Her Arrival

"Be wary mortal child, for they are not what they seem..."

These were the words whispered to her as she'd slipped from her world into another. The void grasped her momentarily but it could not hold her for long, that was when the voice had come to her. Genderless, ageless, a voice reached for her in the dark but it was not quick enough to catch her. The fall quickened.

Crashing through the very fabric of her reality and bursting into another, the Beyond embraced her aggressively. An endless world fabricated beneath her, so different and yet so similar. Death seemed to await her eagerly, it's arms waiting to grasp her as she hit the ground.

No. It wouldn't be the land, it would be the water. The strange shorelines in the distance receded further away from her and a boundless ocean surfaced beneath the dense clouds. Falling faster than ever, the water took her. The break through sea-level came hard and unforgiving and cold water gushed into all her orifices. It was miraculous she had survived at all. Blinding, deafening, she'd never been underwater before, and the salt burned her eyes. Her ears closed off most of the invading water but some escaped through.

Just as she thought she would succumb to the cold, unwelcoming ocean all around her, a pod of ebony dolphins circled her. She felt nothing but dark fins as she was carried up to the surface, harsh sunlight breached her eyes so she kept them closed to it. A bed of slim, elegant bodies had formed beneath her in the water and she was whisked away gently across the sea to a distant shore. Comforting clicks reminded her as she gave herself to sleep that her life was in safe hands, for now.

She knew she would wake up from this dream soon enough, cascading down the stairs of her home to recount to her family the strange travels Morpheus had sent her on. It would, however, become clear to her soon enough that...

She would never wake.