The Dream Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow-

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

-  From “A Dream Within A Dream” by Edgar Allan Poe

She thanked the driver as she shouldered her backpack, opened the door and climbed to the roof of the car going 70 miles an hour down the freeway. Pushing off the edge with her feet, wings black as night unfurled behind her and she tore off in the direction she came from, weaving in and out of traffic. Her eyes glowed red and fangs panged in reminder of the hunger she’d been avoiding. ‘If only,’ she thought to herself, mid-flight, ‘if only I’d never fallen in love, maybe I’d still allow myself to give in to my hunger.’

With that, she pulled up and flew high above the clouds, bored of her game of chicken. Once she got above the clouds she stopped and simply glided along the drafts, basking in the moonlight. ‘Pure energy is up here,’ she thought to herself, ‘but why? Why does it feel so different, so much better up here than below?’ she questioned herself for the hundredth, if not thousandth, time.

Unable to answer herself, she stopped flapping and let her body fall, straight as an arrow. She closed her eyes, letting the Earth tell her when to pull up, which she did, mere inches from the ground. Dropping to the ground after floating for a couple of minutes, she wandered around in the unfamiliar field. After a few minutes, she yawned and sighed, stretching her limbs. “I guess I’ll camp here for the night,” she mumbled to herself as she slipped her backpack off and rummaged through it, pulling out a sleeping bag and small, single person tent.

Quickly setting up camp as the moon reached its peak, she yawned and settled in, closing her eyes and drifting off into a dreamless sleep.