Page | 12 Chapter 1: The Green-Haired Baby Sylphiette I HAD A DREAM once. It was around the time that Rudy went to the King Dragon Realm. In my dream, there was a child crying. A group of dark shadows surrounded her. They ganged up on the child and threw pitch-black lumps of something at her. The child desperately tried to run away, but the shadows would always follow. The child ran toward a light. As she approached the light, it tossed balls of light at the shadows, and they dispersed. The light then gently enveloped the child as she drifted off to sleep. When I first had that dream, I thought it was about the past. A dream about the old days when the village kids would bully me. I believed I was dreaming about it after all this time as a sign of how much I loved Rudy. That was all I thought of as I lay back down and wriggled happily, like a little girl. Several months later, around the time when Rudy was off in the Demon Continent, I had another dream just like it. This time, it went differently. The green-haired child was here. But instead of having my face, the child now had Rudy’s. The green-haired child with Rudy’s face was being chased by dark shadows. There was no light where the child was headed. I panicked and dashed up to the child, desperate to protect him from the shadows. Without my magic, I could only try and swat the shadows away with my bare hands. The shadows were tenacious. They refused to stay away. I could feel the child shuddering in my arms.