My glass outside door slides open and closes quickly to keep the hot, outside air from leaking into my bedroom. The squishy soft carpet feels good under bare feet. I wipe my feet bottoms of the extra sand

“I have to find it,” I think.

I move to my closet. The cheap hollow doors folds open.

I let my eyes adjust to the darkness inside. I'm looking for something – a story. I'm Nahlia by the way. Nahlia Calihari. I'm sixteen and some. Girl. Um. I live in my comfy small house in Neandeleria. We call it Neandeleria, but more like it's pronounced Nandeleria. The “e” has lost it's original meaning. We're stupid like that and not everything makes sense. Ya get me?

I hide a lot in my house...for various reasons. I like reading. I look around at my closet and push some scraping hangars and clothes aside. The air conditioning vents turn on. Nice and cool in my room again. I bump into my closet door and hear the rollers a few times. It folds open and closed as I play with it back-and-forth.

“I put it somewhere....”

Ah the shoe box! My rub my fingers over a dusty shoe box. I sneeze. Sorry.

I hold the lid high and let the contents fall to the ground near my feet. I was barefoot just like on the beach. Beach. Beach. Beach I hum. A book falls out and I toss the lid aside. My adventurous fingers feel the textured smoothness of a worn leather cover. I open up my story called The Far Away Dream, My eyes start to sift through the words.

“Ages ago there existed a group of beings known as the possessors. Among these beings was their sacred priesthood known as the dreamers; and it was this sacred priesthood that held together the Possessors’ entire existence. Each of the possessor beings had no body of their own, and thus they had to be stolen....... or created – the priesthood's forte.

Deep within the caverns of their ancient city, the priesthood would spend days drawing out their artistic desires. Their madness would end with finished drawings of masterpiece bodies; beautiful drawings crafted with imagination and the skill of a hand. Yet, the pictures themselves remained inanimate without the finishing touch.

Such drawings required the energy of souls to be brought into the world. The vacant bodies remained unborn until infused with the life of another. Thus, began the slave raids of the possessor beings against their neighbors. Even though they could possess their neighbors' bodies, they did not. The drawings of the dreamers were fairer than the prisoners they would sacrifice for their art.

So, far beneath their city, the possessors gathered prisoners. Souls were stolen and drawings crawled out from their sacred wombs; bodies whose beauty was only limited to the souls' energy that gave birth to them; magnificent glowing bodies that brought the physical to its knees. Yet even the greatest of the priesthood's masterpieces was nothing compared to their crowning jewel; a gem that they thieved.

Deep within the caverns, there was a dreamer more talented than the rest. He was a pilot. A pilot called Dominion. For unlike the rest of the priesthood, he drew not a body, but an entire world. One even fairer than the one they lived in. And so, came the day that the priesthood found his drawing and became envious, wishing to destroy it.

Yet, their envy ceased, when they gazed upon his work. It captivated them, and they yearned to bring it to life as their own. So, the priesthood stole his drawing and the dreamer was enslaved to become a sacrifice for his own picture.

Thus, the priesthood set out on their final journey. There were not enough slaves in the neighboring lands for their stolen picture to be brought to life. So, the possessors traveled to faraway lands with their drawn bodies to reap what they wanted. Yet, such pillaging planted the seeds of their downfall - seeds that sprouted rapidly.

With each passing invasion, hands were chained until they filled every street of the possessor’s civilization. A sacred ceremony was prepared throughout the city as the priesthood set up their large sacrifice deep within the city’s caverns – a sacrifice that would never happen. During the event, the loved ones of those the possessors enslaved came with vengeance. They came with pain and with tears, wishing to reclaim their families. They came with hate, calling themselves Neandelerians. They swept across the possessor beings with fury and double-headed axes. They destroyed the city and lay waste to their civilization; and those possessor beings that survived, fled west to the Ryoken lands - some with bodies, and some without.

So to this day, rumors whisper of this picture. The one the priesthood wanted to create, but failed to do so. And one day, far beneath the ancient city, one may still find the dreamer's drawing. An escape from this world, a heavenly place rumored with no suffering and a place that......”

The front door opens and I panic.

“Oh my God, Tayt. You should go! You need to go! Now!,” I say frantically to him.

There's another in the room with me. My friend Tayt gets up to scurry away.

The sliding door to my bedroom slides open. Tayt walks outside onto the beach, leaving me all alone. I take a worried look around me.

My book is quickly thrown behind the sound of my folding closet doors.