"Try to catch the falling leaves."
Luce sat up, looking for the voice whispering to her.
"All Red and Yellow."
She pushed her brown hair out of her face and turned around. A figure stood behind her. It sounded like a male voice but the face was too dark to see his features. He leaned against a tree and offered her a hand. She refused it.
""One by One."
Red and yellow leaves started to fall around Luce. She turned to ask the man who he was but he was gone.
"What do you mean?" Luce yelled, opening her eyes. The woods were gone. She was back in her bedroom. She had kicked off blankets while she slept. Her mother was at her door.
"Luce, are you alright?" Her mother's face showed little expression.
Luce nodded and sighed, "I'm okay, I just had a bad dream."
Her mother nodded and disappeared out in to the hallway. Luce changed from her grey pajamas, into her grey slacks and her grey button up shirt. When she arrived in the living room, her parents had the TV on. The news was covering a story about a serial killer.
"We go back to our story about Lucy Opetfets," The TV blared. "Lucy was a normal girl, had a lot of friends. That was until her grandmother gave her a violent book. A few days after her grandmother died, Lucy went to a local police station and tried to gun down several policemen. In self defense, they shot her first. This just shows how important the Law of Morality is. That book caused Lucy to shoot at those policemen…"
Luce missed the rest of the story, her mind wandered back to her dream. She had been having almost the same dream for weeks, now. The voice was always was male and she could never see his face, but he never said the same thing.
"That's horrible. Just, horrible. See, this is why we have the law of morality." Her mother's face still showed no expression. Her blue eyes were blank and her mouth only curved to form words.
Luce only nodded. Lucy. Luce. They're similar. She thought, Looo-chay, Loo-cee. She wondered if anyone else had these dreams. Maybe Lucy did. For some reason, Luce started to feel a connection to Lucy. At school, Lucy had been two years ahead of Luce. She had never really encountered Lucy. Luce decided she was going to do some digging.
"Do not believe
Everything you hear."
The man had a strange accent.
"Luce."
Luce found herself unable to move or speak. His face came into view. He had peach skin and medium shaggy hair. His chocolate eyes held a serious expression.
When Luce awoke, she realized she was trembling. She had finally seen the man who was talking to her in her dreams. Until that dream, she had never seen the man before but he seemed eerily familiar. Whatever, it's probably nothing. I just made him up, She thought to herself. It was probably nothing to worry about. She tried to forget about his words and rushed to get ready for school.
At school everyone looked sullen. There were posters all over about the Law of Morality. The one that caught her attention had thousands of sad looking children on it and it said in big letters, "BEFORE THERE WAS MORALITY THERE WAS WAR." What was a war? She pondered. Luce shook off the thought and kept walking to class.
In her first class, English, her teacher stood at the board. Like most adults, there was no expression on her face. "Today, we'll be taking a break from reading the tragedy of Macbeth and we'll be learning about the Tragedy of Lucy Opetfets." The teacher shook her head, "It really is a shame. She was such a nice girl. This is why the Law of Morality is important. Had she followed it and thrown the trashy book away, it wouldn't have corrupted her into shooting at those honorable police officers." Her teacher went into more detail about the Law of Morality and what it entailed. It was the most important law anyone had ever come up with. Before the Law of Morality, humans would fight; there would be crime and even the slaughter of millions of humans. Which was something called war.
"Now I get the poster." Luce mumbled
"Luce? Did you have a comment?" Her teacher stared at her, still emotionless.
Luce shook her head, "No. I didn't"
Her teacher continued. Luce kept thinking back to the man with the accent in her dreams. He had been the only dream she had been having since she was little. She started write down everything she could remember that he had said.
