50- In Which Foreshadowing Occurs

Elena woke up in the morning and stared at the ceiling for a long time. She was still in her house in the real world. She didn't think she would ever be disappointed that she wasn't hallucinating.

She went down the stairs without doing any morning rituals to prepare her for the school day (that she may or may not actually have). Instead, she went right to the television and turned it on. In the distance, she heard the sound of her alarm clock buzzing. She didn't even realize she had gotten up before the alarm even went off. She was understandably frazzled.

And there was no reason for it. To put in simple terms, this is what was happening to her:

Firstly, she was having a dream.

Secondly, she was growing attached to the people in the dream.

Now, the people in the dream were suffering.

Therefore, she was becoming depressed.

It wasn't right. She shouldn't be feeling this about fictional people. It would be like watching a movie about fictional events and then becoming upset long after the movie ended, no matter how emotional it was.

She was hoping there would be something in the news that would clue her in to what she was supposed to do next. Maybe something she could take back to the fantasy world and use as a vision. After all, these trips to the real world were visions, according to these fake people. Again, she was more convinced about what was going to happen someplace fake rather than someplace real.

A few minutes later, she heard the alarm turn off. Then, some footsteps as Aunt Jane came around the corner, yawning.

"Did you leave your alarm on, Elena?" Aunt Jane asked (the question was a little silly since obviously Elena left her alarm on since it had…ya'know… been on).

"Sorry," said Elena. "I didn't mean to." (Another pointless addition to this banter. Why would she intentionally leave something annoying like that on to irritate other people in the household?)

"What are you watching?"

"The news."

(Still, more pointless banter—but it's morning and they both just woke up so we can forgive their feeble attempts at conversation.)

Aunt Jane stayed silent as she watched the television screen as well. Elena was watching the pictures and she could hear the drone of the reporters, but she wasn't processing any of the information. She was quite busy worrying about Lawson. So, if the reporters did say anything that would be useful to her when she returned to the fantasy world, then she would have missed it (thankfully, they didn't say anything useful).

"You going to school today, Elena?" Aunt Jane asked in a tone that was meant to be casual, like everyone had this type of discussion in the morning.

"Yeah."

"It's just that you seem a little off today."

"I do? You can already tell?"

"Well, I've never seen you get up and turn on the news first thing. You always just sit down here and eat your cereal in your morning trance. You're not even dressed yet."

"I've been having weird dreams recently," Elena said, putting the statement extremely lightly. She wasn't in love with telling the story to another person right now. The last two times she told the story to anyone, she only got treated like a crazy person. Which was probably justified, since the story was pretty crazy.

"Are you waiting to hear anything in particular?"

"Not really," Elena said, turning off the television since it being on seemed to be a source of great confusion for Aunt Jane.

"Okay," said Aunt Jane. "If you need to talk about anything, let me know. That's what I'm here for."

"I'm fine. I'm going to school today."

Aunt Jane smiled as Elena smiled as well.

Elena's smile was extremely half hearted, however. She really only made the attempt to put Aunt Jane at ease as she went back up the stairs to actually start getting ready for school. She started to ready herself for the morning shower when she heard something strange above her, like someone was tapping on the ceiling.

Confused, she searched the ceiling for the source of the tapping. The tapping grew increasingly louder. She was starting to feel a bit afraid since she couldn't see anything, so she went out into the hallway, but she could still hear the tapping.

She couldn't figure out if it was a good or bad thing that she could hear the tapping even in the hallway. She went back down the stairs in response to hearing Aunt Jane exclaim something in wonder at nearly as the tapping increased in volume so it began to sound more like pounding.

"What is it?" Elena questioned, running over to Aunt Jane who was standing at the backdoor, staring up at the sky.

"Look at this…" Aunt Jane muttered.

Elena went to the window and craned her neck so she could see up. There were circular chunks of ice dropping from the sky, landing on the house and around the yard, causing the pounding sound on the roof.

"What…?" Elena questioned.

"It's hail…"

"In April?"

"Strange…"

Elena bit her lip at the hail in April. She wondered if it had any significance to her daydreams and fantasies. The hail falling from the sky. This never happened before. But now that there was the existence of something called the Kingdom of Hail, there it was.

There was a possibility that these daydreams were probably a little more than daydreams.

/end book 1

A/N: I hope to see you all soon in book two! Again, sorry for the hiatus due to massive earthquakes, tsunami and threat of radiation here in Japan. I'm pretty sure I'm back now assuming the world holds still!