Dair followed Serenity from her school to the veterinary clinic where she worked. Being who he was, and what he was, had its perks when it came to travel. He didn’t need a car. Dair had the ability to will himself to the location he wanted. It was known as ‘transporting’ in the spiritual realm. As he continued on the path that her car was taking, he told himself it was because he wanted to keep her safe. If you asked him from what, well, he really couldn’t tell you. He hadn’t been informed of any immediate danger to Serenity, but there was always life itself. She could be in a wreck or be hurt by some crazy human, of which he knew plenty because he had been in some depraved minds over the decades. She was so fragile, so mortal, and she didn’t even know it, or if she did she didn’t pay any heed to it. What do you expect her to do, Dair, surround herself in bubble wrap and never leave her house? he asked himself. He supposed that option wasn’t really feasible, but he wouldn’t deny that the idea had its merit.
Dair trailed her into the clinic, unseen by anyone or anything, until the cat that was lying on the bench in the waiting area hissed at him. He had found that some animals were more sensitive to the spiritual world and could actually detect him, if not see him outright. Other animals’ reactions were often just as unfriendly as the cat's because they sometimes felt that he was something that should not be there. He waved his hand in front of the feline’s face and the animal quieted immediately and then drifted off to sleep. Sleep dust indeed, he chuckled to himself.
“Hey, Serenity.” A deep voice drew Dair’s attention from the sleeping cat. His eyes narrowed on the boy named Jackson. Dair had discovered something new about himself, which was a feat in and of itself considering how old he was. He had realized that jealousy was an emotion that he was not immune to. From the moment he saw the way Jackson looked at Serenity, a possessive―almost animalistic―need to claim her came over him. He didn’t like the gleam in the human’s eyes or the way he smiled at her or talked to her. Okay, so he didn’t like that he breathed air in the same vicinity as Serenity. Perhaps, he was a tad out of control when it came to this new emotion of jealousy.
“Hey, Jackson.” Serenity smiled at the boy and Dair ground his teeth together. “How is Mrs. Green’s dog doing today?”
Jackson took a step closer to her and then leaned casually on the counter where the human owners checked in their animals. Not a step further¸ Dair thought and fought the desire to plant the words in the boy's head. He could only imagine the look on his face when he heard Dair’s voice in his mind. And he found that he took a little too much pleasure in inducing fear in the male.
“Layla is doing better,” Jackson answered. “She’s even gone outside twice without having to be carried.”
“That’s great!” Serenity smiled. She was just too damn nice and naïve for her own good. Jackson’s smile widened as he took in what Dair knew he was seeing—the sheer beauty of the woman before them. Dair could see the intent in Jackson’s eyes before he even began to speak. The fool was going to ask her out, he thought. “Not today you’re not,” Dair said as he walked towards Jackson until he was just beside him. He leaned forward and allowed his invisibility to drop just enough that Jackson would hear his voice.
“You will only see Serenity as a friend. She is not for you. You will not ask her on a date,” he whispered and allowed his power of influence to lace his words. It was underhanded, not to mention strictly forbidden for him to influence a human for selfish reasons, but this time the rules didn’t seem to stop him. Dair watched as Jackson stiffened. Shock, and then fear, and then confusion, came over his face. Finally, he looked back at Serenity who was watching him with wide eyes and her head tilted slightly.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
Jackson nodded. “I’m fine. . .just thought I heard something, but it must have been the dogs barking or something.” Without another word he turned and hurried towards the back of the building where the kennels were located.
Dair should have felt remorseful over his interference, but as he watched Serenity hum as she cleaned the front part of the clinic, alone, without any males drooling after her, he couldn’t bring himself to be the least bit repentant. He had told Jackson that she was not for the human and he had meant it. Serenity was meant for him, whether it was forbidden or not; he knew with absolute certainty she was his perfect counterpart. The idea of her with someone else did not bring Dair pleasant thoughts. In fact, the sort of thoughts it induced might be considered dangerous. As long as Jackson kept his hands, eyes, and desires to himself, he would be safe from the Sandman’s wrath. But if he pursued Serenity, then Jackson just might find himself having the kind of night terrors that could cause a grown man to wet the bed.
