The first time I saw...

A cold mist... Dancing about my face... Kissing my cheecks as lightly as delicate fairie wings...
...Where am I?
I move to get up... What is this beneath my hands? It feels like marble... It looks like stars... As if I am lying upon a glass that shelters the heavans themselves.
As I am pulling my body upright, I notice that I am wearing garments of a sort I've never known. It is a beautiful dress, coming to an end about my knees, layered and ruffled, and soft boots that almost reach my knees. The threads are lavender and the darkest purple, in the most brilliant array... With a silk sash around my waist, tying at the small of my back. I am shocked, for it seems fit for a princess. Wait...
What's happening?
The stars beneath me shimmer brightly, and the faucets of light become vines, then leaves, then trunks of trees that blossom all around me, until I find myself standing in the center of a bright, warm forrest.
A brilliant canopy above me allows only the thinnest and nimblest of sunrays to touch the earth, to tickle it with the gentlest of touch.
My eyes scan the surroundings... There is a lovely, yet terrifying air about this place. I brush my dark hair from my emerald eyes... and I sense that there is life beyond these trees, a secret... Yet something sorrowful has happened here. It is as if the very air is unclean, or as if there is someone trying to warn me of inpending pain.
I reach toward the nearest tree, and where my fingers touch, the bark slides away, down the bark in droplets of the most brilliant blue. The bark seems to melt... I look around and see with a surge of panic that all of them, every tree is sweating blue, bright as the artist's paint, bright as the sky!
Until I am suddenly tumbling down a waterfal of nature's tears.
With a splash I reach the bottom. The water is no longer blue here. It is natural, however I still can see nothing for I am trapped in a chasm the likes of which I have never seen. It is so dark, and the water is rising fast.
I must think, I must act. I scurry along the walls, feeling for a gap, but I find nothing. Only air that is slowly leaving me.
Soon I am choking. I need to breathe. Please, please I MUST breathe! I am fighting for the surface, but I no longer know which direction the surface is. Everywhere I turn I see only darkness, feel only earth.
Earth...
A cave? My hands are certainly brushing sand, rock...  dust and mud.
But I haven't the time to think about it.
The blackness around me is now purely torture. My lungs are burning... I have to get out.
A sharp pain through my head... I'm going to scream.
Then, with a terrible gasp...
... I am awake again.
This happens all too often.
I awake in the familiar, cold sweat, slipping from my sheets to place my bare feet onto the hardwood floor.
I can make only the softest of sounds as I move past my father's bedroom
The man is no longer my father. More precisely, I am no longer family in his eyes. No longer the daughter that he raised alone.
He made it clear long ago that my presence is no longer welcome.
However, what his eyes see and what his simple mind concludes is no longer a concern to me, Because my own eyes have seen things far beyond anything he could ever imagine.
Or what he would allow himself to imagine, If he ever were to give himself the chance.
To each his own I suppose.
He could never have been described as a loving man, even before my... sensitivities. Therefore the loss of his love was no great burden to my heart.
At least... That's what I continue to tell myself.
Now I step outside to greet the new day, to see the dew rise from the grass and green leaves and light peek from behind it all to meet my shining eyes. I often come out here alone to watch the dawn break, to taste the moist, sweet morning air before I must go out and face what father would call "real". The provincial life I am subjected to by day.
For the most part, people don't seem to mind. In fact, a handful of them even seem happy in their routines, letting their fate just carry them away, following the same path their whole life through. A mystery that I will never know the secrets of. There is a certain irony in that. For I know things that they will never, ever know. That I cannot share. Sometimes I must question whether this is a blessing, or a curse.
But any thoughts of the latter are banished, whenever I think back to the moment my life changed, where the biggest portion of my heart was claimed forever by something that noone else can see.
The first time I saw...
I have been having these dreams for the past year. And I can trace them back to the moment that I first gave into pain, leading to the only way that my heart could heal.
The first time I saw...
It was raining. And I was running. Running as fast as I could to get away from the house, away from my drunk, screaming father,
away from my nightmares.
