I'm baaaaaack! Not like I was gone long.

No, Sailor Moon doesn't belong to me.

A monster, Michiru thinks. The dust storm roars over her thoughts, creeps forward, and the wind howls. A monster, she thinks again as she staggers back, an arm shielding her eyes from the grit that will inevitably fill her throat, the grit that will eventually consume her whole, will suffocate her and leave her, perhaps, a calcified body, one of many. That's all it could be. A monster, she tells herself.

She opens her mouth to scream as motes of glass hurtle into her arm—she opens her mouth and choking dust invites itself in. She doesn't scream; she screeches as the dust thickly coats the inside of her throat, both esophagus and windpipe, and the noise itself is enough to rip her larynx to shreds. One hand clutches at her throat; the other shields her eyes. She snaps her mouth shut and, visibly heaving, she continues on.

She continues on past the ruins of Tokyo, past the building where her father had opened his first business, past the restaurant she had loved as a child, past the house she had grown up in. She continues for what seems like miles and finally stops in front of a large house—no, it isn't a house. It's a mansion, she supposes. The door opens for her. She stumbles inside and collapses on the floor.

When she comes to, there is a garnet-eyed woman staring down at her. The silent woman offers a hand to her, which she takes hesitantly; the woman pulls her up and off of the floor.

"Water?" the garnet-eyed woman says softly.

Michiru clutches at her throat. She winces with the pain every breath brings. She nods.

The woman produces a full glass of water from thin air, and somehow Michiru is not surprised. She hands it to Michiru silently and sits down on a nearby couch; she pats the seat cushion as she does so, beckoning the violinist to take a seat as well.

"It's not just you," she says as Michiru sits down, taking great big gulps of water, "it's everyone."

Michiru looks at her as if to ask what she is talking about. The woman seems to understand, and says quietly, "Silence."

Michiru takes another gulp of water.

"The Silence. It's coming, Neptune."

Michiru opens her voice to speak, and somehow she finds that the water has healed her throat. "Neptune?" she queries.

"I'm not the one. Find her," the garnet-eyed woman says. She leans forward and kisses Michiru on the lips.

Michiru awakes to find that she is in bed. Her eyes are fearful and red as she clutches at her throat with a hand, breathing erratically to make sure her windpipe is clear. She looks around, finally, and sees the familiar sights of her apartment.

She gets out of bed and staggers to her violin case. Gingerly, she takes the precious instrument out and opens the door to the balcony. She steps into the cold night wind and breathes in. Finding it to be satisfyingly dust-free, she closes her eyes and raises the instrument to her chin. She runs the bow across the strings.

She doesn't stop playing until sunrise.

A black-haired girl grins at her the next day, elbowing her and asking, "Did you stay up late playing Super Famicom or something? I've never seen you look this tired, Michiru-san."

"You know I don't play video games," Michiru says weakly, resisting the urge to fall asleep at her desk right now. She doesn't care that the wood is hard and cold, or that the girl is rather irritatingly chattering into her ear. "I just had some trouble falling asleep last night, Asuka-san."

"Ah," Asuka says wisely. "Dreaming of a boy? Maybe Shinji-san?" She grins, looking not unlike a ravenous coyote. She looks over to the redhead boy and back at Michiru. "Maybe your kids will have purple hair," she supposes.

"You know I don't have a crush on Shinji-san," Michiru says. She glances at the swirls and knots of wood that form her desk and shakes her head, still trying not to fall asleep.

"But the purple hair—!"

"No," the violinist says, and for the first time she looks at Asuka, giving the black-haired girl a good look at what a wreck she is. "No," she repeats.

Asuka takes a good look at her eyes and finally seems to understand. Michiru's eyes are empty, haunted, and Asuka sees nothing in them, not even her reflection or the reflection of the light. Michiru's eyes are dead. "Okay," she says in a high-pitched tone, visibly frightened, and Michiru turns back to face the teacher. She says nothing for the rest of the day.

Michiru tries, to her credit, to pay attention to her teachers while she waits for the bell to ring so she can go home and fall in her bed and slip into blessedly dreamless sleep. She struggles to keep her eyes open, and part of her feels as though the dust has wormed its way into her mind—her thoughts are sluggish and dull and the world itself seems as though a veil has fallen over it. This is the real world, she tells herself as the school day progresses, as she barely makes it through Trigonometry and World History. This is not the dream... the ruins were...

