If it be destiny,
and Heaven works for this,
that Love should close these weeping eyes of mine,
then may some kindness lay
the body in your midst
and the soul naked to its home return;
death shall become less stern
if such a hope I bear
into that fearful pass,
for the soul’s weariness
could find no calmer haven anywhere,
nor could it ever leave
the troubled flesh in a more quiet grave.
  --Petrarch, CXXVI

Again dreaming...:
    I huddle in a black place, a no-place. Blank space. The  ground is gritty. Sharp grains cut into my bare knees, and the wind that eddies the gray around me slides right through my nightshirt. I shiver, head bent, barely able to summon the energy to look around me. There's not much to see anyway... This place could be a metaphor for my life at the moment. Of its own accord, my hand lifts, touches the locket around my neck, clutches it. Cold. It's freezing. I close my eyes, willing it to warm. Suddenly, hands touch my shoulders. Someone kneels behind me, wraps me close. I am not frightened. These arms... I know them. I am warm now. And I feel strange, I feel something.  Something like the person I was before. I am not so alone. I do not look at my companion. The gray mist begins to shred around us.
    A tingle moves over me as the wind picks up. I feel the arms around me tremble, then tighten. The constriction becomes almost painful, disquiet sliding into my comfort. Suddenly he lets go. I hear him stumble to his feet. He is saying something, over and over, like a chant. Like a prayer. "No..." I am so tempted to turn, though something tells me I shouldn't; I shake with it, as his voice rises and falls. Oddly...
    Finally, I can't stand it anymore. His voice seems deeper, changing. I turn, sharp stones in the ground cutting my legs. A gasp. Was that me? I know that it was. I tell myself that I do not see what I see, this so-familiar face transformed, with features twisted to an expression they never wore in life. This is just a dream... but I know there's something different about it.
    He is quiet now... and Hyde has overcome Jekyll. He is so much the same and yet so horribly wrong that it paralyzes me. I cannot move as he reaches... reaches... I can't let him touch me! Another hand grabs my arm, and pulls hard. I will have bruises. I look up into Lauren's gleaming face. She pulls me to my feet and shoves. I stumble...

    Irene sat upright in her bed, coming awake with a smothered gasp. One hand reached for the bedside table, fingers searching the smooth surface until they contacted cool metal. The locket wasn't any colder than it should be... After a moment she stood, pulling the bed sheet with her and wrapping it around her. Groping briefly in the darkened room, she switched on the lamp standing nearest to her bed, then walked to one of the bookshelves lining the walls. Found the ratty paperback copy of “A Wrinkle in Time” and opened it to her last place, near the beginning. Meg and Calvin... she smiled.
    By the time she'd calmed down, she'd almost finished with the book. ''...Then, seeming to echo from all around her, came Mrs. Which's unforgettable voice. 'I hhave nnott ggivenn yyou mmyy ggifftt. Yyou hhave ssomethinngg thatt ITT hhass nnott. Thiss ssomethinngg iss yyourr onlly wweapponn. Bbutt yyou mmusstt ffinndd itt fforr yyourrssellff.' Then the voice ceased, and Meg knew that she was alone...''
    A few minutes later she closed the book, finished, and lay it gently on the table. She stood, she stretched, and then she trundled back to her bed and curled up hoping to get a little more sleep. She pointedly refused to glance at the glowing numbers of her alarm clock.

    As usual, the alarm rang far too soon. The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more... She slapped the snooze button and started to turn over again, eyes feeling gritty, but a stab of guilt pierced her and she reluctantly slid out from under the covers. Glen would call the apartment's manager to see that she had left on time, make sure that she had gotten up at all. Some days she resented it, but only half-heartedly at best; it mattered to her that he cared enough to nag.
    She rubbed absently at the scars on one wrist before moving to dress, reflecting as she always did how easy it would be to slip back, to stay in bed all day.  That she did not was her greatest proof to Glen of taking her apprenticeship seriously.

    Five hours later, she dropped the messenger bag she used to carry her textbooks into the passenger seat of her car and slid behind the wheel. She was not looking forward to seeing Dr. Roche. Consequently she had not hurried in her walk across campus and back to the dorms, and would almost certainly be late unless traffic ran extraordinarily in her favor. The thought of being late didn't bother her much, though she knew she was only making things worse. The psychiatrist wouldn't be angry; she would just look vaguely disappointed and, even more damningly, thoughtful. Irene knew that, despite confidentiality, the woman reported to someone- and not necessarily Glen; she knew that she was seeing the good doctor not only for her mental health but to prove to the others that she was stable enough to remain under Glen's tutelage. With a sigh, she flexed her fingers, unclenching them from the wheel, and turned the key, feeling the engine cough to life.

