#keraniwolf

The main character of this dream was actually the middle child in a family of royal lineage. She was thin, with long, blond hair that she wore in a high ponytail. She liked to wear the color green. I knew these things before I knew who she was. She was a nurturing, outgoing person whose natural tendencies toward socialization were hindered in equal measure by her position in the royal family and her inability to transition to her true gender. At home, she was a mentor to her younger sibling, and doted on by her father when he remembered her existence, and otherwise ignored by everyone in her family. She must have been bored, and frustrated, and restless -- because, after a few scenes of awkward interactions with her family, she was suddenly absent from the palace. She had run away.

She began presenting as female once she was on her own, and went to an academy where she was determined to make friends without telling them that she was royal. Perhaps one day she would be able to come out to them as trans, but she would never dare tell them of her royal heritage. She wanted true friends, not people who thought they could use her.

Which was going well, for a bit. She had a best friend she’d come out to, and several other friends she was still in the closet with but liked hanging out around nonetheless. She was doing what she had set out to do.

And then the boy she liked asked her out. She hadn’t come out to him yet, and the dream implied that this was just one of several factors that caused her to panic when he got down on one knee and asked her to go on a date with him. In her flustered state, she did what I distinctly remember thinking in the dream itself was the most idiotic thing possible. She told the boy that he was pressuring her to date him, that he was scaring her, and when she still didn’t feel like those reasons were strong enough... she shouted at the top of her lungs that she was pregnant. Which made about as much sense as her then running away from the school and renting out an apartment to live through the foreseeable future as a hermit.

Embarrassed and depressed, she did the only thing that seemed like it would raise her spirits. She got her SRS. I’m not clear on whether SRS was just super easy to get in this dream reality, or if she got it so easily because of her royal heritage, but she was making friends in the hospital where she had her surgeries in no time. I only realized after I woke up that it was odd for my subconscious to have her undergo SRS when 1) it normally prefers magic over science 2) it has only been exposed to such things in webcomics and tumblr posts and 3) it belongs to a genderfluid cis girl so ??? where is this coming from, exactly???

Regardless of the mysterious motivations my subconscious may have had, I didn’t let myself wake from the dream just yet. I was curious when the next scene started, and the MC’s red-headed best friend finally tracked her down. She found her drinking something in a cafe (probably coffee?), and immediately sat down with her and started talking like the two had never been apart from one another. She even made jokes about how ridiculous the “I’m pregnant” excuse was, and how she knew something wasn’t right when MC had chosen such a drastic reason for not wanting to go out with her crush. MC had now had time to come to terms with some of who she was and what she’d done, so she agreed. She also said that she planned to return to the academy and track down her friends and her crush and carefully explain to them one by one that she wasn’t pregnant she had just been scared to come out and she’s a lot more confident after SRS. She and her best friend then did precisely that, walking in the doors of the academy as women on a mission.

Slowly but surely, MC came out to basically the whole student body. She cleared up the rumors about her pregnancy, gained the acceptance and respect of her peers, and even got her crush to say that he’s willing to be friends until she feels like she’s ready for dating. Her younger sibling even started visiting. He introduced himself as a Prince, but it seemed that everyone in school had already known MC was royalty so they weren’t at all surprised that she and her demiboy little brother were part of the royal family. They all just kind of collectively shrugged, and MC felt like she belonged. Things were better than ever.

Which was, of course, when the zombies and skeletons and other mindless undead started their assault on the world. Many places were implied to have fallen to the undead, and the world was in chaos. Only a few areas and structures were still surviving, some even able to go on as if the end of the world never happened. MC’s academy was one such place. Hunters of the undead, followed by a band of newscasters, came to the academy in search of whatever mystical properties had kept its perimeter from being overrun.