But though she repeats the words to herself, she still feels as though the real world itself has become the dream—and that the dream she had last night has become her reality.

She is painfully right.

The bell rings, and somehow she finds the strength to stagger back to her apartment, which is in walking distance. She almost hits her head on the wall as she walks into the elevator and pushes the button for her floor. She slumps against the sides of the metal box as it rises, vision flickering as she tries not to pass out.

The elevator softly dings as the doors open. Squeezing her eyes shut in an attempt to stay conscious, she weaves down the hall and to her door. Fumbling around in her purse, she somehow manages to find the key in record time and unlocks the door, barely bothering to close it shut and relock it behind her before she runs in a last burst of energy to her bed. The world frays at the edges as she collapses onto her bed, spent, and finally disappears as she loses consciousness.

She awakes buried beneath the sand. It is everywhere around her, consuming her, swallowing her, and as she opens her eyes and awakes sand pours into them. They begin to burn not even a second later and she closes them tightly, but that doesn't help, not with the sand that builds in her lungs with every breath she takes and the increasing pressure in her entire body that tells her she is suffocating. She reaches out with her hands to try and push some sand away to form a small air pocket. The sand only falls back into place neatly through her fingers.

But it tells her which way is up.

She stops breathing to try and conserve oxygen and starts kicking her feet and pushing her hands up. She feels sand slide past her, but she isn't sure that she is moving at all—perhaps it's the movements of her hand that makes the sand move as such. Still, she continues.

She eventually breaks through to the surface only to be greeted by a blood-red sky and a small girl, shrouded in darkness. Michiru ignores her, takes gasping, shuddering breaths, grateful to be alive, and weakly stands up. The girl is perhaps a head or two shorter than her and has chilling purple eyes. She stares at Michiru.

"You survived," she says, obviously surprised. "Not many do." She gestures to the surrounding area, and Michiru's eyes follow her hand. "Do you see them?" she asks. "Those were the unlucky ones."

There are thousands, perhaps millions of statues in the distance. They are all staring at the girl.

"Those were people?" Michiru finds herself saying, horrified.

"Every last one."

Michiru looks back in terror at the small girl, whose eyes seem to have become a deeper shade of purple. "No. No no no no no..." she says, stumbling back. She wants to be as far from this monster as possible, far away from here, anywhere away from here—

"Neptune, please," the girl says. Michiru's blue eyes widen upon hearing the name.

"You're wrong. I'm not this person Neptune. I don't know you. THIS IS A DREAM, GODDAMNIT!" She clenches her eyes shut and hopes to wake up in her bed, but when she opens her eyes again she finds that the girl has moved closer to her and is lightly touching her face.

"Wake up," the girl says. "I know you're in there somewhere. Please, Neptune. Wake up. Kill me."

"NO!" She strikes the girl's face, makes her fly through the air and slam against the statues. Something cracks, a loud, resounding noise in the silence, and as Michiru freezes a thousand million statues come crumbling down. The sky screeches, a loud metallic sound, and the statues all crumble into dust.

The wind begins to blow.

It picks up the dust and sends it flying toward the violinist.

"A dream, a dream, a dream a dream a dream," she repeats, but turns on her heel and runs from the dust storm. She runs for a long time.

Something giggles.

"Who's there?" she yells hysterically, not wanting to turn back around and face the dust storm.

The person only giggles in response.

"Well?"

A shadow darts past her; she only catches a glimpse of it before it is gone again. She keeps running.

"STOP." A strange voice comes from behind her.

The dust storm stops. Michiru's eyes widen as the noise ceases and she turns around to see what happened. She barely catches a glimpse of the dust frozen in time before a shadow with dark purple eyes leaps at her throat.

She awakes in her bed.

Michiru leans over and looks at the clock. It reads 3:42 a.m. She buries her face in her hands and cries. She cries dark, terrified sobs.

Somehow she manages to sleep through the rest of the night. At 6:30 a.m. her eyes snap open; her brain is unsure if she is in the dream or the real world. Even as she brushes her teeth, she is still not sure; what she has defined as the real world before is beginning to feel more like a dream than reality. Looking in the mirror, she examines her face; overall, it is as perfect as it has ever been, save for her eyes. Her eyes make her look as though she's seen things people can't fathom, even in their wildest nightmares.

In a way, that is accurate.

Michiru looks in the mirror. She spits out her toothpaste and washes it down the sink. As she places her toothbrush back on the counter, she decides to skip school today.

More chapters coming soon, I promise.