The Dream That Wasn't Hers

I fell asleep with Ashara's warmth against my chest and woke in a place that smelled like shattered mirrors and unborn prophecy.

Not my body. Not my dream. The realization hit like ice water—I was inside my daughter's sleeping mind, but the architecture was all wrong. Where infant dreams should be soft and formless, this space had structure. Purpose. Rage dressed in patience.

The air tasted of silver and regret.

Before me rose a palace built from my own failures—walls of crystallized tears, pillars of choices unmade, a throne carved from the moment I'd rejected godhood. Everything glorious and terrible, beautiful in the way that broken things catch light.

"Welcome home, Mother."

I knew that voice. Had dissolved it with love and letting go, watched it scatter into light. But here stood Mirror-Aria, the dream-daughter I'd refused, wearing Ashara's face aged to perfection. Not the child who'd stood in our cabin begging for existence—this was what she could have become. Would have become, if I'd let her stay.

"You're supposed to be gone." My voice echoed strangely in this space, as if the words themselves were deciding whether to exist.

"Gone?" She laughed, and windows appeared in the palace walls, each showing a different version of what could have been. "I dissolved, yes. But Ashara... sweet, curious Ashara. She left a piece of the door open when she dreams. She still wants to be perfect. And I still remember how."

The windows flickered with scenes that made my heart clench:

My wedding to Lucien, silver dress and willing bond, no rejection to scar us both. Ashara on a throne of moonlight, ruling with wisdom no child should possess. Dorian dead but smiling, having given his life for something meaningful instead of surviving scarred. A world where I'd never bled, never doubted, never had to choose between versions of myself.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Mirror-Aria gestured to the visions. "All of this lives in her. In the spaces between what is and what she thinks you wanted."

"Where is she?" I forced myself to look away from the seductive wrongness. "Where's my daughter?"

"Our daughter." The correction came sharp. "I was thought first, loved first, dreamed into being before flesh ever formed. But come. See what she's becoming."

She led me through halls that shifted with each step—nursery to throne room to battlefield to birthing chamber. At the palace's heart stood a mirror taller than temples, its surface rippling like water. Inside, Ashara slept.

But wrong.

Her eyes flickered beneath closed lids, shifting from silver to gold to void-black to colors that had no names. Her lips moved, speaking in overlapping voices:

"Am I the daughter you wanted yet? Am I the version you imagined first? I can be quieter. Louder. Stronger. Softer. Just tell me which one keeps you."

"Stop this." I pressed against the mirror's surface, but it held firm. "She's perfect as she is."

"Perfect?" Mirror-Aria's reflection appeared beside mine. "She dreams of strangers' lives because her own feels too small. She stands in fire circles channeling voices because silence terrifies her. She knows—feels—that she's not quite what you hoped for."

"That's not true."

"Isn't it?" The palace shuddered, walls cracking to reveal more memories. "Every time you look at her, part of you wonders: What if the god had won? What if she'd been born divine instead of difficult? What if—"

"Stop." The word came out with enough force to crack the mirror. Not shatter—just fracture, spider-webbing from where my palm pressed. "I choose her. As she is. Human and flawed and mine."

"Then prove it." Mirror-Aria's perfect features twisted with something like grief. "Break the mirror. Cut me out. But know this—I'm woven into her dreams now. Tear me free, and you'll take pieces of her too. She might wake different. Lesser. More human than you're prepared for."

I didn't hesitate. Couldn't. Every moment Ashara spent trapped between versions was another thread of identity fraying. I struck the mirror with everything I had—not fists but will, not violence but absolute maternal certainty.

It shattered.

Ashara screamed—in the dream, in reality, the sound echoing across dimensions. But I was already moving, diving through the broken glass into the space behind. Into my daughter's dream-body, where the real battle waited.

Inside was warmth and potential and a terrible wrongness. At her heart's center, lodged like a splinter of fallen star, gleamed a silver shard. Mirror-Aria's seed, the piece of perfection Ashara had accidentally swallowed when she'd opened herself to dreams.

I had to cut it out. But gently. Lovingly. The way you'd remove a thorn from tender skin.

I had no blade here, no tools but intention. So I sang. The lullaby, but backwards—not to soothe but to unname. My hands found the shard, and it burned with cold fire, with the promise of easier paths.

Let her sleep forever, it whispered. Let her dream of being everyone's perfect daughter. She'll never disappoint. Never struggle. Never fail to meet impossible standards.

"She's allowed to fail," I whispered back, pulling carefully. Each movement sent pain through us both—Ashara whimpered, I bit back screams. "She's allowed to be difficult. To be human. To be herself without apology."

The shard came free with a sound like hearts breaking. Or maybe healing. Sometimes they sounded the same.

The dream palace collapsed. Mirror-Aria's form wavered, and for just a moment, she looked young. Lost. Like the fever-dream daughter I'd created in childhood loneliness.

"I just wanted to be perfect for you," she said softly.

"I know." Tears ran down my face as she faded. "But perfect isn't love. Perfect isn't real. Perfect isn't what I need."

She smiled—sad and understanding and finally, truly, gone.

I woke gasping, still clutching Ashara. She was already awake, silver eyes clear and wholly hers, fixed on my face with an intensity that made my breath catch.

"Was that me?" she asked, too clearly for her age but entirely in her own voice.

"It was never you." I smoothed her dark hair, noting with relief that the borrowed colors had faded. "It was what was left behind. What you don't need to carry."

She considered this with the gravity of someone much older, then simply tucked her face into my neck. The gesture was purely infant, purely trusting, purely her.

Dorian stirred beside us, and I saw he'd been awake. Watching. Ready to pull me back if the dream had taken me too deep. His hand found mine, grounding me in the waking world.

"Is it over?" he asked quietly.

I wanted to say yes. Wanted to believe we'd finally severed all the shadows. But as I shifted to answer, something caught my eye.

A crack in the wooden floor beneath our bedroll. Hairline thin, barely visible. But through it leaked light—silver-white and wrong. Moonlight from below, where no moon should reach.

I bent closer, and through that impossible crack came a whisper:

"You've severed the shadow. But shadows grow back where light returns."

"Aria?" Dorian's voice held new tension.

"There's something beneath us." I pressed my hand over the crack, feeling warmth that shouldn't exist. "Something old. Something waiting."

Ashara pressed closer, her small hand covering mine. "She's gone now, right?"

I looked toward our fire, where shadows danced slower than flame should cast them. Where the smoke formed shapes that almost looked like reaching hands.

"I don't know, little one." I held her tighter, feeling the steady beat of her purely human heart. "But even if she isn't, we know how to send her back."

The crack pulsed once with gentle light, then stilled. Whatever lay beneath would wait another night. For now, my daughter was herself—flawed and real and breathing in my arms.

That was victory enough.

But I didn't sleep again. Couldn't. Because somewhere in the space between Ashara's dream and waking, I'd felt something else watching. Not Mirror-Aria. Not the gods we'd fought.

Something that had been waiting far longer for its turn to rise.