Highland Dream (Book 1)

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The rain was still relentless. Even in the place between places. The dream between dreams. It is both real and insubstantial. There is nothing you can do to change anything within this place. You either let the pieces flow together as seamlessly as they will depending upon their mood. Or you can fight the inevitable and end up with nothing that can help you but a knowledge that something will happen you could have changed but now you must watch come to pass.

There is nothing physical here. Anyone who can reach this place must first leave their body behind. But they are not dead, only suspended on the corporal plane. But the mind. The mind is only caged within the flesh and once it is free it cannot be limited as the flesh and bone are but endless streams can be travelled and moved, merged and broken…nothing is impossible.

Aislinn has never dreamed as a normal human has dreamed. She has always taken after the meaning of her name and dreamed, her mind, whilst always aware of her body, is set free when others sleep and she is unrestricted. Allowed to be who she was truly meant to be. When she makes the conscious decision to enter this place, one she has never been able to talk about with others, she can make it into a world of whatever she so chooses.

But today, today she did not choose. This is the time she dreads this place. It shows her things from the past, the present and future. Things so achingly brutal that whatever has caused her to be in this state will be a beautiful dream compared to what she must go through in order to get back to her physical state.

She could not remember what had brought her to this situation but she knew it must be bad for her to have as little control as she did now. She wanted to fight but knew it would only be worse than if she let this world show her what it thought she needed to know in order to travel back to where she needed to be.

As this twilight world started to come alive around her Aislinn wondered just who she would be by the end of this journey and if she would ever be the same again. The mist appeared around her consciousness, surrounding her completely. She felt smothered but knew it would not harm her. It could not be said the same for mental state depending on what was coming.

For what seemed like hours she was taken from almost the beginning of time, witnessing all the horrors of humanity. The battles, the torture, the betrayals every hurt, every scream, every death passing through Aislinn as she felt every one. She tried to scream along with them, but it was fruitless. All she could do was take it.

Eventually there was a slight change in the twilight world. Aislinn knew something had changed in the real world, but as the link was not as strong as if she had chosen to be here she was not sure as to what that change was. As the alteration made its way through to the mental plane the atmosphere surrounding Aislinn changed subtly until it took on the tone of a path she knew she would be linked to upon entering the real world once more. How much she remembered would be an issue but she would try to take in a much as possible. The emotions would be the main entity that remained with her upon waking.

From the mist she could make out a dark night with a castle tower in the distance, flashes of lightening illuminating the area every now and then. She felt betrayed and there was a deep seated anger sweeping up inside her, leaving she was leaving this place trying to escape for some reason. But who did these emotions belong to, and why did she recognise this place she could never remember seeing before.

The more she tried to think the further away the answers went. She tried to cling onto them, they were important she knew they were. But as she felt them leave, almost tauntingly slow, she felt a heaviness within herself. A tugging within her psyche, pulling her back to the body she had left behind. Slowly, so slowly… she re-entered her mind and became aware of the pain that surrounded her.

There was a something different from before. She thought she remembered a fall, the pain, the cold. Hitting her head beside the river. She thought she was going to die there. But…now she knew the difference. It was still cold, she was still soaked to the skin, but there was a warmth she could not place and there was no rain. She could hear the rain, but from a place far away. Here in this place she found herself, she may not be safe, she may not know what was happening. But for the first time in weeks she felt warmth, and that soothed her enough to lull her into a deep dreamless sleep.