Wicked Fate

FIFTYFIRST CHAPTER

Forgiveness

"DARA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

She heard his scream – the voice she'd often dreamed of screaming for her name.

"DARA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

She opened her eyes and felt herself choke up with smoke everywhere.

"DARA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

He is calling out to her. She needs to scream back. She has to scream back.

"Appa!!!!!!!!!!!!", she shouted and inhaled all the smoke. This is her room. She is in her room. Oh my God! What is going on?!?!

"Baby?", her Father shouted, "Are you inside your room? Stay there. Appa is on her way."

She looks around and tries to see through the smoke. She reaches for her blanket. Maybe the blanket can keep all the smoke away while she waits for Appa.

Chubby fingers extended towards the blanket and in a second, Dara realizes that she is in a dream.

This is the fire that had taken her mother and father from her.

"DARA!!!!", her father exclaimed as soon as the door blasted open.

"Appa!", the little girl she once was shouted and ran towards her father. She always sees this. She always sees this up until the time they would both make it out alive and then he'd come back inside the house and leave her – they would both leave her.

Her father immediately puts a wet blanket around her. He is wet with water from the head down too. "Hold on tightly to me ok? We both have to get out safe."

"But Omma?!?", she sputtered despite the smoke. This dream is all too different – it is all too real.

She has to let her father know. He has to save her mother too.

"Omma is right outside waiting for us", he assures her – a lie. She later learned that her mother was looking for her too inside the house that's why they were both trapped inside.

Dara hoped that she had known it was a lie then. She willed her younger self to speak – to not believe in what her father said and instruct him to go back to their living room via the back door stair case where a log had collapsed on her mother as she went on her way to also try to rescue Dara.

"Tell him", she screams from the inside, "Omma's still trapped in the living room!!! Tell him!!!!"

"She won't be able to hear you", a voice from behind her said.

Then... like being siphoned by a vacuum, she feels herself float up and in a second, she is out of her younger body.

"NO!!!!!!", she continues to scream, though. "Appa go back!!!!!! We have to go back!!!!"

She is watching the whole thing unfold from up above.

"You cannot change the past dear", the voice said once again and this time, the woman it belonged to is floating up in the air alongside her, "You can never change the past."

"But this is a dream, isn't it?", she retorted, wanting it to be a dream... please let it be a dream, "I can definitely CHANGE my dream."

"No dear. I'm sorry but this isn't a dream."

"WHAT?!?!?!?!?", she explodes.

"This is your past."

"I know that! That's why I'm sure this is a dream! It's impossible for me to go back here!"