When he said her name she turned and saw him. They began to walk down the prairie together. Then it came to him. “I'm dreaming. We're dreaming, Saymi. We're really in our beds sleeping right now.”
She grinned and then turned and started skipping through the tall grass. That's when it dawned on him, “You're walking. You can't walk, but here in my dream you're walking.” But she didn't seem to comprehend the significance of his statement.
“I bet that girl is around,” he said, and glanced across the landscape. That made him dizzy.
“There was a biting trailer in the back hallway, Sadier,” his sister called. “A short distance is all that it would spare I'd say.”
“Oh, okay,” Sadier replied.
Then he saw her coming. She was jogging to catch up with them, the fuzzy haired girl.
“Sadier,” she called. “Can you hear me?”
“Is this it? Is this a dream?” he replied as she ran up panting.
“Yes, Sadier. This is it. It's not a dream,” the girl replied as her eyes scanned the horizon.
“We're sleeping right now and we know it. It's crazy,” he laughed.
“No, Sadier. We're awake now. The other side is the dream,” she corrected.
“But it's not a reaction that we could recognize is it?” Sadier asked. “Something that would entail the eroding of deeper ends. A bridge to cross the plague of keels?”
“OK, it's time to wake up,” the girl replied. “Listen to what your saying. You're not talking straight. Do you remember the things I said to you in the lunchroom?”
In response, he smiled at her an innocent stupid smile, which caused a slight grin to overcome her face. Then she took both his hands in hers. He recoiled at the sudden disappearance of sight and sound. He heard her voice clearly speaking to him.
“You can hear me clearer now?” she asked. He nodded in response his face a bit more solemn. He noticed that her eyes were a different hue. And that they were glowing intensely. “Sadier, this is you,” she said. “What you are now. This is your soul. What you see around you, this is the upperworld. When you rise from your bed in the morning you look back and you call it a dream, but you don't realize that this is the reality. They keep you blind to it, so that you won't know. They flood you with foggy distractions. It is possible to be awakened, but it takes a lot of work. I'm trying to quicken you right now, to help you see and think clearly in this realm. I am on a team of those who are 'quickened.' We would like to wake up everyone, but we can't. So, we carefully target certain people to wake. You've been chosen, you and your sister, Saymi. Do you understand what I'm saying?”
He nodded his eyes focused.
“I have many years of experience here,” she said. “I'm allowing you to feed off my consciousness right now. That's why you can think so naturally. But when I let go of your hands you'll be on your own again, and you will have to battle the distractions.”
“No, don't let go,” he said. “It's beautiful.” Since the fog had lifted from his consciousness, a strong feeling had arisen. It wasn't positive. It wasn't negative. It was powerful. It was true. He didn't want it to leave.
“I'm letting go now, Sadier,” she said and released his hands from hers.
He gasped as blurry sights and sounds rushed back into his mind. He realized at this point that everything he saw and heard was disoriented. She let him struggle for a moment and then grabbed his hands again, and the distractions left again. She said more words to him and then let go. They repeated this over and over about ten times and he started to gain progress.
“We'd Saymi go?” he said becoming more aware.
“She's right there. See,” the girl replied pointing to her right. “I'm not letting her wander too far. We'll start on her next. My name's Abigail. You're my apprentices now, okay?”
Sadier watched Abigail walk over to his sister, and start repeating the same process that she had with him.
“A day of wondering to you too and may something of fervor rest in its place,” Saymi said to Abigail.
Sadier put his hands on his knees. He was out out of breath. He opened and closed his eyes, and started to filter the distractions. He gained much awareness in the following few minutes. He could see the prairie clearer now. It was a different and amazing world around him. It wasn't just his senses that were clearing up though. It was more his mind. And that's when he noticed that they weren't alone in the prairie. There were figures floating in and out of his awareness. They looked like men but not quite. They were dressed in dark red uniforms. All of them were looking in the same direction keeping their eyes ahead.
“How are you fairing?” Abigail asked Sadier.
“It's amazing,” he said.
“You haven't seen anything,” the girl replied. Sadier couldn't put his finger on it. I, Sal, remember when I was introduced to it. It gives you this deep feeling. It's not happy. It's not sad. It's just powerful and breathtaking. And it's absolutely terrifying.
“Come'on. Let's walk.” Abigail said. “They're going to attack soon.”
