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Perchance to Dream

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She was driving home from the Doctor's appointment; steering with her right hand while her left rested on her stomach. She was thinking of the future and her husband as she approached the intersection. The light was green her way and had been for a bit as the stopped traffic had cleared out. She was half way through the intersection when the street racer, who was trying to out run the police, hit her broadside.

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He awoke from the dream, covered in sweat and shaking. Scrubbing his hands over his face, he tried to wake up fully and get his mind working. He stumbled down the short hallway to his kitchen and made coffee. He would need it. He had a lot of things to do and not much time to get them done. While waiting for the coffee to finish, he pulled up a mapping program on his desktop and laid out the route he would need; ten hours' drive at 65... he could do it in seven and a half, maybe less. He shut down the computer and stepped into the shower.

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She was standing in a dark forest. One of those "this sure is NOT Disney" type places. She did not remember how she got there, or why she would want to be there. Nothing around her was obviously threatening, but she knew this was not a good place for her to be. Clutching the small bundle in her arms tighter to her chest, she began walking.

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The old man had been driving for hours, the glare from the oncoming headlights stressing his eyes. He had blown past two police speed traps already; one he stopped and took the ticket, the other he had to use a "golden ticket" of his own to get the trooper to stand down. The trooper wanted to physically take him into the local court. That was not to be allowed. A phone call to a number that was known to only a few folks corrected the situation. In the end it was not too bad. The young trooper was either really stressed by whose voice had come out of his Motorola radio shortly after he had pulled the crazy old guy over or really wanted to impress the voice. In either event, after the old man pulled out, the trooper pulled in front of him, all lights and sirens, and escorted him to the state line at speeds over 100mph. It saved the old man 48 minutes.

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She was disoriented, everything looked the same... scary! There was a slight path on the forest floor, more like a game trail, that she had been following. Her memory was still mixed up and she felt that she was missing something important. She knew she could not stop moving but did not know why. She was not tiring but she did not seem to be getting out of the forest either. A sense of danger was building and her fears were rising.

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The old man stepped from the shower. Dried himself, then used the towel to wipe the steam from the mirror over the sink. He assembled his razor and soap and carefully shaved his face and what remained of his hair. Examining himself afterwards, he grunted... who is this old man looking at me from this mirror, he thought. It's just like that fucking punk to get old and useless.

He stepped out into the bedroom, dressed and got the things he would need together. When all was as he wanted it, he lay down for a bit, until it was time.

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It seemed that she had been walking forever and getting nowhere. After what seemed like hours or maybe days or minutes, a dim glow off to one side of the path attracted her attention. It was so dim, she was not sure if it existed or it was just a trick of her eyes. But the feeling of dread, of being watched and followed was continuing to build so she decided that whatever the light was, it was better than the dark.

As she came around the bole of a large tree, she saw the source of the light. It was emitting from a medium sized cat. She stared at the orange and white tuxedo who stared right back at her. With a "merrrow" it got to its paws and walked towards her. The paralysis that had been holding her broke. With a trembling voice she whispered, "Pumpkin?" The cat walked to her, gave her leg a head bump and another "merrrow." Looking up at her as if to say, "Yes. Who did you expect?" it sat down and began grooming its paw.

She knelt to the ground, gentle laying her bundle to her side, and pulled the cat into her arms. "Punky... how can you be here? You went away. But you are here. What. How..." Her voice tapered off to silence. She buried her face into the soft warm fur of the cat and cried. Cried for having lost her friend. Cried for having found him. Cried from fear of where she was. The cat purred.

After a bit, the cat put his paw to her cheek and gently pushed until he could see her face. He stared at her as only a cat can. The entire world sucking in until all that exists are those golden eyes with their vertical slits.

After a few moments, he moved his face closer to hers and gave her nose a gentle nip with his fangs. He squirmed until she set him down. With a thrash of his tail, he turned and began walking off into the forest. The glow went with him. He stopped and looked over his shoulder at her and gave another, "merrrow," as if to say, what are you waiting for. Then with an ear flick, he began to walk off into the gloom. Picking up her bundle, she followed the glow.

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The path the cat had been following began to climb in elevation. The dense forest had begun to thin and larger and larger meadow like areas were present. As she and the cat rounded a stone outcropping she was greeted with the sight of a broad meadow with a large stone pile near the center. Seeing that the path continued through the meadow, she stepped past the cat and began crossing, not noticing the cat had begun to "bottle up" and was making a low rumbling in his throat.

As she approached the stone pile, it began to shake and move. The stones seemed to roll over and it was then she realized she was facing a stone troll, just like in the fairy tales. The creature rose to its feet and shook itself all over. Scratching and stretching, the troll made rude noises and eventual hacked up a ball of phlegm which it spit onto the ground. Having finally woken itself up, the troll looked down on the terrified girl. "Ah, lunch," it said.

With a scream like a chainsaw going through sheet metal, the noble cat leapt to the defense of his friend. Twenty claws and an attitude went flying towards the dark shape. The troll, not breaking eye contact with the distressed girl, gave a contemptuous flip of its wrist and swatted the cat out of the air. The cat flew until it hit a tree with a muffled thump and slid down the trunk to the ground.

