The Sleep is Unreal
                    The power transferred
                    Awaken to reveal
                    A life much preferred.

April begins to dissolve into the fog. When she realizes what’s happening, she desperately wants to hug her aunt again.
          Melissa is left standing alone in the fog; palms open upwards and holding nothing except for a partial Seed of Death. The Seed hovers above her outstretched palm. Only the sounds of the waves and the occasional foghorn can be heard. She sighs and sweeps a lock of damp hair out of her eyes, and drops the Seed into a Magikal satchel she carries in her pocket. Melissa hopes that April will be OK but her present self won’t know until after she’s dead, or if her future self talks to her again.
          A shudder runs up Melissa’s spine. April’s returning to a time when Melissa is dead. I wonder what the afterlife’s like? Melissa shrugs her shoulders. Bringing herself mentally back to the here and now, Melissa realizes that she can probably still catch the second half of the party. She doesn’t feel like partying at the moment, but it’s Penny’s birthday party and the present time frame Penny would want to know what the future Penny had to say.
          April wakes up in the hospital. It’s dark. For the first couple of seconds she’s disoriented, but then she remembers that Aunt Melissa said she would be in a hospital. April tries to raise her body but immediately collapses back into bed. One of her arms is not working. April summons the energy to turn her head and looks at her bad arm. It glows faintly in the dark. I must have used the hand on this side to touch the crystal, April thinks.
          She wants to hit the call button and alert the nurse on duty. Her folks would be worried and April wants them to know that she’s OK.
          April doesn’t have the strength to reach it with her good arm. She