Chapter 2
“To dream of aliens or UFOs means that you should be wary of new people. They may have your best interests at heart, but they may also want to probe you.”
Serenity’s eyes began to glaze over after a couple hours in front of the computer. She had left the vet clinic early, after two very strange hours of working with Jackson, and come straight to the library. When she had asked Jackson if he minded that she leave early, he almost seemed relieved to be rid of her. Whatever, she thought. It wasn’t like she was interested in him. She had bigger things to worry about, like a recurring dream. But after two hours surfing the internet, she was coming up empty. Sure, she found plenty of website that claimed they could interpret her dream. All she had to do was type it in the box, and some little analyzer would spit out an explanation. But she felt like there had to be more to it than that. She felt that dreams were an incredibly personal thing, and she believed from what she had read in her Bible, that they were also sacred―used by God as a form of communication to His people. This alone made her believe that there was no way a computer could analyze her dream, much less give her anything close to an accurate interpretation.
“Closing time, kiddo,” Aunt Darla called to her from the front desk of the library.
“Okay, I’m coming.” She closed the internet browser and gathered her things, feeling utterly discouraged and dreading going to sleep. She didn’t want to revisit the dream again. She didn’t want to face a future that was anything less than what she had planned for herself. The dream was the complete opposite of what she wanted―what she had already planned to do once she graduated.
Serenity walked out with her aunt and the other ladies that worked at the library and waved to them as they got in their cars.
“I’ll see you at the house,” Darla told her. Serenity noticed the weariness in her aunt’s eyes and frowned. “Aunt Darla, is there anything I can do for you? Any way I can help at home or the library?”
Darla smiled at her and walked back to her giving her a tight hug. “You aren’t supposed to be worrying about me; you’re the teenager remember. You’re supposed to be going to parties, crying over boys, and falling asleep in class because you stayed up way too late reading the latest teen romance novel.”
“Oh, is that how a teenager acts? I didn’t realize; I’ll be sure and make those changes for you,” Serenity teased.
Her aunt’s face grew serious. “Thank you for asking, but really I’m fine. Just tired.”
Serenity nodded and watched her aunt get in her car before she climbed into her own. Trusting that her aunt was being honest with her, she pushed away her concern and focused on the mystery that continued to plague her. The entire drive home her mind was sifting through the information she had read on the internet, hoping to find something that might help. But regardless of how many times she recited the information to herself, it didn’t change the content of it, and the content was completely unhelpful to her.
Her evening consisted of a quick dinner with her aunt and then homework, a shower, teeth brushing, and finally the dreaded walk to her bed. Only a little over a week ago, she had seen her bed as a haven to escape into sleep from the worries and stress of the world, but now it was a prison. It held her captive, as the rest her body required f
orced her to relive the dream, and none of her attempts to change the dream had been effective. It was almost as if someone else was controlling it. She shivered at that thought as she pulled back the comforter and slipped beneath the cool sheets. That was a feeling she had always loved―the first moment of getting into bed when the sheets weren’t yet warm from her body and the cool fabric eased the tension from tired muscles. Now it only caused her to shiver as she prepared herself to allow sleep to pull her under.
Serenity knew she was asleep, even as she was blinking her eyes open. She looked around her and, once again, she found herself sitting in the waiting room of her family doctor. There were a few other adults sitting in the room, and on the far side of the room, a young girl of about seven or eight years of age was standing, staring at the large aquarium that took up most of the wall. She had smooth, ebony skin and her hair was pulled back in a tight braid that hung down her back in a shiny rope. Serenity had the distinct impression that she needed to talk to the girl, but just like the other times in the dream, she resisted. Something about the child felt ominous, and Serenity didn’t want to know what it was. All of a sudden the heads of everyone in the room snapped up and looked straight at her. She turned to her right to see that even Darla was staring at her. The only one not looking at her was the little girl.
