Liera jolted wide awake. She had fallen asleep on a book yet again, and this time, by the grace of God, she had *not* blotted out her notes with drool. It was a sound that woke her up, a familiar one that she knew the meaning of. It took a few more moments for her brain to catch up.

  “Lili? Lili? Where did you go? Lili!”

  “I'm coming~ Stop screaming! I didn’t go anywhere!” She yawned, her bones crackled as she stretched her stiff limbs. It was 3 hours past midnight and the red Solarak dunes loomed like giants outside their tent.

  The noise came from her little sister. For some reason, she was also awake at this odd hour. Liera dragged her feet into the girl’s room, where they shared a creaky old bed. She fell next to her like a sack of rocks and snuggled against her warmth.

  “Lili…” Her sister whispered happily as she wrapped her tiny hands around her.

  “What are you doing up?”

  “Bad dream!” she mumbled, burying her face on Liera's chest. There were rules in this house. Rules that children had to obey, rules that kept them and their families alive. Even at 5 years old, her sister knew the consequences. They were yelled at and beaten into her, the same as it was for every child in their tribe. Children had to learn and work at day time. Nodding off during those precious sunlit hours was a punishable offense. Mienna learned this lesson the hard way quite frequently, which is why she was in such a hurry to go back to sleep as fast as possible. She couldn't do that without her favorite sentient pillow.

  As her sister tried various sleeping poses that involved her torso, Liera stared through the darkness towards her brother's room. He always slept like he was dead and he never had any nightmare problems. He was so much easier to raise. Little Mienna was his opposite in more ways than one. All that aside, she had no complaints about raising her siblings. As the eldest, it was her responsibility while their parents risked their lives in the darkness outside, looking for food and water in the cold desert sands.

  “I think I woke up and I was somebody else. It was so scary” She broke the silence.

  “You woke up like someone else?” Liera scoffed and left the ending of her response unsaid. *I can only wish*

  If waking up as someone else was an option, she wished to wake up in the world her ancestors wrote books about. The one that had green trees, blue oceans and plenty of food and water for everyone.

  "Alright, you, stop" she interrupted Mienna. Her poses were getting more ridiculous by the second. She was trying to bury her face deeper into her chest in an effort to fall asleep faster. Liera turned her chin to the side, exposing her nose to fresh air. Her attempts to sleep were heading towards suffocating to death. "Just... calm down will you?" She whispered sternly, slightly annoyed by her shenanigans.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Mienna's eyes fell shyly on hers. They were bright orange, much like her own. She had the face of an angel, marred only by a single deformation. It crumpled the skin across her face towards her left temple. Mienna was slightly less than perfect, in both appearance and health. Their brother was the same. These two could never produce offspring. Her mother always attributed it to the divine. God had cursed her siblings harder because Liera managed to be perfect. In this dire era, a family could get lucky only once and most families didn’t even get that much.

  “You want to know what I saw?” Mienna asked, a wide smile spreading on her small face.

  “Sure, I just know you won’t really sleep until you talk about it” She combed her sister’s tangled mess of red hair, tucking both sides behind her tiny ears. She did love this one. She loved her brother too, but Mienna was special and cuter. There was one weird thing about her - she kept having these dreams that came true once in a while. Her parents wouldn’t hear of it but she could swear on two instances where something Mienna saw in a dream certainly came true. She always thought her baby sister was born a seer, like the Prophet Neima from the book of Illumination.

  “See, I woke up and it was…grey. Sky was grey. My hands all white like… a bone doll. I…heard voices in my head and my eyes”

  “What does that even mean? Voices in your eye?”

  “I don’t know! I was um, a bit naked with drawings on my body. It was a bunch of patterns…I was older too! and I had um,” she paused. “I had these just like you have!” she slid her hand across Liera's chest, trying to gesture at what she meant without saying the words. Liera was still very young but her body had all the features that highlighted their 7 year age gap. Naturally, Mienna just couldn't wait to become exactly like her sister. She wanted to grow up faster. This wouldn't even be the first time she dreamed of it.

  “Now, what in the world are you talking about?” Liera raised herself, concerned. It wasn’t the comment about breasts that was alarming. But drawing on skin? that was outrageous. She took care of Mienna ever since she helped her mother squeeze her out of her womb. They never had a moment where they drew anything on their bodies. She knew this for certain because If they did, they would’ve received such a memorable beating for all the precious water that would've been wasted on washing them off. She couldn’t help but wonder where Mienna got this lunatic idea from. Was this something that could happen the next day? She’d definitely have to keep an eye out.

  “I was looking at the sky. I saw ash and dust… and people all burned and ugly. Bones and blood and their bits… and giants!…and triangle ships!”

  “That’s enough of that Mie” She pulled her sister back to herself, forcing her to shut up and drift back to sleep. She was way too young to talk about such dreadful things.

  They lay in silence as they drifted to the edge of sleep. Mienna stirred, looking for a more comfortable position to rest her head. She found a cozy gap right above her sister's collarbone and squeezed her small face there. She rested her warm forehead against her neck and relaxed.

  Liera ran her fingers through her scalp to help her fall asleep.

  “What’d you do if you woke up and you were…someone else?” Mienna's sleepy whisper tickled her skin.

  “I’d go right back to sleep”