[Petals of the Reincarnate]: 612.Melody's Muse

Life Without Ramona.

Dane awoke to that cold, unfamiliar feeling. It had been three nights and four days since his partner Julia had left him, and the cold spot where she normally lay, was a lasting symbol of his rejected love, and his unbearable loneliness.

He still reached out on a morning, to touch her face, to gaze into those eyes. But she was gone. It took him a few moments to slowly re- adjust to the reality he now faced. Life without Julia.

Together, they had conceived the most wonderful , beautiful baby girl, named Ramona. Ramona had exquisite eyes. From the day she was born, she looked upon the world with eyes of a superior quality. Millennia had passed through those eyes, so startling they were, a deep blue, infinitely deeper than the deepest ocean.

Perhaps those very eyes had delved right to the bottom to Atlantis, and looked with those same eyes, all the marvellous, secrets the world had to offer. It was clear that Ramona, now a young woman, was very different to her peers.

She possessed such charms and beauty, that it was a questionable audience that wondered just how special she really was. That perhaps she was something to fear. Boys, as she grew up, felt more and more intimidated, friends turned on her, grew jealous and suspicious of her.

Then the dreams began. At the age of just fourteen, Ramona was subjected to the most horrendous of nightmares. At first, they were relative uncommon, but quickly began those recurring dreams, to lay claim on her fragile little mind. Those that ripped Ramona’s sweet naïve soul screaming from within her tiny body, from wretched lungs of feeble sound and silent gasps, as she lay, tapped within, a prisoner of her own dreams.

A place that should have been a private sanctuary for her, but sadly, it was not to be.

Her first, recurring dream began like this:
Wandering through the dark gloomy forest of some isolated haven, way out in the country, the mist crept, not a soul stirred.
Far away, on some distant mountain, a lone wolf tilts his head toward the sky, and inhales deeply, sniffing the air tentatively. He can smell blood. Flesh. Its warm. And fresh. The wolf howls, blue eyes glint menacingly in the fading light. The sun hides behind a kaleidoscope of ruby reds, interjecting the sky with ripples of varying shades of a very simple, but important, deadly need. A need to kill.
A mild representation of what the White Wolf sees within his minds eyes, the basic needs of a hunter.

A unique canvas, for a hunter to envisage a work of art.

The sun descends, like some forgotten memory, which interjected the skyline with an
Raw, damaged look about it.
Walking barefoot on the moist grass, Dream Ramona shivered. The temperature had dropped significantly, and..

Ramona listened.. Yes! She had heard it! A wolves cry, up there in the distance. It send shivers traversing down her spine, and it was not from the lowered temperature.

If the wolf caught her scent, she was done for. She started to run. Her Surroundings became blurred, as though she was running at a cheetah’s sped. She slowed down, but everything still moved erratically.

It was as if time itself had been speeded up. Night turned into day, before dying once again. Ramona looked down at her dream form. She was wearing a black leather dress, which skimmed the top of her thighs. On the front of her chest were three diagonal slashes in the material, a deliberate design.

On her feet she wore full length boots, that came high up on her thigh. These were also black Her hair was worn loose, which tumbled around her shoulders in soft dark waves.
Gazing at her hand, she realised that had been injured. Why or how she did not know.

The wound oozed a thick red liquid, which appeared almost black in the moonlight.

The faint howl of the wolf could be heard, as he lay dying, slain, by the side of the mountain. Ramona had killed it. Ramona picked up the twitching carcass of the white wolf holding it high above her head, in an almost macabre display of strength.

The blood dripped down upon her face, down her cheeks, as though she were crying tears of the wolf, before finally dripping onto her lips. Ramona licked the blood away, savouring the sweet taste of revenge, An eye for an eye, after all.

Ramona awoke, fitfully. She had been tossing and turning in her sleep and her sheets lay mangled on the floor beside her. Her hair was matted to her head. Panting, she steadily controlled her breaths. Slow, deliberate. Now aware of her breathing, she meditated briefly, until her racing heart came to a stop.

All was calm. Not even a mouse stirred, in the big, old house. If such a creature resided there. Ramona lived with her mother, Juliet, and her step father, Carl. Carl was an engineer, and often worked for long periods of time abroad. Juliet and Carl’s relationship were in turbulent times.