[i]In her delightfully unconscious state subsequent whatever horrid aftermaths the unfortunate turn of events regarding the aircraft had caused, Olivia witnessed a vast pine forest overlooking what appeared to be a number of wooden villages in which myriads of families dwelled, elevated and snowy peaks providing a majestic backdrop to the landscape she had set ablaze. In this nightmare, she levitates along a creek, a river leading across the valley and through every village where she is worshipped as a Goddess of fire and ash. As she passes them by in her apathetic trance, hovering above the scorched ground, the people, whose skin and flesh ooze of molten lava and fire, chant in unison “all shall burn.”[/i]

Olivia suddenly awakes from the terrible nightmare imposed by a throbbing headache and shrapnel bloodied forehead. She lies amongst broken branches and mossy grounds, pine trees stretching towards the sky above her; her eyes shaded of auburn, watery and swollen. Her memory of how she managed to distance herself from the crash site is hazy and remains a mystery to her. With ample effort and energy, and clumsy drunken motion, Olivia stands on with her fragile frame, hoping the panic to have ceased, but that is not the case. She is stricken by dread as she views before her the same scenery as in her awful nightmare, although it is not identical; the villages do not exist and the entire forest is not afire. She is relieved that what she had dreamt was not reality, but feels a bantam sting in her heart when the wish for it to be real presents itself. Perhaps it was the future that she saw; a future in which her kind ruled supreme.

Her train of thought is interrupted by the pain brought on by the tiny gashes in her forehead. Olivia is bleeding, badly, but she knows what she has to do make it stop. The idea is not new to her, as she has done it several times before. Whenever she would cut herself making dinner, or for whatever other reason, she concentrated heat into her index finger and closed the wound by burning it. However, she was still unsure of how much pain from the burning she actually felt; it was unpleasant, but she had a feeling that it was much less painful to her than it would have been to a ‘normal’ person. Surely, it had something to do with her unique condition and relationship to fire. The idea she had conjure was solid, but she needed to clean her hands and her forehead before doing anything else.

Deeper down into the valley Olivia sees a lake, a source of water which can use to rinse her wounds. She stumbles over rocks and moss, fallen trees and tiny insects as she runs through the woods. The sounds from the crash behind her are ever so present in her mind and in her ears, but she attempts to block them out, as they have nothing to do with her anymore — she is free. The moment forces Olivia to think about the day that she almost scorched her own mother to death and the day that she told her psychiatrist about how it actually happened. It was the darkest day of her life. When she reaches the lake, Olivia falls onto her knees in the shallow water, cleaning her hands of dirt and blood, and splashing her face with the cool liquid. Light ripples of steamy mist exudates her presence as the water is instantly heated by her smoldering body. Olivia proceeds to focus intense heat in the fingers of her right hand and places them on top the tiny gashes in her forehead. The pain stings her mind and senses, but it is only momentary. The bleeding stops and the wounds have transformed into burn marks, which will eventually heal with time.

Then she notices a few others of her kind, or what she assumes to be her kind. Olivia recognizes them from the plane. One of them appears to be covered in crystalized water and reflecting an azure hue off of his presence, the other one sitting there watching the ice man and herself. She approaches them cautiously, staring at them peculiarly. The boy sitting down seems to be injured, bleeding from his knee, badly.

“Hey… I can fix that wound for you,” Olivia said.