He dreamed that he had risen up above the Earth in a glorious fire of shimmering green and white. He dreamed that he held the lives of the multitude in his blazing hands, that he breathed molten steel and they cried out in awe of his godhood.
In the vision he suddenly became small, high in the clouds above the trembling planet. A human child, falling in terror through the icy skies, plummeting—
—to the realization that it was all a dream.
Brian Ellis relaxed against the soft warmth of his father’s arms and slept on into the night.