Sadier noticed when one of the men in the red uniforms made a clicking sound with his mouth to get Abigail's attention. Abigail tossed him something and then he nodded. She pointed out across the field ahead of them with a confused expression. He shrugged and started walking. All the men started walking. There were around four or five dozen of the men scattered around. Sadier watched them with curiosity.
“Who are they?” he asked.
“Angels,” she replied. “You didn't see them last night, but they were the surrounding you.”
It's common to see the demons first. Remember that.”
“The demons are going to attack?” he asked.
“Yeah, they're coming,” she replied. “Don't worry. We've got angels.”
“So....” he said. “But I don't understand. What's the worst that could happen to us? If we get hurt here, or even if we die here, it's just a-” he cut his sentence off. “It's not a dream.”
“You die here. You die,” she said.
“Does that ever happen?” he asked.
“Yes, it does, every year,” she replied. Fear began to run through Sadier's blood, a warm terrifying feeling in his nerves. One of the angels in front yelled and waved his arm. He turned and signaled the numbers four and one with his hands repeatedly. Four. One. Four. One. Four. one.
“That's not good,” Abigail said. “Not good. Not good.”
“What's wrong?” Sadier inquired.
She grabbed his hand and the hand of his sister and started hustling through the long grass to the woods on right side of the field. Angels were running around them as Abigail hurriedly dragged Sadier and Saymi by the hand. They crunched through the woods at a fast pace. Sadier realized that the angels seemed to be communicating to Abigail guiding her in some way.
Out of nowhere a boney Demon hand reached out and grabbed Sadier's jacket. He pulled away, and an angel broke the demon's neck ruthlessly. But at the sight of this, Saymi, recoiled a few steps and stood momentarily beyond the angel's protection. A demon struck her with a weapon and she screamed falling to the ground.
“Where are you?” Abigail yelled horrified.
“Here I am,” said a tall muscular boy jumping into the scene. He had long black dreadlocks and blue bandana. Sadier recognized him from the school. Abigail ran to the wounded Saymi. Saymi looked down at the rush of red flooding from her arm and threw up in the grass. The guy with dreadlocks scooped Saymi up in his arms. He ran and jumped off a cliff disappearing with Saymi.
“Follow him! There's water down there!” Abigail shouted.
Sadier jumped, and screamed as he fell some forty feet. His body splashed awkwardly in the river, plummeting many feet underwater. He moved his arms frantically, desperate for the surface. When his head rose above the water he took a huge breath and started struggling to reach the bank. The dreadlock guy was somehow managing to keep Saymi's head out of the water as they moved toward shore. When they all made it safely to dry ground the demons stopped coming for a legion of angels had come to offer support.
Abigail and the dreadlock guy talked frantically as Abigail dealt with Saymi's deep wound. Saymi was in and out of consciousness her blood smeared all over herself, the dreadlock guy, and Abigail. The dreadlock guy went over to Sadier and squeezed his shoulder.
“Don't worry, dude,” he said. “The worst is always at the beginning.”
Then suddenly Sadier heard a familiar sound. He turned off his alarm clock. He sat up in his bed breathing hard.
He walked into the kitchen, and started eating breakfast. When Saymi rolled in with her wheelchair, it didn't take her long to note his serious mood. She asked him what was up as she had the previous day, but this time he didn't reply. He just sat there silent, which scared her.
“Did you have another nightmare?” she inquired.
“Did you have a nightmare?” he said.
“No,” she replied more than a little frightened by his serious tone.
“I had a nightmare last night,” Sadier admitted. “But I've started to wonder if there's something a little strange going. Something spiritually strange,” he said. “The girl that was in my dream found me yesterday at school, Saymi. She knew about my nightmare somehow. She was in my dream last night too. How do you explain that?”
Suddenly the cup that was in Saymi's hand hit the floor water splashing across the tile. Sadier could see in her big brown eyes that a flash of the dream had just jolted through her mind. Saymi slowly reached over and felt her right arm with her hand. “What's going on?” she breathed. “We had the same dream last night?”
“How much do you remember?” he asked.
They compared what they recalled of it Sadier filling in many moments that had escaped Saymi's memory. But there was one part that he had forgotten that she reminded him. And it wasn't a detail that he liked remembering. But I'm going to have to leave out what it was.
