Emma was not like other girls. No seriously, she was not. At first glance she was your average 10 year old girl
She had a mother, a father, a younger brother, and a pet cat that they had recently domesticated. During the week she would attend the local school, and on weekends she would go spend time playing with the other village children. They would run through the trees together and swing on their branches, and during the hot summer months they would spend their time by the lake, swimming in its crystal clear waters.
It was a simple life, but a good one. Their small village did not have much and was not the most exciting place to be, but they always seemed to manage and be content with their lot in life.
But Emma had a secret that she could not tell anyone, not even her family or her closest friends. Or rather, she had tried but no one had believed her. And how could she blame them? If a small child came up to her and told her that they could see everything that would come to pass in the future, she wouldn’t believe them either.
At first, Emma didn’t even realize her dreams were anything special at first. Perhaps every now and then something she saw in her dream would play out in real life, but that had to just be a coincidence, right? But as these dreams began to become more elaborate and powerful over the years, she could no longer chalk up these happenings as “coincidences”.
At first she thought of her gift as just that: a gift. She always knew when to bring an umbrella with her on rainy days, could always find items that people lost, and she was completely immune to any pop quizzes her teacher would try to throw at her.
The only real downside to it was that no one believed her when she told them about her powers. At first they indulged her because of her young age, but as she grew older they told her that she needed to leave her childish games behind her. Even when she would demonstrate her abilities to people, they always dismissed her predictions as mere coincidences.
However, one spring night she had a dream that made her realize just how much of a curse her “gift” really was. Raging flames, red as blood, engulfed her small town in a sea of fire. These flames casted ominous shadows on the walls, these sinister shapes writhing and flickering violently on the walls. In the distance she saw a monster, a great behemoth larger than any mountain she had ever seen, with wings darker than night and three heads, each one more menacing than the last.
She could hear the thundering bellows of the beast, and could feel the way its cries vibrated into her bones. She could hear the cries of mothers wailing over their still and cold corpses of their children, begging and crying out in agony for them to come back to them. And perhaps worse than their cries was the silence that followed after.