“You must stay,” they all said in unison. Serenity was sure that at any moment the music from Psycho would begin playing over the loud speaker instead of the local Christian radio station that the office usually piped in. “Your place is here. You are needed. The future depends on the path you will choose.”
“Oh, for goodness sakes, are you trying to scare her half to death?” To Serenity’s surprise, the girl was the one who had spoken. She had turned around and was looking up at the ceiling as if it would speak back. “For someone who has been doing this for as long as you have, you’d think you could be a little less creepy.”
“Who are you talking to?” Serenity asked.
The girl's head lowered and kind hazel eyes met her own. She smiled at her and Serenity found herself smiling back.
“The Sandman, of course,” the girl told her matter-of-fact like. She walked over to the seat on her left and sat down with her legs dangling freely in the air. “I’m Emma,” the girl said as she held out her hand to Serenity.
Serenity took the offered hand and shook it, noting how much smaller it was than hers. “Nice to meet you, Emma; I’m Serenity.”
“You don’t have to do what they say―what he,” she motioned up to the ceiling, “is trying to influence you to do.”
“You mean the Sandman?” Serenity asked. Her interest had been peaked the moment Emma had mentioned the mythical character, and she wondered if the need to know if he was real made her just a bit loony.
Emma nodded. “Who do you think brings the dreams?”
“But how does he give dreams to everyone that is sleeping? How can he be all those places at once?”
Emma giggled and looked at her as if she’d just asked her what shape a yield sign was. Apparently, the girl deemed her question ridiculous. Finally, Emma let out a sigh as she shook her head with a grin on her face. Her obvious disappointment in Serenity’s lack of knowledge appeared to be amusing the young girl.
“He doesn’t give dreams to everyone, silly, that just how the story has been told. Mama says, 'Fairytales are just real stories that got told so many times that the facts get stretched like over strung taffy.' ”
“Are you saying the Sandman is real?”
“Yep, he’s as real as me. But he isn’t human; he works for…,” she pointed up with her finger and then whispered, “you know who.”
“God?” Serenity asked.
Emma shrugged. “Dair calls him the Creator.”
“Who is Dair and how can the Sandman work for God, or the Creator, or whatever?”
Again with the look. “Don’t they teach you anything in that high school?” Emma asked.
“Sure, we studied mythology in our English class, but they didn’t exactly tell us the myths are real,” Serenity explained. “So,” she prompted.
“Okay, I’ll give you the quick version. The Sandman is Dair. . . that’s well . . .wait okay; his real name is Brudair, but all the angels call him Dair for short. So Dair, known to the humans as the Sandman, is the Creator’s deliverer. He is the one who brings the dreams to those that the Creator deems important. But Dair says that when he says important it means, important, like these people are going to change the course of history in some way. Like Solomon in the Bible, he had tons of dreams; do you know anything about the Bible? Because, if not, than that point is not going to make sense to you.”
“I know enough to understand what you’re saying. The God in the Bible spoke to lots of people in the Bible through dreams.”
“Exactly,” Emma agreed.
“Are God and the Creator one in the same?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know. I’m only eight,” she said it as if she hadn’t just explained a mythological being with as much clarity as a college professor. “All I know is what Dair has told me, and he always refers to his boss as the Creator.”
“Okay, unlike the myth, Dair,” Serenity said the name as if it were a question, “doesn’t bring dreams to children all over the world but only to people he is assigned to by this Creator.”
“Now, you’re catching on,” Emma grinned, her white teeth standing out like beautiful pearls against her dark skin.
Serenity wasn’t sure if she should be embarrassed by being praised by an eight-year-old or proud of herself for following along and not just telling the kid that there was no Sandman.
