My mother laid on the hospital bed, holding my new little sister. She looked so beautiful. I walked over and mother handed her to me without question. Ari was all that I had ever hoped for. We have had so much loss and I knew that this perfect child would weigh out that burden and have a life of her own. She'd say her first word and take her first step and go through school. She'd date and she'd live and she'd breathe. And I was ecstatic. I peered at the my baby sister as she laid in my arms and she gave me the faintest smile, and I laughed despite myself. I reached down and stroked a strand of her dark hair and I ran my hand to her little one and the child's fingers squeezed mine, but something was off. I couldn't feel her touch. The room around me started to grow black at the corners. Mom's and Ari's face grew blurry and everything went dark.

I wake up slowly. I look around the pitch black room and feel a wave of nausea wash over me as the realization of what just happened hit me.

It was just a dream.

A stupid dream.

How could I do that to myself?

I don't even know what Ari looks like. I never got to see her, and I never will. Tears spill from my eyes and they soak my blanket. I try to keep in my sobs. I try to force them down my throat, but they come up regardless. I silently curse God for this dream. For causing me this pain and this hurt. For bringing her into my only sanctuary of peace from her memory. But I thank him for letting me see her. For letting me get a glimpse of her. Of my beautiful little sister before the pain becomes too much and I force myself to forget. But I don't want to forget. I can't. She's a part of me that I'll never have, and her image will eat away at my dreams for the rest of my life.

And as the child's fingers squeezed mine, I realized what had happened. They were here. And they had killed this child.

Her pale blue eyes met mine, and a smile played on her lips. "Thank you," she whispered.

"No," I said. "No, this can't be happening. You'll live. You'll live!"

But the child, only six years old, tops, was growing paler by the second. A pool of blood surround-ed her left leg. She had lost too much of it.

"Go," she said. "Or you'll join me, and the other side."

"What if I want to?" I murmured.

"Selfish," she whispered. "Don't be selfish... Think of-" but she was cut of, her breathing fast and shallow. "Go." Her eyelids fluttered shut, and a knot formed in my chest. It was too tight; I could not untie it, even when I wept, my tears falling onto her dirty face, making muddy tracks down her cheeks.

Her hand fell out of mine, limp, but still a bit warm.

I blew her a kiss, and said, "I hope that you'll have a good time in heaven, sweetie. I should not have let you die."

As I walked away from her body, I knew what she would have said if she were still living; "You could not have saved me."

And I knew, deep down, that she was right.

I rushed to the hospital after hearing the birth of my baby brother, the cries of pain could be heard in the background. My mother told me to hurry, as I rode my bicycle quick as I could. The door swung open, in the arms of my mother my new baby brother slept. His thick black hair covered most of his head, his small fingers hid his face. Must have been his fetal position I thought. The biological mother smiled at me before she turned away. Of course, to this day we call my mother the biological mother, considering he looks a lot like me.

"Hey, little one." I smiled, my hands taking his. A kiss was placed to his small forehead. A coo escaped his lips, and the child's fingers squeezed mine.

In that moment, it was love at first sight.

This takes place hundreds of years from now. Just to make shore this makes sense to you.

The screaming around me is drowned out by the explosions and buildings collapsing.

I run beyond the concretely of the crumbling city into the safety of the forest, but just as I'm almost to safety, I hear a child's scream I turn to see three children just about to be crushed by a slab of concrete.

I run as fast as I can and scoop them up, I hold them the best I can trying not too drop them, which is very hard since all three of them together almost more than me. Even though I feel I am about to collapse, my lungs are about to explode and one of the kids is choking me, I run as fast and far as I can to the forest without falling.

We finally make it but I still keep running I know that the bombs will Surly reach the the outer edge of the forest.

We finally got far enough and I set them down, then collapsed.

When I woke up the bombing was over, so me, and now what I have learned to be is a little girl June and two little boys Tyler and Jaden walked back to the city.

We climbed to the top of a destroyed street and saw destruction everywhere nothing was left,

The kids all started balling and I even cried a little then the child June's fingers squeezed mine and then I new every thing was going to be ok that we would make it.

He was saddened, I don't quite understand what made him feel so unsure about his self. Then I understood it perfectly well, I knew this feeling.

His mother had high expectations of him and forced him to take an AP class, a class where in the middle of the whole class he was the only one who knew he didn't have enough intellect to continue on. He doubted hisself.

He knew that all of these people around him were smarter, brighter, and more enthusiastic about learning than him. When he would answer a question it would be wrong, but he would be confident. So confident that when he was wrong he would manage to crumble and never answer another question again.

So, I told him, "keep going." He looked at me and yelled, "But I'm stupid, Sierra. I don't hold the capacity of the other children, they're all better than me and you know it."

I did know it. I knew it well enough that I knew if he had, in fact, kept going he would be better than them. In that, he would gain superior knowledge and be over them.

So, weeks and weeks went by. I kept teaching him all that I know and he kept listening. Eventually, his eyes began to grow on mine.

Now, I couldn't let this be... so I told him that I wasn't ready for anything new and he was, in fact, not for me.

And the child's fingers squeezed mine and said, "I don't love you, I appreciate you."