    The appointment hadn't gone well, meaning that it was worse than she'd expected. The sessions were always less therapy than battle. Her shoulders felt stiff and tense and her face ached. When she glanced at herself in the rearview mirror she could see why; her expression was set and grim, skin snowy as if she were carved in ice. The struggle for control was always a hard one and all she really wanted was a nice quiet cry in the shower. In a perfect world, she would have gotten it; however, this was far from a perfect world.
    Glen was in her room when she came up, sitting perfectly at home on her couch and examining her token coffee-table book, a treatise on medieval-era art. He looked up from it, assessing her where she stood stiffly in the doorway with her bag still slung across her shoulders.
    "Come sit," he invited, setting the book down and patting the couch, like a father about to administer a gentle lecture on the rules of the house to a recalcitrant teen.
    "She called you already?" she said with a touch of anger. Dropped her bag and kicked it to one side of the door, then moved to drop gracelessly on the couch. She sat cross-legged and stared down at her hands in her lap, stubbornly refusing to look at him, idly wondering what her expression was at that moment. There was an intensity to his watching her; she always felt it. It took an effort not to react, but it was in vain. He must have seen something in her expression, because he draped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a hug. She resisted, resenting being babied, but relaxed grudgingly after long enough to let him know that she knew what he was doing. She felt him laugh, the sound rumbling beneath her cheek.
    "You are a hard-headed child," he said then, and she sniffed once in reply. Her father had often said the same thing, as Glen knew, having become something of a surrogate in that direction. He also knew that it put him in a position to take certain liberties- like getting her to talk. Even that only went so far; she saw Dr. Roche because he had insisted, but she was an intensely private person. Glen was in a sense her only true friend as well as her mentor, and she kept even him at arm's length. It was still closer than anyone else got these days.
    He rubbed her back gently and she tried to relax, pretending she was a child again, feeling how long she'd been up. He spoke.
    "So how're you doing?" A sigh.
    "I've been better." She felt him nod, and he was silent for a moment, their breathing the only sound in the room. It couldn't last forever, and he finally broke it.
    "Tell me about the nightmares," he said, not making it a question- or an option. Irene tensed up again and pulled away. He let her go and she moved to the other end of the couch, sitting legs crossed with her back against the arm. He shifted to face her. Her head was bowed, staring at her hands in her lap again, her long black hair sliding forward to cover her face like a veil. Just as he was about to prompt her, she sighed deeply and began to speak, obviously reluctant, resentful. The words came out mechanically, as if by rote, not colored by any feeling whatsoever. Glen listened with his full attention, but not without some mild amusement- talking to his student was, at times, about as easy as pulling one's own teeth.
    "They're always the same. The mist, the flat ground, the wind. The stuff on the ground cuts me, I feel it, but it doesn't make any mark. Sometimes she-- my avatar-- comes to try and speak to me, other times I just wander there all night. Nothing ever changes. I told you." She looked out at him from under her hair, testing the effect of her words. Since she hadn't been expecting her churlishness to faze him, she wasn't surprised when he prodded her, "Go on."
    With both hands she shoved her long hair back out of her face, sliding her hands through it and twining her fingers in the ends for a moment. Troubled gray eyes met waiting brown ones. Irene let out a gusty sigh, stopped herself when she started to speak, and then said a little painfully, "Lately... it's just started... he's there." Glen only nodded. Of course he'd known, and she worked on resenting it but couldn't do more than toy with the emotion.
    "Will you tell me about it? Please?"
    "It wasn't until a few nights ago I first felt there was someone else there-" her avatar didn't count; she was the avatar and the avatar was her- "but until last night I didn't know who..." and she told him about the dream that had kept her awake for most of the night. When she had finished, he looked thoughtful. So he hadn't known everything- but he shook his head.
    "I have a theory about your dreams, Irene, and I've been working on it for some time now. Without mentioning you, of course-" she looked warily curious now- "I've discussed it with a very few of my colleagues."
    "Glen-" she started to break in, tensely, but he held up a hand.
    "Wait. I'm not finished." She subsided, and he sat up a little straighter, working through what he meant to say. "I know that you've been having trouble grasping Spirit, and I believe that it's not something innate. You've somehow cut yourself off." She was watching him intently now, head tilted just ever so slightly to one side. "These dreams are more than just dreams, you know that. You have some kind of true-dreaming. And these recurring dreams-- they're in a sense real. I think you're seeing the Shadowlands."
    For a moment she looked as if she would speak, and then she closed her mouth and shook her head. "I don't understand."

Sunday is gloomy
with shadows I spend it all
My heart and I have decided to end it all
Soon there'll be flowers and prayers that are sad,
I know, let them not weep,
Let them know that I'm glad to go
Death is no dream,
For in death I'm caressing you
With the last breath of my soul I'll be blessing you
(Sarah McLachlan, "Gloomy Sunday")

    Irene looked down at the locket that lay in her hand, winking faintly in the lamplight at her occasional tremor. “I feel like I betrayed you again,” she said to the uncomprehending metal. Raising her hand, she pressed the locket to her cheek, the metal feeling cool against her skin. But it was a natural cool, already warmed faintly by the heat of her hand. She knew that there was no longer any one home.
    Clicking off the lamp, she lay down, pulling the covers up over herself with her free hand. Under the blankets she curled up on her side, hands clasped together near her heart-- and eventually, she even fell asleep.

The dream begins as ever.
     I kneel on a gritty plain, sharp corners cutting into my legs. If I stand, will there be blood on the ground, though my skin remains unscarred? The ceaseless wind whispers in my ears, not stirring my hair but cutting through my thin shirt- the only clothing I am ever allowed here- like a knife. I shiver, wrapping my arms about myself. I remember another time and other arms, but it is impossibility now. I am alone here. Utterly.
    Knowing this, I start in surprise when footsteps crunch towards me through the featureless mists. I kneel at Lauren's feet. Even her light cannot cut through the gloom here. It is an oppression to the spirit, and meant so. I look up into the mournful face of my avatar. She grieves for me.
    "Why like this, always?"
    She doesn't answer my question, turning back one of her own to me. "How long will you keep us here, Irene? How long?"
I lift up my hands to her like a child. They are stained dark.
    "Until I atone." She clasps my bloody fingers with her own shining ones. It feels like a blasphemy, but I won't pull away.
    "The blood on your hands is your own," she says. I don't understand, but I find myself nodding as the dream shreds around us...