Note: This is a repost because I added to this part. A Silver Thread of Conscious Part IV The girl in the mirror smiled as Silver smiled and pictures filled her head again. Broken glass and black feathers fell like snow in a world of red blood and white wine. The sound of squealing tires filled her ears along with the coppery taste of blood in her mouth. She was drowning. "Nooo!" the scream broke the hold Silver's vision had had on her. Never had the images been so real, the sounds so crystal, and the tastes so true. She opened her eyes and screamed again. Broken glass and crushed metal were all around her. She was trapped and there was blood everywhere and noise. It was so noisy. It was too noisy. The world turned into a black and red haze. Blood dripped into her silver eyes and matted her hair. Silver couldn't think right, everything was soooo.... She opened her eyes and stood in the Dreaming. Actually she was at the gates of the Dreaming. "Let me in!" she called out. The guardians of the gate did nothing. They didn't even seem to notice her. This had never happened to her before. She had never seen the gates before. Whenever Silver dreamed she went into the Dreaming. What the hell had gone wrong? Why was she outside? "Hey!" she yelled as she flung a rock at one of the guardians, the hypogrifth she thought. "I want in! I want inside the Dreaming! Let me in!" A pair of cool eyes steadied on her shaking form. "What business have you hear, little ghost?" the dragon said as he turned his harsh gaze on her. "I come here, to the Dreaming, every night when I dream. I sit in the gardens and wait until the day when the Sandman comes down to talk to me. Please, I must be allowed to enter the Dreaming," she pleaded as tears filled her large, silver eyes. "Go away, little ghost. This is no place for your kind," the pegasus said as it flexed it's large, white wings. "Yes, go away," the hypogrifth added. "No, I'm not a ghost. I'm a girl. My name is Silver. Ask Lucien. Damn you, ask Lucien. He'll vouch for me. I swear," Silver yelled as the world of the Dreaming started to melt away leaving her blinking at a bright light. A bright, white light was shinning into her eyes. She hurt. A headache throbbed dully behind one temple and her body didn't seem to want to move. "Eddie?" she managed to call out. The vague, raw quality of her voice surprised her. What was wrong? Panic ran through her limbs like wildfire. Why was she moving? She could sense fast movement and the bright lights flickered overhead as she moved from on to the other. "Eddie?" she called out with more strength. "She's awake," someone said as a masked face looked down at her. "Who are you? Where's Eddie? Where's my brother?" she asked, hysteria threatening to overwhelm her. "It's okay, girl," the masked man said as he pushed a strand of blood matted silver hair off her pale face. "You and your brother were in an accident." The man continued talking but Silver stopped listening. The pictures. The broken glass, the blood. They hadn't been fake. It had been real. "Eddie?" she rasped again, tears quickly filling her large, red-rimmed silver eyes. The man looked at her again. There was sympathy and pain in his eyes. "I'm sorry but we couldn't save your brother, Miss. He came here DOA." Silver could feel her heart nearly stop as the tears trickled down her face, washing away some of the blood. "No. No, Eddie," she murmured as she continued to move steadily under the bright lights. Now realization began to sink in. The Dreaming had thrown her out because it thought she was dead. It was an easy mistake to make. Probably happened all the time. Even as Silver calmed herself with these thoughts some part of her mind continued to whisper that it was a lie. She had died just like her brother. She had to. The guardians of the Dreaming never made a mistake. Somehow she found the strength to reach her and up and grab the doctor's arm. "What happened to me? Why didn't I die?" His eyes focused on her, two blue eyes, dull, flat blue. "For a while we thought you were going to. It certainly was close. You were clinically dead for quite a bit and then, it was weird, the monitors just came back on and you were okay, you were fine." "Thank you," Silver managed to mutter through the hysteria pushing itself through her mind. I was dead, she told herself. I was dead. I felt the icy touch of Death's hand, I saw her face but...I didn't die. She didn't take me. For some reason, she didn't take me and now I'm stuck here on Earth, forever.