This time the dream is different. This time it is very clearly her four-year-old self. She is flying, her arms spread, her little flowered dress ballooning around her hips like a parachute, and she is holding something. It is small and cold and round. She grasps it tightly in her hand, and with the wind rushing down and her hair in her eyes, she can neither open her fist nor peek between her fingers. The thing is very cold, and it feels as if it is a little mole burrowing a hole through her hand, but it is also strangely comforting—a piercing tickle, an icy hug. She gives in to the falling. She smiles. She giggles. She is flying really. She is a baby bird whose mother has just pushed her out of the nest. She leans into the wind and lets the air rush into her mouth. There is no blue sky behind her, no black night either, it is simply space, and it seems gentle and endless. But soon, a dot appears below her, a single black speck, and as she falls closer, it grows until she can see it is a girl, a woman really. She squints to get a better look, and when she does, she is sucked into this woman’s head. She is not scared despite the fact that she is tied tightly to a hard wooden plank. She is strapped down with leather restraints, and this time, something is very different. This time someone has painted a perfect circle on her bare belly. She would like to touch it, feel the dried paint rough against her fingertips, but the restraints are very tight. She cannot move, and it is oddly reassuring. She stares into the space above her and breathes—over and over—not caring how many inhalations, not counting the number of exhalations, until a dot appears above her, a single black speck, and as it falls closer, it grows until she can see it is a girl. And then something strange happens. She is split in half, but not really in half. She is dissected like a cell, each with its own membrane, each with its own nucleus. The woman and the girl are wiggling their collective fingers, and biting their collective lips, and most surprisingly of all, thinking in tandem—one’s thoughts following the other’s like a row of dominoes going down, down, down. The one on the ground pulls at her restraints, the one in the air claws at the empty space, but they are stuck, as if connected by a single kite string being rolled tighter and tighter in each direction. The woman’s belly grows. It reaches upward as if magnetized, and as it grows, whatever is in the hand of the girl grows colder, freezing the hand shut, plunging determinedly down until there is a moment of pure terror, a kiss of excruciating pain.