The dream had presented itself, like an ominous swirling mass before a storm. It was the same dream that had come to me repeatedly many, many times before, invading every corner of my mind, night after dark night ever since I could remember. It was the sort of dream you really didn't want to talk about for fear of denunciation -that much I knew. It was a dream of mysterious worlds and hidden doorways, of dark placs that reek of death, of light ones that seem to be represent more desperation than hope. 

    Dreams were said to represent part of your unconsciousness -the place where the true parts of your soul reside. Personally, I hope that was a lie. Dreams like these -they got you into trouble especially when you're in a town like Castle Rock. And honestly, this place was enought of a nightmare without the silhouetted dreams adding themselves to it. And if it was true, it meant that my soul was a denizen of that terrifying other world. However, despite this kind of apprehension, there was a small but integral part of me that felt odd.

    My waking hours felt more like an exile -somehow I am less myself, less true than I often am in my enchanted slumber. Like the real world was only a dream, only a mere echo, and in silent moments throughout the day, it would hit me. U surely cannot be home in such godforsaken normality.

    I would shake off the thought, of course, dismiss it as stupid, try and apply some sort of armchair psychoanalysis on the situation. I was pretty sure how my brother would react if he knew what I was thinking. Leo would be all, 'That's nice. Do you want me to read Sleeping Beauty to you next?', and then laugh at me. And besides, I'm sure everyone in Castle Rock must have felt that sense of seclusion at one time or another. After all, we were in an island, a two-hour boat ride away from the coast of England. We only had one theater, and it was situated in an eight-hundred meter alley along with the shops, the market, the grocery store and the gasoline station, which was really just more of a formality because almost everyone lived within the town itself.

    But then before bed, the thought would wash through me, trickle through the mire of usual worries(boys, school, whether or not I'd managed to charge my iPod before getting to bed, or something just as trivial) -will the dream come again tonight? Will he be going home again?

    The night before my seventeenth birthday, the dream came again -stronger and more vivd than it had ever been, as if the gauzy wisp of a curtain between reality and fantasy had at last been torn down, and I had managed to look at the dream with new eyes.

    I was a princess -or maybe not(upon waking up, I'd always tell myself to stop reading gothic novels). But I was royalty, and I looked about the same as I did in real time, only different. When I thought about it, I must have prophesized on my grown-up self, only more glamoured up. My usually straight hair was in a pile of curls that fell down past my shoulders. And I was dressed in an eighteenth-century dress of sapphire blue that clashed brilliantly with my red hair. But it was my face that commanded the most attention -it was strong, taut and calm as if I was waiting for battle. My skin glowed faintly of silver.

    I had dreamed myself into a manor -tall and stately that spread out into the grassy knoll it stood upon, with its shadow so big, it looked like a monster among the tiny leafy stalks. The walls were of stone and marble, vines bursting with flowerd wrapped around colonnades, coloring them up.

    I saw my reflection as I passed by a window, swaddled in the rich clothes, but decked simply with a necklace with a single diamond, and the color of silver -the color of my eyes. I hated that color in real life -the pale silver-blue seemed to make me alien and strange -but here, they were beautiful.

    Here, I was magnificent.

    Echoing footsteps grew louder, and I could hear the people from the top of the grand marble stairs speaking. It felt peculiar, how I always seemed to be at ease in the dream, when in reality, I would have been absolutely terrified. I walked towards the entrance of the recieving room and gazed longingly at the scene beyond the window, feeling like I wanted to go, but I couldn't.

    The footsteps ceased behind me, and in a matter of seconds, I knew I had to turn around and face the personas that puzzled me the most. Slowly, in a fashion that was acceptable in the regency ere, I began to turn around, and found myself facing them.

    There were three people, dressed in the similar fashion as I was -in uncomfortable looking pants and coats. They wore different colors as if to stress their already-noticeable differences. The only thing remotely similar among them were the heavy rings they wore on their fingers -one set with a fiery ruby, the other with emerald, and the third with topaz. Their faces were almost inhumanly beautiful, but cold and unmoving.

