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It was a normal day.
She got up at the same time as usual, had her normal breakfast of toast with eggs and the prenatal vitamins the doctor prescribed. She even went for a small walk as she had been doing for some time.
Then why she dreamed with that place again?
Isabella considered herself as a rational and skeptical woman, but dreams like made her have irrational thoughts.
The first time she dreamed of open fields and white uniforms was when she met her now-husband, Leslie. She hadn’t thought much about those dreams at first because, although they seemed too… realistic, they were simply about her and Leslie playing with other kids in white uniforms.
But then- then she dreamed of Leslie playing a song, Leslie leaving because he had been adopted, her trying to run away from the orphanage in order to catch up with Leslie and seeing a cliff with endless darkness. She dreamed that she was adopted, only to discover the terrible truth hidden in that place, instantly realizing Leslie’s true fate, and accepting the hand that offered her only hope of survival.
That night, all those years ago, she woke up with unbearable crying and tightness in her chest that she had never felt before. She spent the rest of the night trying to convince herself that it was just a nightmare, that it wasn’t real despite how vivid it felt. But that belief crumbled when later on that day Leslie played the same song Isabella had heard in her dream.
For a while she had an intolerable terror of going to sleep because she was afraid of having visions of that place again, because she knew they were not normal dreams, and she didn’t want to know anything about such a horrible reality that had a chance of existing.
Over time, her fear eased until it became manageable, and it had helped that dreams about that place had become sporadic. Isabella could handle that.
But today she had glimpsed the worst thing she could have seen of that place.
She knew that as soon as she opened her eyes and immediately had a panic attack, confusing that nightmare with her reality. Leslie quickly got up and, noticing the situation, helped her to control her breathing. After a few minutes, she noticed she was at home and not in the orphanage, and she began to calm down. Especially when she felt her son’s small hand pressing in her abdomen.
Isabella took a couple of deep breaths and assured her husband that she was fine now. Leslie looked at her with doubt in his face, probably about to ask her about her dream that cause such an intense reaction; however, Isabella spoke before him, expressing that she didn’t want to talk about the dream at the moment because she still felt a little bit scared.
Leslie accepted her answer and went to the kitchen to make tea for them both. Isabella stayed in the room with the moonlight accompanying her and rearranged herself on the bed to sit up. As she sat up, her pregnant belly protruded even more, and she caressed it tenderly.
She loves her son.
It was not a question, nor a lie. It was a fact, as real as the birds singing or the warmth of the sun.
And she knew, inside her heart, that the other version of herself also loved her children.
So how could she have committed so many atrocities?
That day, she had been reading several books searching for a name for her baby, but none of them had felt right. She wanted something special, a name that expressed everything she felt for her son. And sometimes the most special things come from the daily life, so she thought as she watched the sun’s rays come through the window in a perfect way. A special, almost ethereal moment that finally brought her the perfect name. Her little ray of light. Her little Ray.
Isabella felt that the love she had for her son was unconditional and nothing could change it. Maybe that’s why she had that nightmare. Maybe the universe wanted Isabella to know the sins she was capable of.
If she had lived such a life, with a childhood full of happy moments created to keep her ignorant of a heartbreaking truth, and never be able to know what it was like to love freely… would she have done the same? Would she have raised countless children to lead them to an unfortunate fate?
The very thought of doing something like that terrified her.
Especially when she couldn’t assure herself that she wouldn’t do it.
Because she knew it was cruel to give so many children a happy life only to have it taken away from them at such young age. But she also understood with guilt, that this was the only form of motherly love she could give them in a world where the only fate available was to die at the hands of demons. And that the only thing she could do for them was to love them in a limited way (because otherwise it would hurt more to see them go), raise them so that they could live as many years as they could, and live on to keep the memory of all those children with her…
In how many other realities did Isabella experience such things?
In how many other universes she could only offer such a sad and twisted form of love?
The more she thought about it, a new resolution became more present within her. Past lives, or alternate universes… she couldn’t be sure that she had not done terrible things in those other lives, however, she had freedom in the here and now, in this life she was living.
She would make sure to love her dear Ray unconditionally, because her baby deserves to have a happy life with loving parents, because maybe in some other life, in some other universe, her child didn’t have the opportunity to live a life like this one. And she will play that her love will be enough so that her son will never have to glimpse what he could have lived in a different world.
She would love her husband, her parents, her friends. She would love the life she was allowed to have.
Isabella would love fully and without restraint in honor of those lives in which she was unable to do so.
It was a promise.