The following narration comprises a recent series of dreams Cruz had throughout a single week. Heavy with symbolism, not everyone will decipher the context of her dreams, but each dream references Cruz's current, real-life encounters, practices, hardships, relationships, feelings (conscious and subconscious), etc. A footnote for the third dream: Legba Antibon, in the vodou religion, also goes by Papa Legba. The loa Damballa is also known as the Sky Father.

"What'll it be now, Mister Mole?
Whisper sloth in curls of smoke.
Take a back seat,
or play pharaoh.
Dance with me,
and shake your bones . . .

. . . Snake-eyed
with a sly smile,
He can hold you
and shake you, child."

Day 1: The first night.

I twist through rotting boughs and muddy wallow amid a dank, weaving mist. The earth is my home. I am a childe of the old lands. The air exudes the faint scent of virginal blood, an enclave of splintered bones conferred as my road to awe. The ground quakes beneath my sliding belly, and my mind conjures singular inquisition: Where is she?

Day 2: The after.

The little bird lays wounded before me, feathers plucked, her left eye suspended from its socket. I did this. My fangs bear the metallic taste of liquid crimson. I inhale the winged creature, her flaxen plumage scattered round like a halo. This is the lie for which I fall. Her image burns bright, and from its ashes rises something new, something before which I have never seen. She is different, and it is only once she has flown from me that I can see her clearly: the phoenix.

Ashes coat my coiling form, caking over scale and sin. They bury me. From this cocoon, I emerge anew, a woman now. I am naked. The skin I've been through has died behind me. This form is, at once, both foreign and familiar to me.

I am alone, standing on the edge of a sea of blood. I see her there. Voltiel. The name is whispered through my thoughts, but I cannot speak her name out loud. I watch her from the outskirts, tracing the shallow valleys and hills of her frame. Her beauty captures me. She extends a single arm, palm opened, fingers unfurled in invitation. I accept. Voltiel. My bare feet glide forward. She grows near, and I begin to sink. Voltiel. The blood consumes me, coaxing me within the undertow. Red arms rise to take me down, and Voltiel calls to me in a language that I cannot understand, staring toward me with eyes like coal, her phrases sibilant and airy. Everything is dark.

Voltiel.

Day 3: The fathers.

Where am I?

"You are at the crossroads," the voice tells me, heavy with resounding bass.

Who are you?

"I am Legba Atibon. Who are you?"

I speak my name in turn, but English does not spring from my tongue -- my tongue, forked and desperate, striking the air with whipping fervor. The sound that crawls forth from my jaws is like a thousand serpents rasping with mortal hatred. I see myself. My long tail unwinds beneath me. The smooth, overlapping plates of my skin travel the knolls of my hips, my breasts bare and full with milk. Damballa-Wedo suckles at my bosom, feeding. I nourish him to completion. He thanks me, and though his sharp, hissing sonance mirrors my own, I understand him, fully and wholly. He tells me a secret...

Cruz opens her eyes, awake.