    They looked down at me with stern expressions. The dark-haired one nodded at me, but closed his slanting eyes as if he couldn't believe I was there. The one with black hair was acting as if he wasn't sure what to say. Their eyes blazed redwood -their dark hair a striking contrast to their oale skin. Then there was the lone fairchild who stood a couple of paces back, his hair spun gold -almost silvery, eyes a stormy grey. Where the other two held a stiff stance in fornt of me, the blonde stood resolute but calm, very much part of the whole, but colored off as if singled out.

    I waited, ready for the moment when the walls would start to collapse and the dream would end like falling through a giant rabbit hole, for me to wake up. That much I anticipated form the previous versions of the dream.

    I closed my eyes.

    One.

    Two.

    Three.

    It didn't happen.

    The blond boy -the one with the glinting ruby ring, stepped forward to greet me. He bowed and whispered in a level voice, 'Daemon.'  He took my hand and brought it to his lips in a soft caress, feeling a sudden, inexplicable pang of longing. 'Caomhnoir,' I whispered back. I felt his hand tighten around mine as I muttered the greeting, before he straightened. 

    The other two greeted me similarly, calling me daemon -I knew enough Latin to know it meant demon. But I had no time to question anyone about what it meant. After all, it was a dream, and I wasn't even sure I was allowed to diverge from the script.

    Suddenly the scene changed, and the four of us stood in the middle of a ring of fire -beyond which stood ominous figures holding torches. I felt the flames at my already tattered clothes. The flames burned brighter as if from the fear I felt at the pit of my stomach as I watched the fire inch closer. The two dark-haired men stod on either side of me protectively as I clutched the fairchild's bloody body.

    'Run, Dominius,' the one on my right commanded. 'Save yourself.'

    'Not one of them can hurt you,' the one on my right said, looking down at me as he bent down to touch my face. 'Run.'

    I didn't speak.

    'Gabriel can't save us this time,' he continued. 

    The blond sputtered and began to cough up blood so that I had to turn him sideways. 'Stephanie. Save yourself.'

    'And leave all of you at the mercy of the flames?' My voice cracked form emotion. I looked around me as the flames danced an eerie green and purple. I had the most horrible feeling that they wouldn't do anything pleasant to my companions.

    'You have to. We all know the consequences of your falling in the hands of these creatures.'

    'I can fight.'

    He shook his head. 'You will lose. WE will lose.' He reached up and touched something behind me -I followed with my gaze at the inexplicably enchanting thing he was touching. A pair of silver-black wings folded at my back, delicate-looking but pulsing with power. Only then did I notice the burnt white feathers all around him and the other two who guarded me. Were they angels of some kind?

    'Fly, Daemon.'

    And then I sunk bakc to deeper slumber.

    Always -every night, that same dream, that same fear, that same profound sense of longing. When I woke up each morning, I felt a sense of loss -a yearnig that cut so deeply it transcended the bounds of reality itself. My alarm would ring and everything would change. I was a practically-legal, semi-adult with raggedy Converse shoes, and punk rock shirts. I had a second-hand iPod, a phone, and a small stack of classic and gothic novels(gathered from all parts of town, various garage sales and trach bags, and filled with side notes). I spoke in a slightly lilting accent, played no sports, didn't do fights, won none, and lost none. The idea of dating -of other screaming girls trying to get laid, of Facebook relationship statuses and hastily texted endearments repulsed me.

    But for a few hours each night, I was a princess.

    I was home.

    The morning when I woked wasn't exactly the best day for a birthday. The sky was misty and full of rain -the clouds looked as full and wet and ready to drip as a kitchen sponge. But then again, it was always like that in England. I woke up with a headache, in cold sweat. The dream always left me like that. At first it had me screaming like a banshee each time I woke up -especially when the more gory details of the dream presented themselves. But as time passed by, it became no more than a shocking lull that I'd learned to treat as if it were a mere movie I'd witnessed in my sleep, and that I don't see myself covered in blood like Carrie at the prom.

    I looked around at the pale blue walls of my room -it was the same color it had been when it had been my nursery, minus the flowers and cartoon ch