Shadows and Nightmares

In the endless procession of too-bright dreams, the Shadow came again, laughing softly, cruelly.

"You cannot escape me even here, Antarin. I am always with you," it mocked.

Around the dark form, the dream shredded to tatters, a lovely vision of a twi'lek beauty he thought he should know. Her face twisted in anguish and vanished into the Shadow. A lump of ice seemed to form in Antarin's throat. Though thick with disuse, he found his voice at last.

"Begone, Shadow!" he ordered, as he'd done an uncountable number of times since falling into this endless dream. But in his nightmares, the sure voice of command did not carry the weight it did in waking life.

As before, the Shadow did not obey, but replied only with the same question it always asked.

"Where is she?"

Antarin squeezed his eyes shut, or he imagined he did. Unbidden, images of her as she'd been before the dark times floated before him. Each detail was perfect -- the soft oval of her face, the warm brown of her eyes, her slender body, already betokening the beauty that she would become. Or would have. The Shadow watched the fleeting thoughts as they appeared and faded from view like water vapor in space -- frozen to micro-crystals and shattered.

"I told long ago--you...HE...can't have her," Antarin choked, "you will never have her."

The shadow hissed, swirled around him, bringing with it a deeper cold.

"Only WE can keep her safe in this galaxy gone mad, Antarin. They will hate her. She is a child, yet they will murder her. We can protect her. YOU can protect her."

Antarin turned away from the shadow, toward a glimmer of brightness that had appeared behind him. He walked calmly towards that star-point of light.

"She is close, isn't she? She is always close to you, Antarin," the Shadow said, following. "It is simple. Show me and I'll leave your dreams forever."

For an instant, he considered its offer. He was so tired, so tired of running from what he'd done to the child. Tired of the guilt for denying her a choice, even when there seemed to be no choices left to make. Perhaps he should have considered their offer long ago. It would have spared him the sight of that beloved face, those knowing brown eyes meeting his as she calmly walked to her fate. Perhaps there was peace there, but Antarin Gadj remembered only judgement in her eyes.

But no. The Shadow was merely taunting him. He could stomach it's mockery if only it kept her safe until....

The starlight grew brighter, and he heard other voices besides his own and the Shadow's. Real voices, not dreams. Was he to wake from these eternal visions at last? Faces appeared around him, some human, some alien -- a twi'lek--male, this time--that he also felt he should know. He heard the soft beeping of a medical monitor, and the thrum of a starship engine. The menace of the Shadow receded but did not vanish, for it, like the child's haunted face, was always with him. No! The Shadow was closer to her than it realized! It must not find her.

He reached out and clutched the arm of one of the humans who stood over him, a grizzled ruffian who nonetheless had the bearing of a soldier. Liike the twi'lek, he seemed familiar, too.

"We must go back to Ranjahr," Antarin croaked at the man. His voice became higher, and he knew from their looks that he must have sounded shrill to the others, but he didn't care if they thought him mad.

"We must find her before he does. Before the Shadow returns, we must hide her away again. Denia! We have to save Denia!"