The Girl She Dreamt She Was

Anisha:11

She awoke with a start. Memories came flooding back, she remembered it all. All three of her lives. She was Thorn. She was Anisha. She was Diamonique but the world in which Diamonique lived was not a dream.

This was.

Tears began to form and fall down her face. How could all this be just a dream? Her home just a small part of her imagination, her lover just some character drawn from the depths of her mind. She looked around the room with blurry eyes. It all seemed so real.

Getting up she went downstairs and wandered round, looking at all the things she had imagined. The photos of happiness that had never truly happened. She finally turned on the TV and watched the millions of people on the news, all across the globe, each and everyone just a face conjured from her imagination.

Twice now. Twice she had had something amazing that had never truly been hers. Thorn and Anisha. Caleb and Max. They were nothing.

She heard a small sound at the door. Turning she saw Max stood there, worry etched onto his face as he watched tears slowly roll down her cheeks. He walked over and pulled her into a warm embrace. She could feel him, smell him, hear his gentle breathing against her neck. How was this not real?

"What happened?" he whispered, stroking her hair.

She shouldn't have told him. She should never have told him what he really was. But she did anyway.

When it was over they sat staring at a TV neither of them was paying any attention to, trying to comprehend what she had said.

"I'm sorry Max." was all she could say.

"I... I'm not real?" She looked at him sadly, her arms wrapped around his chest. For a while there was silence, then Max spoke again.

"What happens now?"

"I don't know." And she truly didn't. How could she go on in life knowing that when she died at the end of it all she would just wake up and go on with her life, never to think of this, or even remember it ever again?

"I think I do." Said Max, catching her off guard. "We need to carry on. Because even if this isn't real, then does that mean we can't enjoy it? Just promise me something."

"Anything."

"When you wake up... please remember me." She didn't know if she could do that. But hadn't she done just that the previous night, except with the memory of Caleb? She could try. No, she could more than try, she would remember him, she always would.

"I promise." He smiled and kissed her.

"So... who do you like more, me or this Caleb dude?" It was a serious question, but his eyes told her he was joking, that he knew it wouldn't matter anyway. While they were here, in this dream, Max would always be the one she loved more than anything.

"I don't know. Sometimes, I think of you more as the same person. I love you in this world and him in that one."

He looked thoughtful for a minute. "I think I can live with that." They both smiled and kissed again, more passionate than before. Then they just held each other in silence as the time trickled by and the sun rose on a new day.

"... and investigations into the bomb that went off in London a few weeks ago are well under way, though police are said to be baffled by the strange location of what appears to have been a one-sided battle..."

The TV caught her attention as it scanned across a crime scene of a building blown apart by a bomb, next to a car park covered in broken glass. What made her look was recognition.

She had been there before.

The parking lot was surprisingly large. Too much open space could be dangerous on a mission like this, so Thorn sprinted as fast as she could to the other side. Not fast enough. The bullets began to rain down on her and she zigzagged between the odd cars which had been left in the lot over night.

It was the car park which she had escaped across, it was completely identical. But that was in the Thorn dream, another world entirely. They couldn't be the same world... could they?

"Are you okay?" asked Max, but her mind was working so fast. If this was the same world then that meant The Organizations plans would still be going under way. According to the TV, the bomb had happened a few months ago, meaning that the girl she dreamt she was and Caleb would already be dead. But if she got her information to the others in time, perhaps they had a chance.

She looked at Max. Their plans to just carry on would have to wait.

Right now they had to save the world.