighter in my pocket, ready to start another flame. “Everyone is over Mom but you.”

And we’d go to bed, like strangers forced to share the same house, without so much as a comforting word good night. Unable to even look at each other because we were just ghosts; memories of a better past that we couldn’t stand to remember.

The fire was my only friend. It didn’t criticize, it didn’t judge. It only hurt me when I wanted it to, and even that pain wasn’t real. It was just a sting to help remind me I was still alive. Somewhere.

I’d lay on my stomach for hours, listen as Dad’s snoring got louder, as the appliances hummed, the furniture creaked. The hours would pass and it’d be just me and the flames, doing that mesmerizing dance as I dragged my fingers across it, side to side, left to right.

That was, until I met Alex.

I’d never been the type to get chummy. I didn’t believe in getting attached. Why bother? People only ever dissapoint you.

But, Alex… there was something about him. Some sort of kindred spirit that we shared. We spoke for hours sometimes, sitting up against the brick outside the school gym, ignoring the bells ringing inside, pretending we didn’t have a Physics class or US History to go to.

I should have known from the beginning that there was something wrong with him. I should have seen the glare of brilliant madness in those bright grey eyes.

But I missed it. I missed it because he sat at my lunch table and tossed me an apple and told me I had to eat, that thin girls weren’t in anymore, it was all about being curvy, or did I not read that issue of Teen Magazine?

He first asked about the fire on a a lazy fall afternoon. A day like any other. I stuffed dry leaves into an empty can I’d stripped and set it aflame until it crumbled and became dust.

“Why do you do that? Didn’t your father ever teach you not to play with fire?”

“It’s relaxing. I mean look at it. Consistent, strong, possibly dangerous but only if you let it get out of control. The perfect man.”

He’d laughed and touched my face. “But it can’t kiss you. It can’t make you burn inside.”

And he’d pressed his lips to mine.

They’d been cold. Too cold, even for the breezy day.

Then the accident happened. The fire that started at the back of the gym and spread through the locker rooms. A flame the likes I’d never seen.

The alarms blared throughout the school. We were already deep into winter at that point. I remember standing outside without a coat because I hadn’t gotten a chance to run to my locker. I remember watching my breath come out in puffs of smoke. And I remember being in awe of the fire as it reached higher and higher, as though it’d touch the sky.

Everything changed that day. I went from being that weird girl in school to being labelled an arsonist. I was arrested. My father confiscated all of my matches, my lighters, he stripped my bed and emptied my drawers and left me bare.

I didn’t set that fire. I swear I didn’t. I’d take credit if I had.

They called me crazy. Desperate. Well, yea, given the circumstances. My anxiety was out of control. I was pulling my hair, rocking back and forth, powerless without the flame that had been my friend since childhood.

“You have to stop this,” Dad would cry when he came to visit me at the institution. Because he gave up. Because he couldn’t deal with losing me too.

And then Alex came to visit and I finally understood.

“I had to help you see who you really were,” he whispered, shaking his head as though he were disappointed in me. “You’ve been dormant for so long. But they can’t hold you. They can’t keep you here. You’re so much stronger than they are.”

I laughed out loud at that. He obviously hadn’t seen the restraints meant to keep me from hurting myself. The glint in my eyes from the medication. I was not strong. I was wrong. Very very wrong.

“Don’t let them take it from you.” He whispered passionately, shaking my shoulders on his third or fourth visit, when his long inspirational speeches failed to make a dent. “The fire is yours. Don’t you get that?”

And then he put his hand on the glass window and frost spread from where his fingertips touched. It crackled and crept, a slow spiderweb growing more intricate, until it covered the entire panel.

“It’s yours.” He said and looked down at my hands.

And maybe it was the medication, or the burning desire to be free, whatever it was – I believed him.

I held out my hands, knotted by plastic ties, and summoned the fire.

It was a hot day for February. A Saturday, too. A million people or more littered the beaches of Southern California, which was usually enough reason for me to stay away—I liked my beaches better quiet, something akin to private. It was the first day in months that my friends Wes, Ky and I all had off work the same weekend, too, so we did the same as everyone else, and took advantage of the heatwave. We were seventeen and after graduation we’d all split ways, it seemed natural to hang out as much as we could.

The funny thing is, at first I didn’t even see her. There was a whole gaggle of girls playing volleyball, a couple of whom I’d seen before from school. I noticed because Katie Huxley was there. I’d always had a thing for Katie. We sort of grew up together, and she was nice. She reached “out of my league” status around freshman year though, and I’d always been content to admire from afar.

The three of us were walking down to the water, but we slowed to watch the game a bit. We weren’t the only ones—it’s not everyday you see the volley nets used at all, much less by a group of teenage girls. Katie was serving the ball, and it went high over the net. Some girl on the other side lobbed it back, and it went out of bounds—knocking the girl on my left right into me.

“Oh hey, are you okay?”

Petite and blonde, she threw the volleyball back into the game before answering me. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She rubbed the spot on her arm that the ball had hit, and looked up at me.

Bang.

That’s the closest I can come to a description of how I felt. Her eyes were big and brown and seemed to hit me in the stomach like a physical force.

I can’t explain it. I’m not a flowery kinda guy. But man… I felt something. Right away. Not a flutter or whatever, but like I said, a bang.

“Um, hi,” she said, looking at me like she wasn’t sure what was going on in my head—I wasn’t either. I was probably staring at her. Probably creeping her out.

“Hi,” I said, shaking myself out of whatever trance I was suddenly in. “I’m Cole.”

She gave a polite smile and reached to shake the hand I hadn’t even realized I’d extented—who shakes hands? “I’m Leela.”

She only came up to a few inches above my elbow. She looked like she weighed maybe 90 pounds, soaking wet.

“Hey Cole, c’mon, we wanna get into the waves,” Ky said from behind me.

I gave a quarter turn towards him, but turned back to Leela first. “Look, I don’t ever do this… but do you want to come hang out for a bit? Maybe go get a boba later?”

She glanced over at the guy next to her, someone else I didn’t see until this very moment. Her boyfriend, maybe? But he shrugged his shoulders at her, and a second glance said maybe it was her brother. “You have your cell on you?” he asked. She nodded with a check of her back pocket, and he shrugged again. “It’s your life.”

I held up my hands. “No pressure or anything.” But I wanted her to say yes. I don’t know that I’d ever wanted anything else more in my life. I didn’t even know why.

Leela gave a shy nod and took my hand, sending another physical slam down my body. I think one more and I’d be in shock. Without a word, we followed Wes and Ky down to the water, two people in a bristling crowd.

Happy 2012 everybody! Hope this is a great year for all! We’re getting back into the swing of things, and we’ll have a fresh new story for you on Friday!

Hi readers! Hope you have a great holiday! We’ll be back in January with fresh new stories for you!

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If you leave us a comment you’ll be entered into the drawing! Plus, we know you’re already playing Farmville so…

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