When they asked how the academy was untouched by the undead, the Princess rose from her seat at a cafeteria table and picked up her violin. She walked out to the edge of the academy grounds, and sang one long, haunting note. The hunters and newscasters froze. She sang a few more notes, and then placed her violin on her shoulder and started playing in a way that seamlessly blended with her song. The piece had no true lyrics, at least not any in a language that either I or the Princess’s followers understood. It felt ancient, and magical, and continued on as the Princess began to walk. She sang, and played, and her followers stiffened and moved away from her when the undead began to trail in her wake. They howled and moaned, and the sound was less pained and more subdued than normal. They seemed to be trying to sing along, somehow. They ignored the hunters and newscasters and tagalongs, focused only on MC and her song. Eventually, the human followers relaxed a bit. The undead weren’t attacking. They were ever-growing in number, pulled in by the Princess’s strange lure, but docile and harmless and hyper-focused on their leader.

The ever-expanding entourage didn’t stop, even when MC reached her destination. She stepped through a hole torn into a chain-link fence, leading to a strangely marsh-like area behind what seemed to be an abandoned building. There was a small lake beside the far end of the fence, and MC stopped and stood on its tiny shore. Her singing changed slightly, becoming heavier and sadder as she leaned into her violin and swayed with the music. The volume of her song seemed amplified in the abandoned yard, and the undead complied with what the Princess’s human followers suddenly realized was a set of unspoken instruction. They sang with her, as before, and leaped willingly into the lake. The surface bubbled as each undead landed in its waters, a strange steam rising, and then the undead creature was gone. Effectively killed a second time. Destroyed by water that I later reasoned must have been blessed by magic or spiritual energy of some kind. They jumped alone or together, never in groups larger than three. They gave themselves over to the lake as the Princess sang, until no more of them remained. MC sang a few more notes after the last skeleton had offered itself to the waters, reminding the hunters and newscasters of those notes which had initially preceded her performance. She went silent after that. And, wordlessly, she indicated that this was what she did. This was what kept the academy safe. This was her secret.

The newscasters and hunters arrived to watch and record this process several more times, even bringing the King along with them. MC’s father and siblings watched as she used her siren song to dispose of the undead. They watched as, once, the last of them sacrificed itself and the song went on. They all watched as a woman, nearly dead, jumped from a window of the seemingly abandoned building. She walked to the shore of the lake, and MC’s song changed. It was wilder this time. Violent. Strained. She was crying as the woman’s body seemed to rapidly evaporate -- leaving nothing but her bones. She fell to the sand, and MC kept singing. She transitioned with unexpected smoothness from her violent spell of death to the soft siren song of before. The bones rattled to their feet, cast a final glance at the Princess, and jumped into the lake. MC said she would not allow this to be recorded again.

She didn’t tell them that this was the woman who had been her kindest and most supportive friend in the hospital. She did not tell them that while she was going through physical therapy, this kind motherly woman had been cheering her on the whole way. She did not tell them that she’d had a miscarriage due to a terminal illness, and had only just gone into remission when MC was in the hospital with her. She did not tell them that this woman was like a mother to her, and did not deserve to be infected by the undead and forced to die. But I recognized her face, and saw the flashbacks of her that the Princess tried to hold back. I knew who she was, and for the first time I disliked that these undead were sacrificing themselves to the lake at MC’s behest.

It seemed the Princess did, as well. She lowered her violin, and said again that she would not let them record her. She would not let them watch her. If hunters wanted to know that the undead were truly gone, she could not stop them from observing from afar. But no more audiences. No more cameras. She was done being a spectacle. She would do what she had to do, and no more.

She walked back to the academy, and a strange energy rippled through the air in her wake. It was like a green fire, almost, and one hunter noticed its presence when nobody else did. He noticed her power. It wasn’t long until he went after it. He made some kind of deal with the Princess. It was more of a threat, really. She would come to an underground lake and use her power to kill the undead there. She would do this as many times as needed until he could access the ancient weapons in this cave. In return, he would avoid doing something to harm someone in the academy. It wasn’t clear who he was threatening, but it was enough to persuade the Princess.

She began singing at the abandoned hospital and in the cave. It wore on her. She was exhausted, and frustrated, and hurt. A wild, angry green fire crashed through the underground lake. The hunter got his relics, and when he turned around the undead were rising from the water.

They were silent, and focused strictly on him, and listened only to the unaccompanied violin playing of the angry girl stuck on a small island of sand behind them. They looked positively murderous.