Mother of Selene

On the purple gem, far from the world of her troubled past, she laid there in bed, unable to sleep. Ridiculous! A grown woman afraid of the dark! she told herself. I'm safe here, on this moon, next to my loving husband. But it wasn't the dark that she feared, it was the nightmares that haunted her each night. The nightmares were so real, so grim, so horrifying, that her innocent, childlike face was betrayed by the dark circles under her emerald eyes. The sleepless nights had taken their toll--she was a wreck.

And as she lay there by her sleeping husband, the woman held a strand of her green hair and twirled it between her long milky-white fingers. The beautiful color reminded her of the grassy fields of Shusoran--her home. The lush forests and colorful flowers were now just a memory. Such things were nonexistent on Dahlia. Here, there was metal--ridged, cold metal.

But the curly lock reminded her of something else too--her father. She could remember childhood mornings, waking up early as the chirpers first began to sing. She would run down the hall of Shusoran Palace and into the room of her sleeping father. Climbing up onto his bed, she would tickle his feet until he awoke. Only these precious memories could ever soothe her to sleep.

Thea's eyes slowly shut that night, and she began to dream . . .

It was the same nightmare she had every night. She was reliving her dreaded past:

Thea sat on the cold stone floor of her dungeon cell. She was curled into a ball crying into her hands. The clicking sounds of the cyborgs--Orakian killing machines--echoed through the chambers and corridors. Those noises were the sound of death--the sound of her father's death.

The cyborgs had invaded Cille first. That eccentric old Queen had never been a strong ruler. When the Orakian horde came, she forbade her armies to fight them, saying, "My love has come back! He's come back for me!" At the order of their crazy Queen, the people of Cille were slaughtered without a fight.

Shusoran hadn't fallen so easily. Thea could remember her father, still holding strong even after he lost his right eye. But the cyborgs' metal blades were sharper than any monster's claws, and not even Foi was a match for the spitting bullets of an Orakian gun. She sat on that cold dungeon floor watching her father die over and over again in her mind. Thea would never forget his killer--she had watched as that dark 'borg with the fiery hair aimed his gun and killed her dad. Siren! Just the name sent a freezing tremor down her back. Siren! Siren! Siren! As if in slow motion, she could see each speck of death spray from the barrel and lodge deep in her father's back. She could see the pain on his face as he looked at her one last time and fell to the ground.

And now, sitting on the cold dungeon floor, Thea was alone. She was the last survivor of the kingdom of Shusoran. The last of her people; a princess without a throne.

The initial sadness slowly passed after days in the dark cell. The great sorrow she had felt turned into hatred and a desire for revenge. Not revenge on Orakians--revenge on Siren! Anger swept through her body as she gripped her slicer.

It is at this point in the dream that things become hazy. They twist and blend as reality alters at the whim of the dreamer.

"Who's there?" Thea spoke in a loud voice of royal authority and concern. She could hear the taps of three distinct people walking down the corridor toward her cell. Though she couldn't see around the bend, Thea knew it wasn't the usual cyborg clicks to which she had become accustomed.

She rose from her nest of rags on the floor and held her slicer tightly in her right hand. Did they come to execute me? she wondered. Well they won't get me without a fight! Thea readied herself to cast Tsu and Gra like her father had taught. The slicer that she had managed to hide under her blouse during her initial capture was cocked by her right ear, set to be hurled at whoever turns the corner and opens her cell.

That executioner is in for a surprise if he thinks I can be taken out so easily. Putting her left hand across her heart, she closed her eyes and whispered the sacred words to herself, "Kill no living thing . . . I'm sorry Laya." She tried to stay calm, though she could not stop from trembling.

And then she saw him--she was awestruck. He was fair-skinned, about her age, with light blue hair. "We mean you no harm," he said, but the bells ringing in her ears blocked out the sound. She looked deep into his skyish eyes, and knew he was the one. "I'm here to rescue you. My name is A . . ."

It's at this point that the dream fades away . . . dissolved by the morning light.

"Aooohhhh!" Thea woke up next to her husband in a sweat. Her eyes scanned the room as her mind raced to distinguish reality from her dream. She sat up in bed and looked down at her hands, still shaking from the bad dream, as if they belonged to someone else. The man lying next to her, whom her movements had awakened, spoke in a hoarse morning voice. "Nightmares again, honey?". He had a long mane of green-yellow hair.

Thea looked at him and smiled. She did love that man--that man of the legends. He was the one who had *really* rescued her from the Orakian dungeon. "Yes," was her mumbled reply.

After wiping his eyes and yawning, Thea's husband asked, "Was your blue-haired dream-lover in it?"

Ignoring the question, Thea gazed into his dark eyes that so much resembled those of her father, and said, "I love you, Lune, with all my heart."

He responded by kissing her gently on the forehead. Lune then looked down at her stomach, which showed the first signs of pregnancy, and asked "how do feel?" Thea's morning sickness and mood swings had the whole of Dahlia on their toes these days.

Rubbing her stomach, she replied, "not bad. [a long pause] What do you want to name her?"

"I think we will call her Kara."

"Kara: daughter of Lune and Thea. I like the sound of that. One day all of Alisa III will know that name."