“Dair said his job is to make suggestions in a person’s dream to help them decide to go in the direction that the Creator has planned for them. He said he can’t force them to make the decision, but he can influence them so that the choice seems like it was theirs all along.”
“Can I just ask―how did you get so smart and mature for an eight-year-old?” Serenity interrupted.
““My mama says, 'I have an old soul,' ” Emma told her.
“Well, your mama’s apparently done a pretty good job of raising you,” Serenity told her.
“Well, duh,” Emma said suddenly sounding very much like an eight-year-old. “I test at a college level in nearly all my subjects. Now can we get back to Dair because we don’t have all the time in the world; we have to wake up eventually.”
Serenity decided not to touch that comment with a ten foot pole. Though Emma had just implied that she was asleep and somehow a part of her dream, it was just too much to even consider.
“Please continue,” she told the girl.
“Dair can’t tell the people he’s assigned to why they have to go a certain direction, and he said sometimes he doesn’t fully know why. All he can do is give them a dream that will hopefully result in them doing the Creator’s will.”
“Wow,” Serenity breathed out. “No pressure on the Sandman, huh?”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t want his job. Imagine if he was assigned someone that was supposed to do something like cure cancer and they choose the wrong path.”
Serenity didn’t know if she believed a word of what Emma was saying, but for a moment she thought about the possibility that Dair was real and how difficult his existence would be. She wondered if he felt responsible when his charge chose incorrectly, and then something awful happened because of that choice. As Emma had said, she wouldn’t want that job.
“My times up,” Emma suddenly said as she stood. “Remember you don’t have to do what the Sandman is trying to get you to. You do have a choice.”
“But at what price?” Serenity asked.
Emma shrugged. “Could be world peace or the answer to global warming, although my mom says that’s a crock.”
Serenity laughed. Emma waved at her and then headed for the door of the clinic. Before the door had fully closed, Serenity was pulled from the dream and her eyes opened to the sunli
ght shining through her window. She sat up in bed as Emma’s word echoed in her mind―Could be world peace. That was what the little girl said could be the price paid if someone picks the wrong path—if they don’t follow their dream. Was the same true for her? If Serenity chose to leave Yellville, to follow her dreams, the consequences would not be something small. Because according to the eight-year-old in her dream, the Sandman only came to those who were going to influence history in a big way.
“The Sandman?” she huffed out as she let the moment of panic slip away. Was she really going to base her decision off of what a kid said in her dreams about a children’s tale? Perhaps, the dream was just her subconscious way of dealing with the guilt she felt over leaving. Maybe some small part of her wanted to stay because she didn’t want to leave Darla and Wayne to fend for themselves.
Blowing out a breath that caused her cheeks to puff out like a blowfish, she pushed the covers back and got out of bed. Serenity raised her arms up over her head and stretched the kinks out. For the first time in six days, she had slept through the entire night. She had finally just given into the dream and let it run its course. Though she didn’t feel completely rested, she wouldn’t complain. At least the dark circles under her eyes were gone she noted as she walked past her dresser mirror toward the bathroom.
After showering, dressing, and taming her wild, long locks, she headed down for breakfast only to find a note next to gravy smothered biscuits. The note read: Had to get to work early to put up the Christmas decorations. Eat your breakfast and have a great day! Love, Aunt Darla.
“Like I have to be told to eat biscuits and gravy,” she muttered under her breath as she began shoveling the gooey goodness into her mouth. As she ate, her mind revisited her conversation with Emma.
As the day wore on, the strange conversation refused to leave her mind. By the time the school bell rang signaling the end of the day, Serenity’s head hurt from all the concentration she had given to the dream. She couldn’t really bring herself to believe in a being such as the Sandman, not to mention the fact that his real name was Dair. What kind of a name was Dair, anyway? It sounded like, ‘I DARE you to go jump off a bridge.’ Maybe now that she had let the dream play out in its entirety, it would go away and she could finally move on. Surely that would be the case.