It’s funny how so little words can say so much…

In my dream, I was with my daughter, cosmic spheres sewn neatly into her silver, silk dress. She looked pale, ashen by the sight before us. We were on a bluff in the middle of a desert, warships and battle cruisers casting shadows on the red sand below. Our dresses whipped around out legs in the wild, desert gust.

Blood was strewn like a crimson curtain across the flat plains before us, rippling in the headwind. A hot, clotting smell was in the air, snaring our senses with the incense of dried-up, rotting flesh. A wave of smoke collided with us, pungent with the smell of hot blood. Skeletons of ships lay stripped and bare in the midst of the piles of bodies.

A slow, boiling dread crept into my mind, trapping my thoughts in a black bubble. The only living thought that traced around the edges of my mind was wonder. Wondering whether this was indeed the future of the planet, wondering if my daughter and I would be able to make it through, wondering if it was even a dream.

Finally, I gathered enough sense to grab my daughter, engulfing her tiny body in my arms. As I touched her cold arms, an erupting noise broke into our ears, accompanied by a spine-curling black shadow that fell over the land, waxing as the sound grew. I slammed my eyes shut, afraid to see what was about to obliterate us. I felt my body in the real world stir slightly and took it as a window of opportunity.

"Wake up now!" I screamed into my daughter's ear, over the roar of whatever was falling. Slowly, I felt my body being pulled away from the deathly pressure collapsing on us. My fingers slipped away from my daughter, my heart reluctant to leave her.

I opened my eyes, just in time to see the warscene melt into a white forever. My dream body jerked back like a hook caught me, yanking me into my body in the real world, safe and sound in my bed where my daughter was staring at me with her blue eyes from my bedside.