She's Dreaming

Chapter 1

"She's dreaming the same dream again," one of the men in the white coat said to the other one. She could hear them. They were speaking about her.

"I must be asleep then," she thought to herself. "But how could they know what I dreamt? Were they magicians? Black magic and witchcraft and all of that. What dream was I dreaming again? I didn't usually remember my dreams, so I wondered which dream they saw me dream. Was it a happy one or not? I hoped it was happy. I was tired of living a sad life. At least my dreams should be happy."

"Can she hear us, do you think?" The first man asked. He had a deep gravelly voice, which made it seem like he would be a good looking man. But she knew that that was never really the case. You imagined that he would look like a demigod, and he always turned out to be less than ordinary.

How boring, you thought to yourself. Life was not imitating art, but inferior to it.

"Probably not. These savages. They don't know much about anything, do they? Even though she is probably the most advanced of all of them. Being a shamaness and all. I can't imagine she would even recognize our speech patterns." The other man said. He sighed. He had the kind of voice that you would imagine a little toy soldier would have. Squeaky and soft. "Anyway, let's get this over with. I want to go home and have a nice glass of kombucha with my wife. We are working on our gut bacteria at the moment, and I don't want anything ruining the delicate balance that we have achieved till now." He seemed like the grumpy sort. The kind of person who would never be happy no matter what he had, or what he was doing. The kind of person who would rush after work because he wanted to go home. And then be listless at home because he wanted to be at work instead.

She giggled a bit on the inside. She knew someone just like him back at home. Her father would appreciate this place. She wished they had bought her father here as well.

She couldn't see her surroundings. Her eyes were taped shut or something. But she could tell that she was in a sterile environment. The smell of chemicals and astringents. She didn't know what they called this place, but she imagined it was filled with staid, serious souls who were interested in the results more than the journey. She never got along with people like that. Even in school, she was always more interested in how she got to the solution of a problem, rather than the solution itself.

They lifted up her hands, but their hand on her skin felt odd. As if they were wearing something on it. Gloves, perhaps. Made of something soft and silky. There was so much to learn from these people. She wondered how she could convince them to let her be conscious while they performed their experiments on her. She wouldn't tell a soul, she could promise. She just wanted to know. To quell her burgeoning curiosity.

Like a cat you are, her father used to say to her. A cat who wasn't satisfied until every detail of a particular mousetrap was clear to her.

One of those mousetraps will kill you one day, my dear, he said to her wisely. And I won't be able to do anything for you, he had added.

Her dearest father. Well, his prediction had come true. And there was nothing she could do to see his triumphant face.

She tried to move her hands, but they were tied down. As were her legs. And her neck. The only part of her body that was movable was her fingers. But even those, she could barely move.

Were they afraid of her? Why would they trap her so diligently? What did they think would happen? She might not be as advanced as them, but she still had a semblance of common sense. She wouldn't jump, claw, and bite strangers from the promised land. What if they could teach her something that could save her tribe in the future?

Her chieftains and leaders might be short-sighted, but she was not. She knew that there were many things that she did not know, and she wished to know them all, slowly, but surely. Not just in this lifetime, but over the many other lifetimes to come.