“Liam! Get up! Or you’ll get late for high school!” His mother said.
Enter Liam Smith. He was still sleepy from last night’s party. The party was his girlfriend’s birthday, which she was celebrating her “16 years of time on the planet”. It was cool but he never expected it to take so long until midnight. That’s probably the reason why he became very sleepy in the morning.
He opens his eyes. Still feeling groggy from last night. He was up pretty late and went to sleep at 1:00 AM in the night. So yeah. His school would have started at 7:30 AM so of course he was going to gain a missing note. Liam doesn’t like missing notes. He immediately decided to lift his body up and at an angle, could see what was going on.
“Yeah mom! I’m going to school today, like any other.” Liam responded.
Deciding to move his muscles to leave the bed... of his bedroom. He got up and decided to prepare breakfast. His brother, Ruben, wasn’t there strangely. It was definitely Ruben being a rover scout since his scouting camp always begins on a Monday. Oh Monday, Liam hates Mondays.
Bread or a simple apple was typically his preferred choice for breakfast yet today, he probably didn’t have time for either as he didn’t know if he had enough time. Checking his phone with a quick glance he noticed it was only seven thirty so he still has a half hour and plenty of time to get ready even though his mother typically drove slower than he liked. Honestly if his father was around to drive he would have an extra fifteen minutes at home.
Then comes what he calls the daily cycle: wake up, brush his teeth, put on the uniform, drive to school, do the studies, go back home and have free time on his computer before eating dinner and going to sleep.
His high school classes usually began at 8:00 AM before ending at 2:00 PM which during 12:00 PM was the usual time for lunch. No, not lunchables he always brought... but... you guessed it, apples. The reason was today’s class.
In this class on biology, the teacher, Peter Johnson Sr., made a personal question to every single student, questioning “which animal was their favorite”. He noted that it wasn’t to shame them, just because he was curious, since animals were a part of biology. Liam’s response? Horses.
These coated, four-hooved, tailed animals were his favorite not because they were cool or not only because they were a part of conquests or fast, because they were unique than any other animal.
The bullies decided to take care of the situation and do what he expected. Bullying.
“Huh. Probably because you are obsessed with watching them from a distance. Haha!” Said Brent Alexander.
Enter his girlfriend, Amelia Hansen. Liam had been dating since he came to the Bronx High School of Science. He wanted to study science at his best but also to learn about biology to his surprise... but back to Amelia, Liam met her during a prom at the end of his elementary school tenure.
“Don’t say that to my friend! He can get embarrassed or even angry if you take that to the extreme.” She said.
Having the support, Smith smiled. Same as Hansen.
Before the cycle could end, usually on a Friday or Saturday, he would perform a lucid dream following steps by people who did it in the past and it works. Sometimes he dreams about flying, using magic or getting apples down a tree.
But there is one that happened after he was in a dream. A day before summer began.
In this dream, Liam had an extremely blurry vision (like most of his dreams do) in some sort of a dreamscape where he could see where the horizon began or where the ground ended. They were showing the same thing, a light blue sky like if he was up flying, but there was a flaw. There were no clouds, not even above him or below him.
Between looking up and down with his eyes, he noticed something when he looked straight-forward. Six colorful blobs of different colors.
The first was of yellow color with something in it’s sides, but Smith couldn’t figure out what it was due to being so far away and the blurriness, as well as having something pink. The second was of orange color and had something in the top after the blond thing, being brown. The third thing was of cyan and from the top, he could tell that it was colorful, like a rainbow. The fourth blob was of lavender color with some sort of purple color on its “head”, as well as having a pink stripe. This one caught his attention, a lot. The fifth one was of white with, just like the previous one, purple, just purple color on the top. The final and last one was pink, just pink.
He couldn’t see much because of the blurriness of a dream. But then Liam realized something.
I want to see more clearly because I am dreaming.
Then, he entered into an episode of one of his lucid dreams. He knew this because his vision ended up being less blurry and more cleaner, viewing even more of the situation.
They weren’t blobs, they were instead six horse-like creatures standing away from him right behind him looking somewhere. Liam could hear something, which was them speaking which he knew the source was coming from them as his small ears could identify the direction of the sound. But he thought the following:
If they are horses... Why are they talking? They are not supposed to do that.
He decided to walk towards them, and at the same time, they started trotting. Following them as they went far and far to the horizon and it felt endless. Even when Liam was getting closer, they were getting far and far. Almost like they were going away from him. The pink one was jumping a lot, while the cyan one was flying faster.
Liam decided to have the great idea to run over them and try to hug them, because they were so damn cute. He run and the horses continued to walk normally, slower than his running speed. When he was about to, definitely, hug them. His dream suddenly...ended.
"LIAM! IT'S ALMOST TIME TO GO TO SCHOOL!" His father, James, yelled.
Liam suddenly opened his eyes faster than ever.
"Dad! You ruined my chance to hug some horse! In my dream, obviously." Liam responded.
"You know you have school, right?" James responded.
"Uhh, yeah?" Liam responded back to his father right in front of him.
James facepalmed saying:
"You need to work faster. No breakfast today because we don't have much time! Go! Go! Go!"
Liam decided to believe on his father and the cycle repeats. Only this time, his hunger was heavier than it was usually at high school. During class, he decided not to tell what happened, nor why he was feeling hungry.
Finally, it’s summer.
And usually, his family would go visit Bayville, a village in New York, where it was where his paternal grandfather resided but also for his father to take care of the agriculture in the area since he worked for a company that had machines for that historical method of plantation.
It took a while, probably around 30 minutes and Liam enjoyed his life in Bayville. Taking a few months off of high school and being happy about there being horses, still. Sometimes he would explore the wild, or ride a horse to explore the roads.
One night, he was visiting a friend of his father and he was about to ride a horse. When suddenly, James was trying to make the horse calm down. It was “neighing” and moving uncontrollably. Liam tried to reason with him.
“What is going on with this horse?” Liam questioned.
“I don’t know! Stay inside right now!” James, desperate, responded.
Liam didn’t. He saw the horse he rode all the time during his early summer falling down to the ground, nearly taking his father to the grass. It was dead.
Looking around, Smith saw in the distance more horses falling down and dying. It was strange. Was it a result of climate change? A new disease? He didn’t know what happened. Yet.
Shortly after, he noticed some sparkles start to form up in the night sky. The moonlight perfectly angled to the sparks. And before both knew it, it happened.
It happened fast as a massive magenta star of six points, three for each side. White sparkles, four to be specific, also accompanied the image. It was so bright it could burn someone’s eyes like if they directly looked at the sun.
It started to fall down to the area where the horse near the duo had died and it was placed on the horse’s flank, and after that, it made the mark spread some kind of a lavender color and it reshaped the horse into something unfamiliar and smaller. Unusual to some animals.
When it was finished, Liam could see what happened.
The mark was still there, but the body... was different.