Emily dreams

and rises from her bed

nude and without shame she

walks outside into the snow

and begins a journey of

a thousand miles in

the biting wind and

the freezing air to

a place she does not

know where she stands outside

crystal gates and in

snow to her ankles kneels

not feeling the cold

or any confusion

or any fear and she

imagines what is inside the gates

and knows only that she

wishes to serve and

more than that, she lives to

Emily sat up in bed with a start. It was not yet dawn, but she was awake.

She'd had the dream again. Of the crystal palace in the snow, and the long journey. The long naked journey. Her hands were playing between her legs. She was horny. Unbelievably horny. And naked. She had dressed for bed, so why was her gown gone?

She bucked her hips into her fingers, stifling her orgasmic cries so the others in the rooming house wouldn't hear. The twenty-four-year-old wanderer didn't want or need that sort of reputation to follow her. Wanderers have enough trouble being taken seriously. She let out a pleasurable, shuddering gasp, quiet as she could, then took a few deep breaths in the darkness.

Her small room wasn't shared, but the walls were thin. If a mouse walked across the floor downstairs, it shook dust off the ceiling. If any of her immediate neighbours were awake, there's no doubt they would have heard something; what they might have thought the noise was could have been up for debate.

Her breathing settled into its usual easy rhythm as she sat on the edge of the bed, reaching around in the darkness, finding her nightgown at the foot of the bed, not entirely sure how it got there.

As she fumbles about, getting the gown back on, her fingers brush against something cold at her neck. She pauses, running her fingers around a circle of metal, thick, solid, seamless, resting just above her shoulders, about an inch from top to bottom.

It had not been there when she had gone to sleep. She wasn't all that sure it was there, now. It could have been a trick of warm fingers on cold skin. Or of wetness. Or just of a dreaming mind. She finished pulling the gown on and tried to sort through the situation, but as curious as she was, she was also tired, and there was no light in the room; soon, she fell asleep to new dreams.