Nightmare

On this evening, each of you sleeps too soundly to arouse himself from the light nightmares, in which you and you alone plod on across a high mountain ridge, horribly cold and deep in snow. All the while, dragons are swooping down from the sky, their maws grinning at you and bearing teeth that seem to be just a bit too long and a bit too pointed. And then, the largest dragon of them all, an impossibly huge red dragon sweeps down upon you from behind, also with unnaturally long and pointed teeth.

You know no real dragon the size of this one ever has existed. Its flight cracks across the sky like an earthquaking thunderbolt, and the sound causes avalanches on the slopes below you. Despite the cold, you begin to sweat with fear. But the dragon does nothing to you. Grinning, it lifts upward and flies on, almost out of sight ... and then ... and then it turns around and dives at you once more from ahead.

You know you're in a dream, sweating in temperatures of perhaps -40 degrees (F or C), ridiculous as that may seem. Again, the dragon's flight cracks across the skies like a thunderbolt, causing new avalanches, and again, the dragon gains altitude and flies back in the direction from which it had come. Then it vanishes, and the smaller dragons return. Powerful as they are, these normal dragons no longer cause fear in you. After seeing the gigantic red, these other dragons seems as harmless as butterflies on a summer day.

You almost begin to believe you'll succeed in shaking the nightmare, when suddenly, that horrible droning sound begins vibrating behind you again. Once more, the great red is coming, faster than before it seems, and then, you feel a slight bit of relief. It's not flying over your ridge this time, but over the next ridge to your right. Your eye follows the path the dragon seems to be following, and now and then, through the heavy snowfall, you seem to glimpse an old castle ruin on a peak in the distance.

Once more, the dragon's flight cracks like a thunderbolt through the night, and again, avalanches begin. But the dragon flies on past you and then seems to land where you thought you saw the castle ruin. The smaller dragons who had been plaguing you depart now and follow in the wake of the great red. Soon all the dragons vanish in the distance, and once again, your are left in peace, in the snow, in deep cold, drenched in sweat.

Slowly now, you begin to awake. The night seems peaceful, but it certainly is too cold. Moonlight comes through the bedroom window of your cottage. Your sweat begins to chill you in the coldness of your room. It's too cold. Something's wrong here. You reach for the candle on your night table and light it, and then you see the cause of the cold. Something has completely shattered the glass of your bedroom windows. Shards of glass lay on the floor beneath it.