Pressing her hand to her lips to stifle the cry at what had just transpired the girl felt the hot burning tears running down her cheeks.

"You are so tiny, so delicious looking. Who will come to your defense now little girly girl?" the creature said. "Who will save you? Hmmmmm?"

She folded herself more tightly around her bundle, protecting it. Shielding it. She knew she was going to die, but with her life she would not let harm come to it.

The troll began moving closer, chortling to itself in anticipation of the fine meal of human and FEAR laid before it.

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The sky lit up with the light of 100 suns. A point so bright it was almost violet. She could see the light through her closed eyes as she wrapped tighter around her bundle.

A dark speck formed in the center of the light point as it began to dim. It appeared as if something was coming out of the light at a very high rate of speed.

As the light dimmed to something she could tolerate, the girl looked up. The troll had stopped its advance and was staring up at the rapidly approaching object.

The object was resolving into something with wings; a plane, maybe... certainly too large to be a bird. A noise was coming to her now. It was faint but there, almost like the noise the hawks on her parents' farm used to make as they circled high over the fields. The sound was getting louder as the form got closer "Screeeeeeeee! Screeeeeee!" She looked closer at the object; it did have wings and it did have what looked like legs and it glowed like her friend did. She squinted and recognized the shape as a dragon! Not just a dragon but a wyvern.

Contrails were forming from it wingtips and a burnt orange smudgy trail was marking its path through the sky. With its wings pulled back, the wyvern dropped and was now coming in at tree top level at stupendous speed. The wake from its passage was churning the trees, breaking them like twigs. It was aiming directly at the looming troll.

The troll's head went flying as the dragon made its pass through the clearing. Pulling up into a gut-wrenching loop, the dragon came around and down and hammered the troll's headless body into the ground. Scraping the ground with its talons, the dragon kicked the troll's body to pieces, flinging them helter-skelter around the glen. Finally, with contempt etched on its face, the dragon raised one of its legs and pissed on the sludge under his feet.

"That would be me," he said in a voice surprisingly light and mild for a multi-ton dragon.

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The dragon settled his wings and walked over to where the girl was standing. "You should not be here, little one. This is not a safe place to be."

"I don't want to be here," replied the girl, "I do not even know where HERE is."

"Here is a place that is between," said the dragon.

"Between what?" asked the girl.

"Between 'things,'" replied the dragon, "Between life and death, life and dreams, dreams and death, between things.

"Think of it this way," he said as he began walking away from the mess in the meadow, "When you are alive, you are someplace and when you are dead you are a different place but the boundary between the two places is not as sharply a defined line as some would have you believe. It is more a zone, an area of possibilities. Sometimes it is called the Never-Never. It has inhabitants of its own along with people and creatures from both the places of life and death, who get lost and end up wandering into its domain. It is the place from which fairy tales and mythical creatures come into the real world."

The girl felt a solid thump on her leg and looked down to find her friend staring up at her as if his earlier engagement with the troll had never occurred. With a sob, she knelt to stroke his soft fur.

The dragon, noticing the movement, stopped walking and lowered his head to peer at the cat.

The cat started to bottle up again before the dragon said, "Look at me, Sir Cat, before you attack. Look at ME and you know I mean no harm to your friend."

The cat stopped and his eyes opened wider. He tested the air with his nose and his ears flicked a few times before he moved closer to the dragon and began to strop himself against the dragon's legs.

"Good kitty," said the dragon before he started striding off again.

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After walking for a bit, the girl said to the dragon, "You said this place is between life and death and that although it has its own creatures, things from both places can wander into and through this place."

"Yes, that is very true," replied the dragon.

"OK, then," she said, "you seemed to enter this place when that bright light occurred. So, where did YOU come from?"

"Now that," said the dragon, "is a very good question." As he continued to walk along the path.

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After walking for what seemed to the girl as forever, the three walking figures came to a stop at an almost vertical rock face. A few steps from the end of the trail was an opening in the shear rock wall. "There," said the dragon, "That is the tunnel that formed when you came through. It connects this place to not just your world but also to you specifically."

"Me," squeaked the girl, "It knows me and where I am?"

"Oh yes," said the dragon, "Anyone or anything that follows that tunnel will end up where ever you left your, how to say this, physical body."

"What do you mean, left my physical body," asked the girl, "I am right here, I am me!"

"Not really, little one," whispered the dragon, "You are here as your astral projection, your spirit. Your physical presence is back wherever you left it."

The dragon walked over to the tunnel entrance and stopped. Looking down on the girl with her bundle and the cat, the dragon pointed into the darkness and said, "You just need to go down this tunnel for a bit and you will end up where you belong."

The cat began to trot down the tunnel but stopped, looking back to see if he was being followed. The girl had begun walking down the tunnel, holding her bundle gently to her chest. She looked over her shoulder at the old dragon and said, "Thank you, Daddy." The figure turned, but instead of the dragon there stood a man wearing the regalia of a Knight Templar. The armor was worn, extremely worn. The overcoat was torn and stained by time, dirt and grime. The chain mail was tarnished with many broken links. The helmet dented and dull. "How did you know?" he asked.