They boarded the bus for Waterfall Academy. The girls teased Saymi about her wheelchair. It seemed like Saymi was taking an extra amount of bullying so far this year for whatever reason. There was this guy named, Dalton, who would encourage it more than anyone. Sadier did wish that he could do something to help his sister, but there's not much you can really do. You could tell them to stop, but they won't listen. You could talk to the authorities about it, but then they'll really hate you. And after all, Sadier really didn't feel like it was any of his business. His sister was old enough to handle her own problems. She would do something about it if she wanted to. But he guessed that his sister didn't really listen to what they said. He figured that it didn't bother her. They were just having fun anyway. No need to let it affect you.
They hopped off the bus and another day of school began. Sadier was expectant that Abigail, the fuzzy haired girl, might meet him some time in the course of the day as she had the previous day. But class after class went by and he didn't so much as see her in the halls. Sadier had been especially expectant that she might show up during lunch, but she didn't.
And near the end of the day, Sadier began to have some particularly disturbing thoughts. As he continually processed the wild things he had experienced the last few days a thought began to creep into his mind: Is it possible that I'm becoming delusional? Perhaps the powerful dream caused me to hallucinate that the girl came to me at lunch yesterday. Maybe I even hallucinated that Saymi had remembered the dream this morning. As he walked down the hall to the bus that would take him home his senses seemed to be coming in strange and frightening. He had been somewhat enjoying this whole experience to this point, but all of a sudden he was just scared and he just wanted it all to stop. This game had been fun for a while, a little supernatural intrigue, but now it was suddenly very not fun. He wished the dreams would have never happened. He wanted everything to go back to normal. Sadier was haunted by the thought that maybe his brain had started to fail in some way and he was starting to go crazy, or worse. His worst fear was that he really didn't have a clue what happens after someone dies. He tried not to think of that, but the question kept coming to his mind, what if I'm dead?
“Sadier!” someone said his name.
Sadier turned but he couldn't find who had said his name.
“Sadier! Welcome to the team, dude.” He identified someone walking towards him who was sporting dreadlocks and a blue bandana. It was the guy from his dream.
“Am I hallucinating?” Sadier asked him.
“Absolutely, you are,” the dreadlock guy laughed. “Come with me. We're about to start.”
Sadier felt the urge to run away but he didn't. The dreadlock guy guided Sadier through a door in the hallway that Sadier had never noticed. They walked on the ceiling, a perfect trick to encrypt their location. The walls were golden mirrors.
“My name's Adrian,” the dreadlock guy said. “It's good to meet you.”
“Am I dead?” Sadier asked.
“Absolutely, you are,” Adrian said. “But not for long. We will see to that.”
They landed in a small office. Sadier looked and there at the table were his sister, Saymi, and the fuzzy haired girl, Abigail.
“We have to travel through the upperworld a bit to disguise our location,” Abigail said to Sadier. “Don't want any evil ears listening in you know.”
“We're going to miss our bus,” Sadier protested suddenly. “Our godfather will be worried.”
“Look at your watch,” Adrian said.
Sadier looked down at his watch and saw that it was displaying symbols that he had never seen it display.
“What does it mean?” Sadier asked.
“Omega Omega Feta,” Adrian answered. “It means you don't have to worry about your bus,” Adrian winked.
“You're controlling time?” Sadier remarked.
“No, not quite,” Abigail replied. “We're just kinda ignoring it.”
Sadier finally noticed that there was a tall man in a suit at the other end of the small room. Sadier thought he recognized him, one of the faculty members.
“Have a seat, Sadier,” the man in the suit said.
Sadier's was very confused and still felt a little on edge, but he took a chair at the rectangular table next to his sister, and across from Abigail.
“Sadier and Saymi,” the man with the suit spoke. “My name is Paul Bradley. I'm the founder of the Alma. It's a group that is comprised of students who we train to interact in the supernatural to help protect other students in ways the angels cannot. I'm sure the enemy has been feeding you some heavy reactions, so I know you're probably a little frightened and confused by the things you've experienced the last few days. You're waking up. You're quickening. I will leave you now to Abigail and Adrian. Listen intently as they educate you on what you need to know when you fall asleep and enter the upperworld as it is a ruthless place. See you soon, and good luck to you.” With that the man in the suit floated through the wall and vanished. There was silence for a moment. Sadier and Saymi glanced at each other wondering what to think. Adrian, the dreadlock guy, paced around the floor. Abigail, the fuzzy haired girl, sat opposite the siblings.
