Excerpt: Then the War Came

She awoke with a start, her world spinning about her like a kaleidoscope. Myriad colours flowed about her in a weird pattern that made her dizzy as she watched it. She closed her eyes tight, trying to fight away the visions. When she opened them her father was gazing down at her. Crude glasses and all. His warm smile soothing her ailing senses. She was aware of a new warm feeling in her throat and chest and of an odd warmth to her left, she had the feeling as if someone was lightly touching her chin but disregarded it.
“Did you have a bad dream?” Her father asked her as she lay, tired, in her own bed back home.
“I dreamt I was out in the wasteland, with Chris, and I was dying.” She said tearfully.
“Well it’s okay, you’re okay now.” He stroked a strand of hair from her face and kissed her lightly on the brow. “Go back to sleep.”
She drifted off again, this time her dreams trouble free. Again she felt the faint touch of someone in her sleep, the same warm feeling but put it down to her troubled sleep the night before. She drifted into a peaceful sleep. She dreamt of a vast taiga, she walked through it barefoot but felt no chill. Dressed in a snowy gown she skipped through the snowy trees, wrapping and arm round one every now and then as she did so. She came to a small clearing where sitting in the middle was a wild and wounded faun. Its leg bent horridly, she hurried to it intent on setting the bone but as she knelt by it the taiga began to shift strangely, and the beast that lay before her began to change. A faint wind whistled about her as the landscape was once more the wasteland and before her the faun had changed to the form of a man, naked as Adam. His warm smile familiar as Christopher’s. She stepped up to him, and on tip toes stretched to kiss him lightly upon the lips. As she did so day changed to night. But above her, instead of dark cloud and smog, there was a bright blanket of stars like specks in the night. The kiss lingered. As she felt his lips part and reciprocated the stars about them began to fall. Plummeting like droplets of rain, each hitting the ground in silence but creating great mushroom clouds of blue green flames and dust. Pulsing around them like the northern lights in long waves of fluctuating colour and hue. A bell sounded in the distance as the stars continued to fall, for whom it tolled she cared little. All of her focus was on Christopher, his lips, and his tongue. Her hands were on his shoulders, shoulders that presently began to fade with the landscape as the taiga returned.
The snow swept about her, the wind leaving her gown billowing. Her fair hair blowing in the crisp, fresh breeze. She caught the snowflakes in her hand and gazed at them a moment at a time while they slowly melted in her grasp. A great sliver landed in her palm and danced somewhat before settling there, she brought it to her tongue and tasted the fresh glistening water of it. She raised her hand to the grey sky and let the flake fly upon its way upwards as the taiga faded once more.