CAVE: Chapter 1 — The Nightmare

Part One — Fire and Fear

When I was eleven, I thought nightmares were just dreams that ran wild — dark stories your brain made up when it got too tired to behave.
But I was wrong.
Sometimes nightmares try to tell you something. Sometimes, they remember things before you do.

It all started the week before my first trip on a plane — my first time leaving the United States. I was born by a midwife in the Blue Ridge Mountains, near two spots on the map called Trust and Luck. My mother raised me in a snug cabin surrounded by forest and riverlight. I never imagined I’d fly halfway around the world.

But before that journey, I had the dream. The one that changed everything.

I remember every detail. The place was dry and strange — dust scraping my throat, sunlight too sharp. I didn’t know where I was.
A boy about my age walked along a cracked road. His name was Atash — somehow I just knew. His dark hair was wild and defiant. In one hand, he held a small book filled with writing I couldn’t read, and in the other… a detonator.

His father had taught him to “act like a man,” to hide anything soft or tender. He played the part so well that everyone believed him — everyone except me. They called him Atash the Martyr, which meant fire. And it fit. He wrote stories and poetry as if he carried a secret flame inside.

But Atash was tired of pretending. He wanted to learn — to read and write like the master poets of his ancestors. Yet in his world, sons were raised to fulfill their fathers’ wishes, not their own.

I felt his thoughts whisper through mine: What kind of world makes a boy hide his true self just to die for someone else’s dream?

Then the light changed. The air shimmered. Atash stood before a white building that pulsed in the heat — a hotel. It looked familiar. His father’s voice echoed in his head: You are ready. You will bring honor to our family one last time.

My pulse quickened. I didn’t know why.

Then, Atash saw her.

A woman in black robes, eyes like midnight. She reached for him, gripped his arm, and whispered, “Do not turn yourself into ashes.” For the first time, Atash looked afraid.

And then he looked straight at me.

It was like staring into a mirror. The same eyes. The same round cheeks. The same fiery hair.

The world began to tremble. I smelled smoke, heard shouting, saw the light turn red — and I screamed. But it wasn’t my voice. It was his.

And that’s when I woke up.

I remember gasping, clutching my blanket so tightly my fingers ached. Mom ran in before I could speak, wrapping her arms around me. “It’s just a dream, Starr,” she whispered. “You’re safe.”

But I didn’t feel safe. Because deep down, I knew that boy wasn’t just a dream. He felt real.

Mom blamed it on “too much internet,” said I’d scared myself looking up our travel plans. She had shown me where she and Dad once wandered along the old Hippie Trail. I’d Googled our hotel in Kabul and found a jumble of images — glossy wedding halls beside photos of bombed-out ruins and rebuilt facades.

She apologized over and over, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Atash and I were somehow connected — that the dream wasn’t finished.

When she finally left my room, I pulled the blanket to my chin and whispered, “I’ll face the nightmare. If he comes back, I won’t be afraid.”

Then I blew on an imaginary dandelion, hoping that — like in the old fairytales — my wish for protection might drift across the world to reach him.

I didn’t know it yet, but that single breath — that wish — had already begun its journey.

Somewhere far away, a boy named Atash might have felt it brush his cheek like wind. And Starr — though she couldn’t know — was already on her way to find Atash.