Bwahahaha!! My second co-write! Hoshi-chan and moi! ^.^ Written by Hoshi-chan 
and modified by Ironic Balance. Neither of us owns Sailormoon, but the character 
Toki belongs to Hoshi-chan. ^^ She can be reached at HoshiKami@aol.com, 
whereas I... well... <coughs> Yeah. I'm at ironic_balance@hotmail.com if you need 
me... ^^;


         --Nightmares--


     It was dark...
     A young girl cautiously glanced around her, but she could not see nor hear 
anything. The silence was deafening amongst the total darkness. She nervously 
fingered a lock of her long, dark emerald hair, which merged into a brilliant gold at 
its tips. As the strands glittered darkly in the dimness, she looked around uneasily 
with crimson eyes, trying to find any trace of another living being... or a clue as to 
where she was. 
     There was nothing to be found.
     A thick black haze hung drearily over what seemed to be a dead and barren 
ground. It seemed to reach out to her... choking her... The girl shivered. She 
thought she felt something brush past her...
     Wrapping her arms around herself, she tugged at the inadequate, flimsy silver 
nightgown fringed with exquisitely wrought lace. It was freezing.
     A small, soft glow lit behind her, but she failed to notice it. Trembling with cold, 
the girl started to walk slowly, not wanting to stay in one place. She casted her eyes 
around desperately, hoping to see something in the empty darkness, but she was 
barely sure there was a sky above her... or a ground beneath her. 
    Tilting her head back, her scarlet eyes grew wide. Where sky should have been, a 
scorching orb of flame was descending to the ground on which she stood. The mist 
melted away before it, turning the air into a bloody, murderous red...
     She could see nothing but that blazing ball of fire, which devoured everything. 
     It left nothing behind. 
     She began to be afraid...
     Her feet suddenly took her into a wild run. She had to get away from the sphere 
of fire before it descended upon her... 
     But she knew she couldn't escape it.
     It neared inexorably, crawling slowly closer and closer... She could feel the heat 
from it.
     In her panic, she forgot to watch where she ran and tripped over something. 
Stumbling back up, she quickly scrambled into a run again. 
     And fell.
     Screaming, she fell into a darkened abyss that seemed to last forever... 
bottomless, endless... 
     She lost all sense of direction, motion, and time... She seemed to be falling 
forever. 
     Getting a grip on herself after a while, she managed to look around at the sides 
of the chasm. The black mist still sulked where the flame didn't burn, but she could 
see through its density the shape of skulls... human skulls.
     The walls were lined with skulls... thousands piled upon thousands of 
crumbling, dirty ivory bone. Some of children, some of men, and some of women. 
Bones from thousands of civilizations littered the walls, embedded upon one 
another. Some even looked too bizarre to have come from humans, but the girl 
couldn't recognize what kind of species would have those kinds of bones.
     Their hollow sockets glared at her. All of the skulls were staring at her. They 
were moving, turning in their fixtures, to gaze into her eyes...
     The girl's lip trembled as her eyes widened with fear. Those empty, black holes 
mesmerized her... Shuddering, she screamed in denial. And she fainted.
     Her body landed gently on the ground a few seconds later, alighting as if she had 
only fallen half an inch. Silence. 
     Then the shadows moved.
     Her arrival brought a seething mass of disfigured, humanoid creatures surging 
from a small cave nearby. One detached itself from the tangle and prodded the girl 
roughly with a staff it held in its misshapen limb.
     She cracked her red eyes open slowly and gazed upon the nearest four figures 
surrounding her. A ray of light flashed past and she caught the sharp glint of fangs 
protruding from their mouths. 
     Their forms were bathed in blood.
     Moving once more, the creatures slowly closed in on her.
     The girl realized she was going to die...

      **PIPI PIPI PIPI PIPI PIPI!!!** 
       The girl woke up in a cold sweat, jerking up. Drenched, she panted; hastily 
grabbing stray strands of green and gold hair, tucking them back behind her ears. 
She stared at her alarm clock, which was beeping loudly. It read four AM. 
      "...only a dream..." she whispered, felling limply back onto her pillow. 
      As she stared up into the eloquent canopy of her bed she suddenly remembered 
what her mother had told her when she had a nightmare during her childhood.
     Sailor Pluto's words echoed as she gazed lovingly at her daughter. "Toki-chan... 
a dream is just a dream to you, but somewhere the dream you had isn't a dream, but 
something that really happened."
      
*Owari*