Melissa Remoth has dreamed the dream before. The first time was the very night she turned thirteen. It has continued, on and off, for three years.
The landscape through which she walks is bleak, but it's a landscape with which she's familiar. The whole area around the town of Flicker is a maze of crazily shaped rocks, disjoined boulders, and deep gullies. It all resulted from a gigantic prehistoric flood that ripped through the area thousands of years before.
Melissa's parents, both geologists, have researched the area for years. They specifically moved there before Melissa was born in order to devote spare-time study to the strange formations and put some kind of scientific explanation to them. Even before Melissa could walk or talk, she had often joined her mother and father on trips into the ancient flood lands.
In her recurring dream — and she always knows it's a dream — she recognizes exactly where she is. She's visited Dry Wash Gulch countless times before, awake and in sleep. The well-worn pathway in its ancient basaltic stone, long-ago uncovered and carved by rushing flood water, leads the way past a gigantic slab of volcanic glass at which she now stops, as she always does, to examine her reflection in obsidian and moonlight.
She wears a red robe with hood. She pulls back the latter to reveal her pretty face and blond hair. Somehow, even in the darkness of the night and the black obsidian stone, her blue eyes are clear and readily visible.
Here, the dream changes from the familiarity of all times before, in that she reaches out a hand and touches her reflection. The rocky surface is ice cold and accompanied by a sighing sound of stone against stone off to her right.
She turns to see a pathway revealed that hasn't been there before.
Unable to stop herself, she moves along the revealed trail and into deeper darkness. Though she's afraid she'll trip on rough and unfamiliar stone underfoot, she successfully maneuvers all obstacles until…
The cavern in which she enters has a niche filled with a large stack of candles. Somehow she suspects, it all has something to do with her mother who makes candles as a hobby.
Automatically, she pulls one conveniently placed candle from the pile. She stands it upright on an adjacent block of stone. From the pocket of her robe, she produces a lighter and sets fire to the wick.
Resulting shadows flicker the wall. The candle shimmers in distorted light and darkness to — quite miraculously — seem to assume human form: a girl, no older than Melissa, with long dark hair. She wears a long blue robe. Her mouth moves, but there's no sound.
"What?" Melissa asks and leans closer.
The apparition's lips moves again and barely seem to manage a whispered, "How long?"
Melissa hasn't a clue as to a proper response.
"Hopefully, not too long," the girl says and reverts to candle-status.
The fire caught within the wick sputters and goes out.
Melissa awakes with a start in her own bedroom.
Copyright 2009 W. MALTESE
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