A Dream Or A Nightmare?

• Zoe Nucifora, Grade 8, Cairns State High School
• Short Story
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'Write As Rain 2014' competition

The golden sun rises slowly over the cobalt blue sky, illuminating the soft mist that casts its gentle fingers over the valley. Beautiful flowers bursting with luminous colours raise their shy heads through the soft blades of grass that cover the hilltop, whilst robins chirp a spritely song that echoes through the trees. A girl sits there, with her face to the sun, her long, tangled, auburn locks blowing in the breeze. Her crimson lips are curved into a smile, and her warm brown eyes echo with laughter and light. Her skin is as pale as ivory, her lashes as dark as ebony. She wears a dress of bluish-green, the colour of the sea when the sun is not quite hidden, but not quite there. And yet. A scar, running from her eye to her ear stays, the reminder of a memory which had never been hers. She smiles and it is half forgotten, fading away in the light of the sun.

To the east a storm is rising. Lightning flashes through the bruised purple sky, as thunder rumbles menacingly in the distance. There is a single, solitary drop of rain. Then more fall, until it seems as if the heavens themselves have opened up. There is a boy. He sits there, hair, as raven black as the night itself, eyes, as green as the greenest forest, skin, as pale as moonlight. He lifts his face up to the pouring rain and laughs, his laughter barely heard over the deafening thunder.

The trees seem to be whispering a name to her. “Romar” they whisper, and she sees a boy with black hair in her mind. He is sitting in the pouring rain, and laughing. She knows him. She has seen him before, in a dream. A dream. Or a nightmare. Lightning flashes in her mind, and the vision is gone as quickly as it had come. Isobel sighs. She knows there is a brewing in the air, that an event of magnanimous proportions is about to come to pass. But right now she wishes to escape in to the moss covered trees that surround her, and dream dreams to herself, dreams that will hurt no one. She lays back, and the ground disappears.

He sees her. Isobel. In his mind’s eye she is falling, falling, falling, the branches of trees tearing at her hands and face as she tumbles forever downwards. Suddenly, he is there with her, and yet he is not falling. He is still, yet helpless, yearning to reach out his hand and save her, yet whenever he tries, he does not move. It is ripping him apart, looking down at her face as she falls and yet unable to help her. Suddenly, she lets out a chilling scream, and darkness enfolds the both of them.