his sword to The Kind Stranger's neck.
"Watch out!" I shouted to The Kind Stranger in warning as a flurry of molten energy erupted from the orb.
All at once, the hundreds of soldiers peered up at me. The gushing liquid disintegrated the soldier I'd aimed for as soon as it grazed his helmet, and a chain reaction was caused, so one by one, they all crackled into nothingness.
The Kind Stranger raised his fist, and waves of disorientation circled around me, causing me to fall from the sky. At the exact right moment, he caught me and jumped into the rushing waters of the river, seeking out the crystal cave we'd use to send me back to the waking world.
We submerged together and he dragged me to the entrance, ducking inside and raising me up to the ledge as I caught my breath.
"I'm so sorry!" I whined to him, and he only laughed.
"You did great, Selene," he smirked, and it occurred to me that this had all been carefully planned.
"Wait! You-"
"Yes. I did."
I didn't know whether to laugh, sigh, or slap his shoulder, so I settled on pouting as the waters rose.
"Are you upset with me?" The Kind Stranger carelessly asked, gently holding my hand and batting wide eyes.
I snatched my hand away from his, "You tricked me!"
He only nodded, "But you learned something, didn't you?"
I scoffed, "Lots of things. For instance, I should never run into things at school. I should never trust myself with Andromedian orbs, and I should never trust you not to use my weaknesses to strengthen me."
The Kind Stranger shook his head as the crystal-clear depths spilled over the entrance of the cave and above our waists.
"You're almost exactly like her that way, Selene. If only you could've known her in the waking world."
I tried focusing on responding to The Kind Stranger, but my own relentless fears settled in and I began trembling.
"Who?" I asked shakily, and The Kind Stranger smiled warmly, holding my hand.
He waited to speak again until the water was at my chin, "Your birth mother."
I whipped my head around to question him further, but he was gone. Then once again, all around me was the waves, and I powerlessly jolted around as they consumed me.
***
My eyes opened wide and I sat up abruptly. Then I winced and slowly fell back against the cot in the nurse's office.
The cloying scent of cucumber melon body lotion wafted nearer to me as the popular girl I'd seen at my locker rushed to my side.
"Calm down. The nurse said you're not supposed to be moving," she told me softly, and I squinted as the light from the window reflected off of her golden hoops.
I didn't even care about the embarrassment of running into something and blacking out in front of one of the most popular divas in school. I could focus only on the intensity of every little bit of light and the throbbing in my head.
"Why are you still here?" I asked her groggily, and she rolled her eyes.
"You walked into a trash bin on wheels and passed out in the hallway. I have a rep. to protect, you know," she explained, and I couldn't tell if she was joking or not.
I decided that I didn't care enough to ask, so in the silence, she went on.
"You feel okay?"
I met her eyes again, shocked at the seemingly genuine concern in her voice.
"Why's it sound like that's a hard thing for you to ask?" I questioned her, and she sighed exasperatedly.
"Maybe it'd be easier for you to make friends if you stopped being so aggressive," she huffed.
"You didn't answer my question."
"And you didn't answer mine."
My arms wobbled like jello trying to support my upper body to sit up, and the pounding in my head intensified for several excruciating moments.
The girl worriedly glanced at me, coming closer and raising her hand inches behind my back in case I started to fall again. She handed me a blue ice pack from the bedside table, and when I looked at her face to receive it, she quickly changed her expression from the genuine concern to annoyance.
"I said the nurse didn't want you to move," she scoffed, flipping her hair sassily, and how it did not catch in her giant earring was beyond me.
"You wanted me to answer your question. I will," I announced, and her annoyance became an icy blank expression as she folded her arms in anticipation.
"Where to start?" I began, "Well, first you approached me at my locker asking about my dead friend-"
"I didn't know that!"
"And then you invited me, a literal stranger to you, to a college party with absolutely no explanation whatsoever, which was likely a false pretense to make me the butt of you and your mini gang's jokes throughout the night. Oh, and then I blacked out, that was lovely..."
"If you don't want to go you could literally just say that."
We both fell silent. I was about to rebuttal, countering that the invitation was fabricated anyways, when my mom and dad stormed into the room.
"Eden! We came as soon as we could, honey!" my mom told me frantically, ushering the popular girl to the side and kneeling next to me.
"Margaret, I told you we shouldn't have let her go to school today! All these recurring nightmares and the screaming you tell me about, we should've known!" my dad paced the room and shook his head, halting abruptly to tap something
