Undercover Badge; Next Generation

Chapter twenty two

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

I was dreaming. And for the first time in months, that dream wasn't a nightmare. I was enjoying the simple peace thereof. In my dream I was in the high school building, alone, at midday, looking for something. There was no feeling of urgency however. I was just taking my relaxed time, searching for something I'd been told was here and was now playing a game of hide and seek with an inanimate object. All in all, the dream was peaceful.

I had a crimson tipped cream rose in my left hand as I wandered the halls, all the while humming a foreign tune under my breath. The doors were all open and so were the windows and all I could smell was lavender and mint and rain and the rose in my hand.

In my biology class I found a pile of crimson tipped roses as tall as I was. Made solely of the bulbs, the stems cut away so the pile consisted in its entirety of a sweet soft pile, the scent thereof feeling like it blanketed me and sank into my hair, the warm smell of the roses replacing the cool lavender, mint and rain.

I looked to my left hand and found the rose itself replaced with a lighter, and yet I found this no stranger than the dream itself. Almost robotically I crouched and set fire to a conveniently placed trail of petals like a fuse, watching the roses burn blue and green and crumble before my eyes, the petals taking the fire's hand and leading it to the pile, and in moments the whole thing erupted. No warmth came from the dancing green and blue flames, and I leaned closer and closer until the dancing tongues lapped at my cheeks and lips without burning me and feeling as if the petals of the ruined flowers were fresh again and stroking my face. The pile made its decent to ash that looked like gold dust and in the middle thereof, my emerald necklace was wrapped around a stem of lavender and mint, and just like that the room smelled cold and fresh again. My left hand stung and when I looked the rose was back, its thorns attached and overly large and cutting into my hand, with the same necklace wrapped around its stem. Its twin was twined around the lavender, and for the first time the dream encouraged an emotional reaction from me. Frustration danced on my forehead where I knew I would furrow my brow, and my other hand reached for the lavender and its necklace that rested on the gold dust. That same dust slowly melted into itself and had begun emitting a sweet smell like pleasantly burned vanilla. It was caramel.

I picked up the flower and necklace from its bed of amber coloured sugar, and when I looked down again, I saw two bunches of colour, the crimson tipped rose in my left hand and the bouquet of lavender in my right, and two matching silver chains, wound around each floral thing, but only one emerald. The chains reached for each other across the space between my hands in the middle hung the emerald, attached to both. When I looked up, Kat and James stood in front of me, both reaching out to me, and when I blinked in the dream, they were gone and the room felt like rain and cold, and when I turned around, I was looking down at a smaller version of myself, sitting on a small hard bench in the cavernous space inside an army helicopter, the door on each side open and a uniformed man with a very big gun leaning out each side, scanning the ground below. As I watched, Kat and James opened their mouths and all that came out was buds of lavender, falling form their lips and obscuring their words, and then the darkness of the night sank in around me, pooling on the floor and rising like water, and when the black water reached my chin, I opened my mouth, breathed in and held my breath as the water rose above my head and the darkness soothed me to unrelated dreams.

"Katherine. Come on, you have a class to get to." when I opened my eyes, Matthew was bent over me in my bed, staring at my thighs. I was wearing very small boxers and a long-sleeved white t-shirt with little white socks. Matthew, it seemed, had noticed the smallness of my shorts.

"Why in the Hell..." I started, groggily.

His eyes cut to mine quickly and he cleared his throat. "I'm taking you to your class. I need to see what kind of training you're doing."