A universe lives inside her.

Falling asleep was hard. Tomorrow, Hope would have to break away from Angel, Ivy and their clique. 

When her eyes finally shut, Hope slept, but that night felt different. She did not toss or turn. Hope awakened in another place, where she felt light, and airy. Then, Hope saw her.

Beautiful and fearsome, her cottony black hair blew around in a calm, warm breeze. The only light came from the bluish-white light shining through the girl’s flaming amber eyes. Hope’s eyes widened as the girl disappeared suddenly and dispersed into little specks forming what looked like a large cloud of twinkling dust in midair. The dust swirled slowly and then stretched out into a long trail maybe a half-mile long. It moved slowly toward the mesmerized human in front of it. Hope drew back, cringing as it came closer. The trail encircled Hope, and she shrank. Something at the front of the dust trail ignited in a bluish-white flame, and then the flame shot backward, igniting the rest of the trail and setting every particle of the trail ablaze. 

Hope covered her eyes from the light, as the girl’s long stretch of bluish-whiteness wrapped around Hope. As Hope lowered her hand, the girl’s intense light radiated across the atmosphere and the darkness of night disappeared. Her light particles spread over every object, coloring each one brightly. A fuchsia and lavender mountainscape appeared in the distance. It was more beautiful than any place Hope had ever seen. The mountains appeared to be shiny, like crystals. Big drops of silvery liquid formed a stream that floated in the air from Hope toward the mountains.

Hope wasn’t sure if her heart was still beating. There was no ground beneath her. She reached out to touch the silvery liquid as it moved away from her, the way electrically charged water moved away from a magnet. Everything was so quiet. There were no other people or animals in the landscape, just Hope and the beautiful girl of fiery dust. 

The girl floated closer to Hope and they stared at each other. Hope was entranced by what looked like twisting, golden ropes crisscrossing everywhere around them. The ropes flickered and dimmed, flashing repeatedly, and they carried what appeared to be many colorful droplets of something that flowed between the two of them. The girl’s fiery eyes looked like jewels with galaxies inside. Out of them flowed the colorful droplets of light, from the girl’s eyes into Hope’s eyes, filling Hope with a sense of total peace. Hope felt that this girl knew her somehow - knew how Hope felt, what she experienced, what pained and saddened her, and maybe even things Hope didn’t know about herself. 

This girl’s fireball slowly dimmed, and her long trail of dust condensed back into a small cloud. As her light retreated, the atmosphere turned dark again, and she rematerialized as a human-like body, but the bluish-white light that flowed from her fiery eyes continued to glow. 

Hope’s brain felt bathed in energy, like it was fresher and recharged now so that she could do anything. 

As Hope began to feel happy about this new life she had, she awoke. She was in her bed, back in abysmal Opal Lake. Disappointment took over as always, but something was different now.