The moon was the color of blood the night the fat man arrived in the little village of Ul Beval. A blood moon was a bad omen for the superstitious, but the man never believed in that sort of thing. All it meant to him was a good opportunity to take pretty pictures, that’s it. He drove into the parking lot of a hotel and went to check in. “Good evening, sir,” the receptionist greeted the fat man with cheery enthusiasm. “Evening,” he responded with the gusto of a dead cat. “Reservation under Bartes.” The receptionist looked at her computer and nodded, working to activate his room key. “So, what brings you out here? Hiking?” The man shook his head, “Mining. I’m one of the engineers for the lithium mine they’re building out west.” The receptionist lost her excitement suddenly, “Oh. That mine is on holy land, sir. I don’t know if you should be--”

“Sweetheart, just give me the keys. You’re not a priest.”

The woman frowned, handing the card over with a bit of attitude. “You’re in 215. Good night, sir.”

The engineer took his coat off and fell onto the bed, letting his tense muscles relax after ten hours of driving. He contemplated how quickly the receptionist lost respect for him once she found out his purpose for coming to this little backwater town. Fucking locals. Always thinking they know best. He was certainly understanding of people’s religious customs, but at the end of the day, money is money, and lithium needs to be mined up. He told himself many different things to prevent feeling guilty for any potential complicity in the destruction of sacred land, and he reckoned he was rather persuasive so it was working. If the angels wanted us to stop they would tell us somehow!

His self-comforting was interrupted by some shouting from the bar across the street. Opening the window, he instantly saw the reason for the commotion. A ball of fire streaked across the sky. Headed right for the mine! The meteorite left the window’s field of view, but mere moments later the engineer heard a loud bang. Throwing his coat back on he got in his car and sped over to the site. Men rushed from the small construction site as the meteorite had collided right on the planned initial dig area. Getting out of his car, the fat man ran towards the fire. There’s expensive survey equipment there! That’ll come out of my bonus! He scrambled up to the site, climbing a mound of hot dirt to overlook the impact. When he came to the top, he stopped cold.

There was no meteorite. Standing among the fire and annihilated equipment was a woman. She was around 5 and a half feet tall with curly blonde hair that fell to her waist. Most strange was the fact that she was clothed in a black business suit. It was undamaged, looked tailored and fit her well. She was just standing there, as though she didn’t notice the fires around her. The man called out, “Hey! Lady! Get up here, or you’ll get burned!”

The woman just glanced up… and waved. Slowly, she sauntered up the hill to the engineer, now completely at a loss for words. The woman spoke with a low, slightly smoky voice, “Hello. Where am I?”

The engineer stammered, “Are you alright? By the stars it looked like that meteor hit you!”

The woman chuckled, “No, I’m fine. I just need to know where I am.”

The man wouldn’t give up his concern, “We need an ambulance, you’ve obviously got some kind of injury! Come with me, I can-”

“SIR. Tell me where I am.” Her voice rang in his mind as if she spoke from inside his body. He froze in fear. Slowly, he gained control back, “Y-you’re in Imlai Field. About 45 miles from Peshrim.” The woman smiled, “Thank you,” and she began to walk away. After a few steps, she stopped and turned to the fat man, “Sir, what is going on in this field? What are these… machines for?”

“We’re mining, ma’am. There’s lithium a few miles underground here.”

The woman’s face dropped, the engineer nearly wet his pants, and she spoke with flat authority, “This is holy land. You will leave it alone.”

He began to shake, fearing whatever this woman was, “Of course, ma’am. I’ll tell my boss.”

“Thank you, little one!” The woman flashed a smile at the engineer, and then turned back around and walked into the night, leaving the man by the flames, confused and scared.

- Meanwhile...

Home.

Amelia’s mind sluggishly registered her whereabouts. Her childhood home was right in front of her, and she was standing in the middle of the street. She didn’t know why she was there. She just… appeared. It was a cloudless day, the grass a saturated green indicating the height of summer. Amelia heard children playing behind her, lawn mowers running to her right, sprinklers running to her left. The quintessential summer afternoon. Curiously, when she looked around no one was outside. It was just Amelia.

She tried to walk to her home, perhaps to bask in the nostalgia. But her legs didn’t respond. She tried and tried but she seemed stuck in place. Suddenly, the noises stopped. The entire neighborhood was utterly silent save for the strained struggling of Amelia. She joined the choir of silence when she saw something flash from the house. Eyes.

They stared at her and she stared back. Large, blue eyes with no person or head attached to them peered from the front window. Fear beginning to take over, Amelia redoubled her efforts to move, but to no avail. She looked down to see she had no legs.

Work.

She was on the bus now. No longer in her home village, she was thousands of miles away from her family and her old friends on her daily bus route to her job at the central bank. The bus hummed along quickly, evidently the city was free of the traffic it is infamous for.

Amelia noticed that in addition to there being no cars outside, there was no one on the bus. She was completely alone. Scanning the entire vehicle, she noticed even the driver was missing. When she turned around, her heart leaped from her chest as she saw a man in a coat sitting in a front facing seat at the back of the bus. He did not speak, but he stared at Amelia, blue eyes pierced unblinking at her. Shuffling her feet, now having use of her legs, she tried to walk back from the man. Turning to the front again, she saw another man at a side seat, also staring at her. She yelped, feeling both sets of eyes gawk at her, assessing her, sampling her visage. A third turn, another man, another set of emotionless, unblinking eyes. Each time her head turned, each new angle to view the interior, another man spawned with open eyes staring right at the woman. She turned one last time to jump out of the bus from the front door, but as she turned a man stood in her path, towering over her, his eyes burned into her from an inch away. As she fell to the floor, the men all got up and stood over her, breathlessly staring. She covered her head with her arms in sheer terror.

