There were birds surrounding her. They were as pitch black, like someone had ripped a raven's shadow off a la Peter Pan and given it the ability to move freely. Their eyes were a stark, glowing white, and each bird had a strange number. Some only had one, while others had 8 or even more. One had eyeballs on the underside of its wings, another on the tops of its feet.

Calintha changed direction, moving through the field into an ornately gated entrance way. She was walking through a hedge maze, and there were shadow birds lined up on the tops of the hedges, just simply staring down at her. She moved quicker, and soon, the hedges were flying by. Some had roses on them, others had vines with flowers. It would all be perfectly pretty and pleasant, save for the birds. The beasts were always there, always watching.

It seemed as if they were waiting for some kind of cue. The maze began to get darker, more wild. The hedges weren't trimmed as well anymore, and stray rose thorns cut her skin when she brushed by them. It wasn't long before she had reached the center. Calintha didn't know how she knew for sure it was the center, but it just was.

Stone statues littered the open space.They were all covering their eyes, and all of them looked sad. The more she looked, the more Calintha began to recognize who they were. A trio of statues; her mother, sister, and father were in the corner. Fallon, Cassius, Howl, and some other school children that she recognized from her classes were littered about, intermingled with students she remembered from Barren Pines (if they ever actually existed, that is), and teachers from Meadowview.

She tripped on a root, and fell hard on the ground. Apparently, this was the cue for the shadow birds. They flocked about her, cawwing madly, beating their wings in her face and scratching at her skin with their talons. Their beaks were filled with rows of gleaming white teeth, which they used to tug at Calintha's hair. It wasn't long before a pair had gouged out her own eyeballs, leaving the world black. She could still see the eyes of the birds around her, but everything was black.

Calintha woke abruptly to the sound of her own screaming. The voice escaping from her lips was raw, her face was wet with tears, her body was shaking.

This was nothing new for the girl plagued by nightmares.

What was knew, however, was 36 pairs of eyes staring at her. It took her a moment to realize that they belonged to her classmates (in particular, her math classmates). "Oh god." As soon as it hit her what was actually happening, blood hit her cheeks faster than the Red Queen could yell for a beheading. She ducked her head down ashamedly. Mrs. Jensen, the partially deaf/blind math teacher who possibly had taught math to dinosaurs looked bewildered (apparently, it had been loud enough for even her to hear).

"Miss Calintha! Are you alright?" Her shrill seemed to echo through the little classroom. Calintha's ears had become painfully sensitive; she could the whispers and snickers around her. She had pretty much always been the 'weird quiet girl' in the back of the class, doing her work and getting average grades, never really talking to anyone unless it was required to do so.

Without a word, she quickly gathered her books and hurriedly rushed out of the classroom. She would probably get a detention for it, but Calintha just didn't care. The girl physically could not stand being in that classroom any longer, not with her having made such an a** of herself. The door behind her slammed rather loudly, leaving a rather stunned looking classroom of students and an old teacher who was already writing up a detention slip for 'disruptive classroom behavior'.

She hurried down the hallways as quickly as she could without running. Calintha didn't have a hall pass, and the bell hadn't rung yet signaling the end of class, so the hallways were barren of life. The last thing she needed was some nosy teacher stopping her and asking her what was wrong, Calintha just wanted to get her backpack and coat and leave Meadowview.

Even the sound of her sneakers seemed to echo loudly. The school was too quiet, and it began to look eerie. It gave her chills up and down her spine. Calintha rounded the corner to her locker quickly, looking about her as she went. CAWWW! The loud harsh sound made her jump into the air, and caused her heart to race. She looked around wildly before noticing the large black bird in the tree. "Weird bird..." She muttered and shivered. Black birds were fairly common...it wasn't a big deal, right?

Taking a deep breath, Calintha moved on. She grabbed her bag from her locker and headed for the back stairway out of school. Calintha didn't want to have to check out with the attendant at the front desk, and this was the next best option. Calintha left the school as quickly as she could, shivering and cold, despite it being a warm spring day. She was a couple of blocks away before she felt something itching her side.

Reaching under her Meadowview uniform top, Calintha felt around for a second before finding the source of the itch. She pulled out a pitch black feather, which gleamed a little in the sun.

That was ...weird. Calintha hadn't been near any feathers recently that she could remember. When the girl thought back to her dream, it unsettled her a little. How on earth did that get there? It was bizarre and made absolutely no sense. But yet, there it was, a little black feather twirling about between her fingertips. If there was one thing Calintha understood very well, it was that some things were just not meant to be understood.