The Spiritguard

I find myself suddenly waking up, vivid memories of my dream flooding into my head. "Arcona…in two years?" I say to myself, sitting up immediately and pressing my hand to my head. "Vuranya? Mister…Madera?"

I slide out of bed and pace around my room. I wonder…is this dream real? Did I just see something from the past? The present? It's even possible that whatever I saw was in the future. How could I know something like that, though? Two years from that scene could have already happened, or might not happen for another ten years.

I shuffle out of my room, taking note of the time. It's four in the morning, and I need to be up and getting ready at seven. I'll hate myself for not going back to sleep, but I feel like I should talk to my mother about my dream.

I walk down the short hallway and stop in front of her door. I don't know when she got back, but it was after nine. That was when I went to bed, after all. She must have had an incredibly long and hard day. Was it right for me to wake her up, just because I had a bad dream?

I step away from her door as I realize how silly I'm being. It was just a dream, it didn't mean anything. How many dreams have I had, now, that were just as realistic, perhaps even more realistic than that? I've been having these lucid dreams for my entire life, and they have never meant anything or amounted to anything.

One time, I even had a dream that I was walking down to the diner with my friend Kael and my village suddenly started filling up with water and was completely flooded. That never happened, obviously, and I had that dream about three years ago. I should stop investing so much in my overactive imagination. I mean, look at me. I was about to wake up my mother, who's hardly gotten any rest and needs to go to work early in the morning, just to tell her some nonsense about an imp named Vuranya.

My mind was playing tricks on me. Mr. Madera is a famous man who lives up far to the north. He's a millionaire and head of one of the most respected families in the nation. Why would he be in the woods somewhere, summoning up Spirits? Nothing about it makes sense, so I decide to push it out of my head.

Or at least, that's what I want to say. Something about it is eating at me. 

 I return to my room and sit down in a chair near my mirror. I look at my face in the mirror, examining myself. As a fifteen-year-old, I'm about eight years too old to be complaining about nightmares to my mother.

My tired blue eyes stare back at me, illuminated by the faint moonlight shining into my room. My mind wanders to Kael. I think about him, and worry. He and I are about the same age, of course...but I always have seen him as a little brother. Someone I need to protect. 

And I couldn't imagine joining the Spiritguard without him. He's like my other half! We've been through everything together. And we always will.

I grab a book I've been reading from off of the dresser that rests in front of the mirror. It is a book about a young man in a fictional world. In that world, there are dragons. Fearsome flying creatures that are like…some type of overgrown lizards, I guess. They have wings that stretch out so far that they can completely block out the sun when they fly overhead. They have the power to breathe fire, and they collect a trove of treasure to sleep on. If anyone ever tries to steal that treasure, the dragon will defend it with his life.

"If only things like that existed," I mumble to myself. The truth is, there is no such thing as dragons in my world. We have Spirits that blow fire, which is where I bet the idea behind dragons comes from. Those Spirits are not living creatures, though. Spirits are a type of anomaly that appears, spurred on by emotion, or natural disaster - any strong energy that is allowed to build up may eventually gain sentience and be born as a Spirit. And once a Spirit is dealt with, it fades into nothingness.

Not like a dragon. That would be an actual, real-life, living creature. I don't know if anything that big could ever even exist. I hope it could, though, that would be amazing. Supposedly, at least from the book, the leather you can make out of a dragon's skin is some of the toughest stuff around. The bones of the dragon can be used to make powerful weapons, and…

And I remind myself it's all just stories in a book. Just like my crazy dreams, it has no place in the real world. Just the late-night fantasies of a lonely kid.

...

...I don't usually let myself think that vulnerably. I should get back to sleep.

I set the book down and climb back into bed. I don't think I'll be bringing the book to the barracks with me tomorrow. I have a few things set aside that I need to bring. A nice outfit, some toiletries…we need to limit personal effects. I can read the book when I come home to visit in two weeks. As far as bedding and everything else, that's supposed to be provided for us. It's a good deal for me and my mom. Neither of us has to pay for me to live for the next two years while I'm in training.

Two years of training, huh? That's a long time, now that I think about it. When I finish up, I'll be seventeen. An adult, practically.

I close my eyes and focus on getting back to sleep. It won't do any good if I'm too exhausted to move tomorrow. I need to be able to show off my awesome sword skills to everyone else. I'm certain I'll be the number one student in my class, once I get there. How could anyone be better than me, the son of a professional and legendary Spiritguard?

As I sleep, I gradually forget about the dream that haunted me enough to cause me to awaken. Perhaps I don't want to remember it.