Fields of Teslara

The dreams always started the same way. A cold, dark concrete room. An open expanse, endless even, so vast its breadth made her stomach drop as if she was looking over a steep cliff. Her body was present but inaccessible to her except her eyes. 


And there she stood, as if for hours, watching. Scanning for some sign of an end to the slabs of gray to no avail. Then in the midst of her mental drowning, a window directly in front of her slides open bathing her in a single ray of filthy florescent light. It is then in an attempt to to shield her eyes that she regains domain of her being only to realize she has been shackled along what would be the room's back wall. she panics momentarily, twisting each wrist and ankle until the skin beneath each cuff is raw and bloody, but her eyes quickly track back to that window. Where before there was only blinding light, now there are faces. Writhing to fit in that small rectangular square so they may stare back at her. 


In some dreams, the people on the other side are doctors taking notes feverously. In others, the window never opens. Still in others, she never resists the chains nor does she ever see her body. Rather she remained omnipresent, affected only by that never ending expanse. 


They began on the night of her father's death. He had moved his family to one of the sister islands of Teslara, a small sanctuary called Dantia, to live among what last few natives still existed. It was a move purely motivated by the desire to remove them from the political unrest churning below Teslara's surface.