Chapter 1 ## The First Dream
462 Words
The heat woke her first.
Sari Dewi lay still in the dark, her cotton nightdress sticking to her back. The ceiling fan spun above, pushing the same thick air in lazy circles. Outside, rain drummed on the tin roof—the start of another wet season night. Frogs called from the rice paddies, a sound so familiar she usually slept through it.
Not tonight.
She turned onto her side, kicked the thin sheet away, and closed her eyes again. The mattress creaked. Somewhere in the house, the wooden floor groaned—old teak, settling into its hundredth year. Her grandmother Nenek would be asleep in the next room, her breathing slow and even.
Sari counted her own breaths. One. Two. Three.
The rain softened. The fan clicked on each rotation.
She didn't remember falling asleep.
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The sky was grey.
Not the grey of a cloudy morning in Java—that was soft, wet, the colour of river stones. This was hard grey. Cold grey. The grey of steel and glass and a city that had never known a rainy season.
She stood at a window.
Below her, buildings rose like blades. The streets were too far to see, lost in a haze that wasn't mist or smoke. Everything was sharp edges. Every line cut.
And she wasn't alone.
She felt him before she saw him. He was behind her—tall, silent, his presence a weight in the air. Not threatening. Just there. Just existing in the same impossible space.
Her heart beat faster. Not fear. Something else. Something she didn't have a name for.
She tried to turn.
The dream broke.
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Sari opened her eyes to darkness. The fan still spun. The rain had stopped.
Her pillow was wet.
She touched her cheek. Damp. Not sweat—tears. She had been crying in her sleep, and she didn't know why.
Outside, the first light of dawn began to grey the window—a different grey. Soft. Wet. Familiar.
She sat up slowly, pressing her palm to her chest. Her heart was still racing.
*The cold*, she thought. *I've never felt cold like that.*
Not in Java. Not anywhere she had ever been.
She reached for the notebook on her bedside table—the one she used for lesson plans—and opened it to a blank page. Her pen hovered above the paper.
She didn't know what to write.
*Grey city. Tall buildings. A window.*
*Someone behind me.*
She stopped. Read the words. They meant nothing. They meant everything.
Outside, a rooster called. The village was waking up.
Sari closed the notebook and lay back down, staring at the ceiling fan.
It wasn't a normal dream.
She knew that already.
She just didn't know what else it could be.
- Writer