I had woken up from a screaming in fear of a horrible nightmare, screaming of goblins and delvers that had held me prisoner in my sleep, and still held their grip on my mind.
My father, never one for "fairytales", drunk from his long day working, burst into the room hollering at me that he was fed up with nonsense, to stop speaking devil's tales, and trying to beat me senseless.
Now I was running aimlessley through the woods, wet grass, leaves, and mud splashing up from beneath.
Eventually I broke down, my knees failed and I collapse, tears streaming from my eyes and gasping for breath. Each raindrop seemed to be insulting me, trying to force me to become one with the soil beneath me, convincing me that it would be better if I simply ceased to exist. It is the only time I can remember feeling so helpless in all of my fifteen years.
I realized I had led myself nowhere. I could no longer hear my father's cries nor could I see further than the twigs around my hands. I stretched my body its full length across the ground, soaking myself but I no longer cared. My body ached where father had hit me, and my mind continued to catch glimpses of the horrible creatures that even now continued to keep their hold on my mind. Tried to hold me in my dream state.
It was then in the most horrifying time that I can remember... That I cried out from the very center of my heart.. the very esscence of my soul. Not with words, but with everything else that I had left in me.
I wished for anything to help me banish the pain. Banish the darkness. Or if not, then to toss me aside, make it so that I would never have to feel anything again.
I looked up, and just beyond my vision... I caught glimpse of a creature so beautiful that it very nearly broke my heart.
It was the first time... I saw...
A unicorn.
It was nothing like the sort of image one might have of a unicorn. It was not a picture of innocence, of gentleness, or purity.
It didn't look like the sort of animal you would find prancing with rabbits in flower feilds. No. The creature that stood before me was one of pure life, feirceness, it seemed to resonate fire itself.
In appearance, it was much like one would expect. Horselike in body, however much smaller and somewhat shaplier. And it's feet were cloved like that of a goat, tufts of silk hanging about the ankles.
I didn't dare blink, I could hardly breathe. I was terrified that if I looked away, if even for the slightest moment, that the magnificent being would be gone forever.
We stayed like that for a long time.
After a while, however, I got the sense that it wanted me to move... wanted me to do... something. So eventually I lifted myself from the ground. The rain had stopped long ago, and the moon was pouring buttery light down on the unicorns gossomer flanks. I must have appeared like a mouse in comparison, covered in mud that was now falling off of my clothes and drying hair. I moved slowly toward the unicorn.
Not because I suspected it may be skiddish, no I didn't think that for a moment. I couldn't imagine that a feirce creature such as this could be frightened by even a lion, or dragon!
No, I was more afraid that I may do something disrespectful, and the creature would turn and leave in discust.
Finally, I was close enough to look directly into the creature's eyes. They were bright, and hard to look at. I could not see my reflection in them. I wanted more than anything to touch the flowing mane that appeared to be liquid fire, threads of light. I reached out, and the unicorn seemed not to object. I touched the softest feeling I have ever felt. The very air around the unicorn seemed alive. It seemed to be living joy, passion, anger, and justice. everything that could reside in the soul, save for sadness or lonelieness, seemed to be this being's entire self. for a long time, we stood looking into each other's eyes. He seemed to feel my pain. To understand. I do not know if he was aware, but that in and of itself meant the world to me. Without saying a word, I got the sense it was speaking to me... telling me not to be afraid. I reached up, as it instructed, and touched the brilliant horn.
My hand felt as if it had caught fire, but my heart filled with joy!
Every fiber of my entire being filled with a sense of promise... a sense of untouched joy waiting just past the next moment... quivered a love of things unseen... mysteries unsolved...
I felt myself being cleansed of everything that haunted me, a pure ecstasy I cannot describe.
Then, in an explosion of light and fire...
I woke again in the woods near my home. I was safe, warm, and suprisingly dry. I still heard the unicorn's peircing cry in my ears. I came home, past the dozing figure of my father... feeling better than I had in a long time. My hand still bears the unicorn's mark, and I know I will see him again. I heard that promise the moment before I awoke, and our souls connected.
That, is enough to keep me going untill that day.
And enough to keep me believing.