Chapter 3

 ** A dream or a reality**

She ran like a leopard not looking back to them. For once in a while, she wanted to be away from them. For once in her lifetime, she wanted to far away from them. But, not like this. She wanted to leave the foster home, fairly and in her own consent, not like this, being chased.

After she had run, a long-distance, she stopped bending her waist and touching the knees and sitting down on a ground restlessly, she looked back at them. They weren’t there. Finally, she thought she was safe from those bullies.

But, the problem actually started from here. The problem was that she never had imagined and the problem that would change the rest of her life forever.

“Where am I?” she spoke to herself.

Where in the world is this? When I ran I was in the freaking cold region of the world and what is this sudden change of seasons just in some minutes?  Where is this? These were the questions that were flooding in her mind.

She was amused visualizing the scenario before her eyes. The beautiful spring garden with the most beautiful flowers blooming freely and blissfully of whose she didn’t even know the name. The view she had seen had mesmerized her eyes, delighted her soul, and elated her mind.

She wasn’t believing what she was glancing right in front of her eyes. Everything was like a dream and as if she was dreaming with her eyes wide open. She blinked her eyes numerous times to believe what her soul and her eyes were going on.

“ Is this a reality? Everything seems to fade away in some time,” she talked to herself. The big blossoms of flowers and its aroma were calling her to them. She walked to them like instinctive chemotaxis was calling her to them.

She walked to them and tried to touch them as she was already feeling so enchanted by them. She stretched her palms and tried to touch one of the most beautiful bosoms of the flower bush. Suddenly, I felt the petals of beautiful cherry blossoms falling down from the sky.

I closed my eyes for a moment before looking up at the bright sky. There wasn’t any cherry blossoms tree from which these petals could fall. She was all confused and all in dilemma. She wasn’t getting what exactly was going on?

Meaning, she thought she was dreaming.

It was winter from where she came from? Then, where is this ?

The beautiful pinkish-white petals of the cherry blossom were falling on her skin, lightly and softly. She was liking and loving each and every second in there. Suddenly, she found out the cut in her arms and it pained like the sting of a bee or an ant.

She turned around to check her arms and found out that there was a small cut on it. Another petal rubbed her skin and there, it made another cut in her skin, and one by one the petals started to cut the small cuts in her skin. Horrified by that, she tried to run away from there. She wanted to be away from those petals.

She started to run away from them. She held her both arms with her palms, trying to cover up the arms that were bleeding. After she lost the sight of the petals falling down on her, she checked her arms. What the hell was that?

There were no more cuts in her arms. There weren’t even the scars of them. She was scared to death than being happy for not seeing those cuts.

“ Where are they? Where did they do? How can a petal cut me like that ?” she spoke to herself. She believed that she has turned to some crazy psychotic patient who was dreaming and seeing the dramatic fantasies and illusions.

“ It’s an illusion. It’s just a hallucination. I will come out of it when I am pinched. I will come out of it when I will be splashed by water, tomorrow by Athena. But, I wanna come out of this nightmare. I really don’t want to be here,” she said running her fingers crazily in her hair and pressing her head with both of her hands and kneeling down on the ground.

Then, she pinched herself. She pinched herself hard, that she hurt her skin and it started to bleed. After seeing the red blood of her own she realized that it wasn’t a dream and in some seconds, the blood was all dried and her hand was back to the normal.

She rubbed her hands with another hand hard and found no scars on her hand again. “ I don’t want to turn to the mental patient. I don’t want to be a psychopath. What the hell is going on ?” she screamed hard and loud but there was no one to help her. What she could hear was her own echoes coming back to her.

“ Water…Water…I need water. I need to get out of this horrible dream,” she stood up and started searching for the water. She looked at all the sides, all the directions, there was no sight of the water source. It was like a desert but a spring desert, where finding the source of water was quite impossible.

All of a sudden, she saw a pond and a deer drinking water from there. She was merried to the core of her heart and ran, hastily to the water. The water was like an oasis in the desert. But, when she reached there, it was lost again. She scratched her head hard and saw it in another side. She crazily ran after them. But, she couldn’t find the water and at last, she sat down tired and hopeless.

The water was just in front of her. She scooped the water in her hands and splashed the water in her face, a couple of times. But, she was still there. She checked her hands and her body and surroundings around her, she was still there.

In frustration, she dipped her head on the water and looked inside the water. The view below the water was beautiful and she smiled at the view but suddenly, a creature came out of the blue. A creature that was long like a snake and had two pairs of limbs with it.

How can this be possible? The creature horrified her so much that she drew out her head from the pond and ran in the opposite direction. Now, she was hearing the unusual and horrifying sounds. It was completely hypnotizing her mind.

With a mind, which wasn’t able to think accurately, she ran to the cliff. She was seeing the cliff and the height it possessed. She was scared to hell but she wasn’t able to control her mind which she wasn’t able to control anymore.

Someone pushed her from behind. She turned to see the person.

“You……you…., Aries…who are you ?” she said while falling down the cliff. Her eyes looked at him in guilt. Guilt that she trusted him. Guilt that she was wrong and can never be happy.Guilt that she will never wake up again.

She closed her eyes and for the first time, she felt her warm tears on her eyes leading the way to fall down somewhere they could turn into vapor before even reaching the ground. For the first time, she felt what the tears are? What the tears really feel like?

“ I am going to die after all. After all that I have tried, I was destined to be dead. Destined to go away from everything," and she accepted her fate. Her fate which was like a catastrophe…