"Sarah?" Mom called from downstairs. "It's time to get up, sweety. It's the first day of school and you don't want to be late."
Sarah woke up with a start, sitting bolt upright in bed. Almost immediately she knew that something wasn't right. The dream that she had woken up from was so vivid. She was in her house, sleeping, when she was woken up by a bright light and then pulled...somewhere. She was told that she would be transferred to another universe, where she was needed. She was told not to be afraid of what was going to happen, that she would be all right and everything would work out in the end. There was no way to tell who she was talking, or perhaps she just didn't remember. They might have been balls of light, or thin, stick-like silhouettes bathed in blinding illumination.
Even though the details of this strange dream were fading, Sarah had the creeping feeling that it wasn't over. She looked around her room and immediately spotted several differences. All of her furniture was the same -- her bed was exactly the way she remembered it, and her dresser and computer desk were in their usual places -- but some things were very, very new.
There were pictures all around her room of some...immense creature that was part-man, part-horse. He had short, thick brown fur and gray hooves, and his mane was a brown so dark it was nearly black. His hands were rough, padded leather on the palms, and tipped with blunt, hoof-like nails on each of his four fingers. He kept modest (as much as a titan like him could) with a simple pair of overalls that were big enough to cover city blocks. Sarah couldn't get an exact sense of scale from the pictures, but she knew that this...man was immense, measured in miles the way she was measured in feet.
It was stunning. She had no idea a being like this could exist, but at the same time she felt herself regarding these pictures with no small amount of affection. How could she feel so strongly for someone she had never met before? It was as if some hidden part of herself knew things that she didn't. She sat in bed for a few minutes, trying to figure out what else she knew about this...thing. Her mind came up blank, though.
This is what she did know. Her name was Sarah Lancaster. Her parents were Philip and Rory Lancaster, and they lived in rural Pennsylvania, where they owned a horse farm. She had one brother, whose name she couldn't remember, and he was 18 years old. She was 20, she was studying to be a veterinarian, and this life -- whatever it was -- was not hers. She didn't belong here.
"Sarah, honey," her mom called again. "We really have to get moving. Avery's waiting for you in the Meeting Area. You don't want him to come over here looking for you, do you? You know what happened last time."
Avery. Why did that name sound so familiar? The part of her brain that knew these things seemed to be somewhat amused. Avery, she suddenly remembered, was her...
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