Hell.

She was in darkness. She let her arms down, not able to see them at her sides. She felt some comfort here after what transpired on the bus. No light, no eyes to stare, no one to size her up, no one to remind her they can hurt her. She took a step forward and felt a disgusting, slimy squish. She looked down in shock knowing what she was standing on as light poured in from the sky.

She was in a… sea of eyes. The sea was still as she stood, but the moment she walked, the eyes all turned to face her. She crouched down, trying to ignore the orbs piercing her once again, when she used her own eyes to notice movement in the distance. An arm emerged from the ocean surface. An arm waving frantically at Amelia. Rushing over, doing her best to tolerate the sound of crushed eyeballs under her feet, she grabbed the hand and pulled, hoping to rescue whoever the arm belonged to. It easily came up, revealing a bloody stump at the shoulder. It went limp and motionless in Amelia’s hand.

Hearing more squishing from behind, she turned to see the man in a coat, eyes open, rushing at her. He shoved her before she could react and she fell into the eyes. She began to sink into the sea, the man who pushed her standing over her, blue orbs gazing as she was fully enveloped in eyes. She let out a blood-curdling scream.

“AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!” Amelia shot up out of bed, her pyjamas drenched in cold sweat. She darted her head across the room, wiggled her toes, then pinched herself at different parts on her body. All to make sure she was awake. Fucking nightmares. So tired! This was the fifth nightmare this week. Amelia made note that they were getting weirder and far more vivid. This wasn’t a phenomenon unique to her. Everyone in this province was reporting increased frequency of sleep paralysis episodes; lucid, detailed dreams; and frantic nightmares. Numerous government officials assured the populace that it was being looked into, but Amelia had her doubts. Their government was incompetent on a good day. Dealing with anomalous dreams affecting millions of people? There’s a better chance it’d be solved by the priests of the Gaian Temples. Maybe it is demons. We can’t know for sure! Amelia was proudly superstitious: She believed in angels, demons, fairies, mole-people, all of it. She has the best attendance of anyone at her local temple, and would get away with running the place, she knows so much. Not that she could, as priests leading the worship of the Great Mother had to be male. Women were explicitly forbidden from anything more than prayer and helping in the ritual sacrifices during the winter solstice. There was a time long ago when women weren’t even allowed in the temple at all! They just heard about the services from the men when they left. She normally didn’t object to much within the temples, but she firmly believed it was not Gaia’s will that women should be excluded from any of the duties of a pious human. Thankfully, temple leaders were starting to come around on that, in part because so many folk nowadays were turning away from the temple and its strange talk of angels and sacrifices. Amelia wished there was a better reason for the Temple to be progressive, but results are results.

It was 6:34AM; she needed to be at work by 8:00 so she decided to get ready a little early. She slowly got out of bed and went to the mirror. She spied a large zit forming on her forehead, the red volcano contrasting with her green eyes below. Stress is killing me, she needed relief from these nightmares, as did everyone else. She got dressed in her grey business suit and put on a smattering of makeup. Fixing up her black hair into a simple ponytail, she took her backpack with her laptop and lunch out to her garage, ready to head out to work. Her nightmare still lingered in her mind. She decided being subjected to the gaze was not something she could tolerate right now. No bus ride today. I’m biking to work.

The commute was a mess, but it was the normal kind of messy. Cars running through the bike lane, busses passing far too close, pedestrians giving her dirty looks. All in a morning’s ride for her. Finally, she arrived at the Central Bank. Locking her bike, she slung her backpack over her shoulders and walked into the lobby when she slammed right into another person, who was just standing at the revolving door.

“Oh jeez, are you okay?” Amelia asked after having fallen down, holding her nose in pain. The other person, a short blonde woman in a black suit, didn’t even budge from where she stood, “Yep! I’m great! Wait, are you injured?” She crouched down to Amelia, her face tensed with guilt as she realized what she did, “Oh no, I’m so sorry! I was just so amazed by this… thing!” She glanced at the revolving door. Amelia got up, brushing dirt of her suit, “The door? Um, yeah I guess it’s… what do you find so interesting about this?”

“Well, it’s like a door, but no hinges! It spins! Oh my, it’s so efficient!” The woman clasped her hands together in glee. “I’ll have to bring this idea up with my colleagues!”

Amelia chuckled at the odd woman. “And who are they, if you mind me asking? Are you with the McDermont account, by chance?”

The woman leaned back in confusion, “What’s a McDermont? No, my colleagues are just curious scholars of your nation. I’m really just admiring your buildings, is all.”

Amelia nodded, still confused but glad she wasn’t some client having a mental breakdown, “Ah, well have you seen the architectural bus tour? The main station is just around the corner!”

“Really!? Could you show me the way, Ms…?”

“Amelia,” She stuck out her hand, “and, of course, it’d be my pleasure. What was your name?”

The blonde woman completed the handshake, and an oddly satisfied smile creeped across her face, “My name is Sophia”