OVERTURE to Nocturn (Intermission)

(I recommend playing the attatched song to help deliver the picture more clearly: "Sailing" by Carter Burwell. Turn off your lights, and try to remember the most beautiful dreams you have had, ones not even a Dreamthief would dare touch)

Midnight blue...

It is only a dream... but the most beautiful dream. This one means something. It has significance. Something is different now. Something tonight is going to last. Something new.

Anna can feel it, and in her nightgown the young girl's small feet crunch through the snow, the snow which isn't so harsh on her feet as snow should be, as she leaves small footprints in her wake. The stars look just as cold... a light cold, a kind cold.

She looks about, finding herself in a small enclosed garden, surrounded by ruins of white walls and a solitary lamp light which isn't shining at all. Dead trees, soothing statues of angels reaching ahead, with pious lips and blank eyes. Snow capping everything.... a stone bench where she sits and waits.

She looks behind her to a frozen pond, and beneath the ice she sees something move, sublime and resplendent, for just a moment... something far larger than the garden, as though the pond was just a small window to something far, far greater beneath. She tears herself away from the small pane ice, as the beautiful scales in the great abyss almost break the illusion. And yet... Anna sees herself in the surface of the frozen pond, older and tragically beautiful. A sorrowful smile.

"Child", a meek voice askes from behind. An old friend she has never known. A perfect being, if there could be one, in the perfection of his face. He humbly holds a top hat in two hands to his chest and a soft purple velvet jacket elegantly clothes him, coat tails softly brushing on high boots of white. Upon closer inspection, he seems a bit too perfect, and then one may see that his skin appears more like material than skin, a pale white knit of fine silk, and his eyes dark and ponderous like obsidian marbles. As if he isn't real.

"Don't fret about the pond, Anna. There are better things, kinder things", and a grin spreads ear to ear, showing an unnatural nature to his face, which is even more comforting. Drawing her in, and making her smile,"Don't I know you?"

"All children do. Now come with me, Anna.", he walks away, facing her, his roguish grin haunting, long blonde locks like a wig spilling on his shoulders. "I have wondrous things to show you", and he turns through a small alley she didn't notice before, which leads into the midnight.