14. The Dreamer-Sparring Protectors

14 Years Earlier

The scythe flashed towards his face.  He twisted out of the way and brought his gun up.  Now it was her turn to dodge as he fired.  Picturing, no, feeling himself in the air, with no ground beneath him, and seeing her kimono and hair from behind, transported him.  He hung in the air and fired several more rounds into the back of her head.  It was a dream overlapped with reality.  While Dreaming, it was possible to teleport and fly.

She was faster than him and disappeared.  The bullets sailed harmlessly past.  There was no visual cue, no auditory hint, but he felt her behind him.  It was almost a physical sensation, her presence behind him.  The scythe cut towards the back of his head.  This time he pulled the sword from his side to block the downward thrusting scythe.

It was a weak parry and only deflected the incoming blade.  He had anticipated this since he was wielding the normally two-handed blade with one hand.  His other fired the gun and this time they found their mark.  She had been hit.  She was down.  He had won.

"Very good," Aislinn applauded from her stricken form.  The torn, bloodied body and clothes soon appeared as though nothing had happened.

"I'm slightly more dedicated now," he pinched two fingers in front of his face.  The sparring session over, his weapons disappeared.  Not Aislinn's.

"Because of your daughter?" she didn't crack a smile.  It wasn't something that happened often.  The scythe shifted to sit over one of her shoulders.

"I have to be ready to protect her when she starts Dreaming," picturing and feeling his house, his daughter's room, he went home.  It was a difficult jump to make.  Every day places changed.  Even the house of the most obsessive neat freak changed in subtle ways.  To teleport, a place had to be imagined perfectly.  The more differences and discrepancies there were, the harder it was.  If there were enough it simply wasn't possible.

And there she was.  Sleeping.  His daughter.  His angel.  His baby.  No matter how old she became, she would always be those things.  If another parent claimed their child was the most beautiful, he was prepared to throw down.  And everyone he met knew she had just won the Spelling Bee.

"You have been watching over her?" he asked.

"Of course," she had found a comfortable place to sit on Anna's dresser.

"Good," he managed to choke out.  His daughter, a Dreamer.  He remembered touching her at the Bee.  Aislinn had camly explained it was, indeed, possible.  Genetics had passed on the ability.  It was a gift he had never wanted for her.