As the floorboards moaned under the soldiers’ feet, the children groaned in their sleep. Their young, beautiful faces radiant under layers of dirt and dreams.  The people who were never there.  But the soldiers were on their way.  Coming up the stairs.  Pounding in the hall, getting closer, raising the dust into the dark where it hung for a moment and settled back down.  The children were dreaming. They were dreaming of nothing, but their sleep was not silent.  It was filled with shaking bones, racing eyelashes, flailing limbs, and prophetic ramblings in tongues.  All the secrets in the world were being forced through these children submerged in sleep.  Channels, conduits, for the Universe and its vibrations.  They felt and saw our dreams and had none of their own.  They felt the repercussions of our actions, our willingness to disturb and unsettle the innocent.

A man just outside their building was smoking a cigarette. He had been dreaming about burning the city to the ground, but when the soldiers stormed past him he felt nothing again, and kept smoking his pack of cigarettes.

“The contraband must be eradicated,” a walkie-talkie said.

“Engaging.”