Memory, Dream, or Promise?

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I don't dream much, and when I do it's usually something without much meaning or effect on me, but every once in a while there's an image that sticks with me, bonded to the stuff of my soul. This is the oldest of that kind.

I had never actually had a nightmare before this, and I didn't really think that this counted. You see, I was terrified by the seven figures of cold justice. I wanted to run away and hide, even though doing so would mean there would be nothing stopping those things from destroying my best friend in the world, Alisa ([link]). I was a coward, you see, and I had abandoned her in less scary situations. In that sense it was a nightmare.

But this one didn't count, because, through all my fear, and contrary to my nature, I stood up and told them that they couldn't have her, no matter what she had done to deserve it, or what she thought she had done to deserve it. Even though I was very young, very, very young, I loved Alisa Green, and this proved it.

All at once, a miraculous thing happened - nothing. My muscles were shaking under the intensity with which I strained them, forcing myself to stand still through tears of terror at the expectation that, at any moment, the Wraths would come down on me and take us both. But they didn't move.

"Step aside, child! We don't want YOU." The central, most terrible figure ordered.

I shut my eyes tight and shook my head. I wasn't going to move.

The anger in the air at my refusal became palpable, saturating the void around me...but still...they did not move.

It sounds cliché, but I think, now, that it was my love for her that made us indomitable. I always expected that I would love her forever; I just never expected that so many years later I would be grasping so desperately internally and retrospectively for that power that kept her safe.

It was many years after that when I began training in the martial arts, and many more years still before I exhibited that kind of determined, confident courage that it took to stand between the Wraths and Alisa, but that has become the zenith of my personal progression, the ideal for which I strive. Coming as far as I have from that shy coward in my youth has only showed me how much further I must go before I am satisfied. I will protect those that I love. Always.