Abigail finally spoke, “Now, many times I've told you, there's actually no such thing as dreams, right. There is no such thing as imagination. These are concepts that have been birthed to try to explain what happens when from time to time we gain a fleeting awareness that our souls are bouncing around higher worlds. This fleeting awareness is experienced most consistently in what are commonly known as “dreams.” But you have to stop thinking of it as dream or you'll never get anywhere. When you sleep you are actually very aware of what is happening to you, but when you wake up you forget it. Or at least you don't recall what you experienced as thoroughly or as vividly. Now here's the scary part. When you are asleep you are not walking in a world that your mind is generating. Our minds are not powerful enough to generate worlds that feel that real to us. This means that something else is giving you that world for you to walk in. Typically, in our case, it's either an angel or a demon or a mix of both. There are breeds of angels and demons that specialize in the skill of giving us scenes to walk in. With these scenes they manipulate the framework of our thoughts and plant seeds in our minds. The seeds that they plant will pop up later and we won't recognize that they came from an outside source. These seeds can be very very powerful and very very dangerous. This is why we have depression. This is why we have suicide. It comes to us from an outside of us. It comes from seeds. I think you're starting to see why the war rages every night over what we will experience when we sleep. You may be getting the idea that angels and demons actually generate the worlds for us to see, but they don't. They aren't powerful enough for that generation either. They pull landscapes from their level and aim them at us. This means that the things we see aren't just made up. What we see is real.”
“Real?” Sadier asked, “What do you mean? How can it be real?”
“You have to start realizing,” Abigail replied, “that the things that are supernatural to us are just everyday life to everyone higher than us. What we call the supernatural is the line separating what we can see and understand from what we can't see and understand. Those upper realms are where everything plays out that determines our lives down here. Nothing is ever random. Random is another concept that has been birthed because of our short-sighted perspective. And actually, angels have a line too where their vision reaches its limit so in a sense they have a realm too that's supernatural to them because they can only see and understand to a certain point just the same as us. Truth is that everyone's perspective is at a different level. But it is possible to enlarge that perspective by journeying up the path of the upperworld levels. I say all this to answer many of your initial questions and to start your education. Your invitation to the Alma means you have been invited to join us in our main task, which is to protect the subconscious of the students of Waterfall Academy. Does that sound like something you would be interested in?” Abigail asked.
“I don't know,” Sadier replied. “What exactly are we supposed to do?”
“Well obviously, Pre-death most of us are far weaker than angels and demons, so it doesn't seem like there's much we could do,” Abigail admitted. “However, we are closer to the students than they are, and this allows us to do things in the upperworld and in the natural that the angels cannot. We have to be aware of what the demons are trying to accomplish in our school. Sometimes all it takes to keep someone from committing suicide is to just say hi to them as you pass by in the hallway. But we can do more than that. This is why the Alma exists. There's a technique we call quickening in which with practice and good education like I'm giving to you now you can gain enough awareness to become conscious while you sleep. When me and Adrian enter the upperworld we can often do so without even so much as losing our train of thought. Right now, you don't have much conscious control over what you do in a dream, but by quickening you can gain this control. After that the next step is to learn how to find parallels, the parallels to the things you want to alter. Or in reality since you'll be in the upperworld these parallels are the actual and the one down here is the replica. And of course, the parallels that we are most interested in are the ones for the students, which are what we call souls. You will in time learn how to find your fellow students as they dream.
“Wait. Wait. Wait,” Sadier frowned. “How is that possible?”
“You have to start to start putting this all together,” Abigail replied. “When we see something without our eyes, we are seeing the supernatural. We are walking in the supernatural. We are the supernatural, Sadier. Our dreams aren't their own little world. Our dreams all connect to each other or to put it more accurately our dreams connect to heaven and to hell, and all the realms of upperworlds. That means with good practice and focus we can find each other in our dreams. And as we are on the same level with our fellow students we have more efficient and direct influence over them than angels do. The angels physically battle the demons to plant positive seeds and keep evil seeds from being planted, but we can go straight to the victim and steer them away from those seeds.”
“It is that easy?” Sadier said.
“It's not easy,” Abigail replied. “It's very difficult and very dangerous. Don't take it lightly. I'm not going to lie to you guys. The reason this is all so serious is because if you die in the upperworld don't expect to wake up in your bed the next morning. You'll wake up far, far away.”