"Really? A dragon shows up in my hour of need? A TALKING dragon... a TALKING WYVERN and you ask me how I knew?" she said gently. She fully turned and reached out her hand to touch the bit of face exposed under the figure's helmet. The figure shifted again... there stood a middle-aged man... 6-foot-tall, dressed in old style "tiger stripe" camouflage. His greying hair was cropped short. A scar ran down his face; starting over his left eye, though the eye, down the cheek, down his neck and disappearing under his collar. His right eye was topaz green.... his left, a smoky black glass orb. "It is time for you to go, my child," he said.

"You are coming with me. You have to," she said.

"No," he said... "All things must balance. You and your special package there must return. I brought with me years of life's burdens... karma if you will. It is sufficient for your needs but I will remain here as balance." He looked at the cat, "You too, Sir Cat. You must return as well. She will need you. Do you accept my charge?"

The cat looked up at the man and gave an inscrutable cat yawn... he blinked then turned and padded over to his friend. He looked back at the man, said "meow," and ran down the tunnel.

She was left standing before her father. "Please, please come back with me."

"No can do, my love," he said as he morphed yet again. Standing before her was a young man, in the prime of life. He was wearing Navy Choker Whites. "Balance must be maintained," he said... he removed a pair of white gloves from a pocket and began to pull them on. "You see sweetie, I have done things; bad things, even if for good reasons. They all add up. Nothing is free and the price must be paid. The karmic burden I have accumulated will get you all back but someone must remain, be sacrificed as it were. Not only that, but someone must guard the tunnel. It will still connect this place to you. In time it will heal and eventually close, but it is too dangerous for the time being to be left unguarded." He finished with the gloves and pulled the sword at his side from its sheath. There were words engraved along the length of the blade: "Cognosce te ipsum". The words began to glow, turning from red to orange to yellow and finally to a white almost as blinding as when her father had appeared. The light was cast and reflected again and again along the tunnel walls. The illumination filled the tunnel's mouth with a warm protective light. Bringing the blade up, he saluted her through the sword's pommel. "Get moving now. Don't let your friend have to wait."

She stepped forward and placed a kiss on the man's cheek. "I love you, Daddy."

"I love you too," he said as he turned his back to her and stood at Parade Rest.

She turned back into the tunnel and began to walk. The further she went the dimmer the light from her father's sword became. Towards the back of the tunnel, it was again almost pitch black, she gripped her bundle more tightly wishing the cat had stayed closer or was at least still glowing.

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She blinked her eyes.... she was lying on her back... people were around her, there were electronic beeps... she was confused.

A young man, her husband, leaned over her and saw her eyes were open. "NURSE! She's awake!" Things moved quickly; nurses and technicians and finally a doctor came running into the room, displacing the family of the young woman lying in the bed.

Her husband was holding, more like gripping her hand crying softly, "I thought I had lost you..."

She was confused... she felt wrong... empty... EMPTY!? Her hand flew to her abdomen searching for the presence she knew had to be there. Her stomach was flat... FLAT! She started to panic before the doctor, seeing what was occurring, stepped in and quietly said, "It's OK, we saved your daughter. You and she will be OK."

The young wife... no, young MOTHER, wept then when a nurse brought her daughter into the room and laid her down in her arms.

After all the poking and prodding that modern medicine demands, and when finally the newborn baby and mother had drifted off to sleep, the doctors, nurses, friends and family left the room. In the mass exodus, they did not notice an orange and white cat slip from the room's wardrobe. He moved like a ghost across the room and jumped to the bassinet where he settled in at the sleeping baby's side. Assuming a sphinx like pose, he closed his eyes... his purr soothing both the baby and the sleeping mother. He was here now... it was as it should be. He knew his friend would be happy he was back. He would be at her side for as long as was possible. But he knew his real task, the one given to him by the old dragon, was to protect the new life beside him. The dragon had burdened him with this charge and had given him the life power necessary to carry it out. He would stay with and guard the child her entire life. He would not fail.

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The Charge Nurse came up to the doctor as he filled in the last of the paperwork on the night's goings-on. "Doctor," she said, "You need to come down to the ER. The EMTs are bringing in a body; male, mid to late 60's, Caucasian. He was DOA in a room at the extended stay hotel next door to the medical complex but the new regulations say that you will need to call TOD here at the hospital."

"What happened," asked the doctor, "Heart attack? Drug interaction? Age?"

"They are not sure, Doctor. You will have to figure that out. He was dead when they found him. The whole thing is just weird," said the nurse.

"Why is that?" asked the doctor.

"When the EMTs found him," she said, "He was fully dressed lying on his bed. They say he was wearing a Navy Dress White uniform and he was holding a dress sword against his chest."

"WOW! That is weird," the doctor replied, "OK, I will be down shortly. Was there anything else?"

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I am your Father, you deserved better.

You are my only treasure.

I have failed you in so many ways, but I promise you these three things:

1. You are my child. Nothing you can ever do will cause me to not love you.

2. There is no place you can ever be that I cannot find you.

3. There is nothing I will not do to come to your aid.

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