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from Africa now, playing catch up with work, loving hot running water and writing for all she's worth.
    Contact info:
    Follow her blog for updates on her recent works at The Fictional Life of Cari Z , and check out her Website for a running tally of everything she's put out there and news on what's coming next. You can email her at [email protected]. In fact, please do! She'd love to hear from you. She also has a brand new Twitter account @author_cariz .
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IN DREAMS
    by Eden Winters

    For three sleepless days, the lyrics have been pounding around in my head. Every time I close my eyes, this is the face that I see. The music is pouring from me, dragging me in its wake and I can almost believe he is real, his haunted eyes singing to me .
    ~ Lexi

    genre: fantasy
    tags: elves; magic; hurt/comfort; abduction/kidnapping
    word count: 4,939
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    IN DREAMS
    by Eden Winters
    Callused hands smooth my sides, the scent of new mown hay blending with my lover's skin as he lays me down in the fragrant meadow. A ring of stones encircles us, shielding us from the world outside. He smiles down at me. His lips are full, his cheekbones high, a hood hides most of his hair. Wisps of ebony down escape the confines of the fine wool, lightly caressing his face. "I choose you," he whispers. "Tonight you are mine."
    He takes me, his face hidden in shadow. I cry out in my completion, a name falling unbidden from my tongue: "Alastair!"
    Afterwards he holds me, crooning a melody with words I cannot understand.
    A rooster's crow jolts me awake and the image dissipates like smoke on a morning breeze as it's done so many times before. However, this morning was slightly different, for this morning I hum the tune my nocturnal visitor sang to me and whisper the name "Alastair." A niggling of a memory dances from my grasp, vanishing in the mists of forgetfulness.
    Three nights. For three sleepless nights the phantom has haunted me with his sweet lovemaking and elusive lyrics that mean nothing yet everything to me. They plague me night and day – a mystery to puzzle out. Every time I close my eyes, I see old eyes in a young face, the curve of his cheek, plump lips. This man who lives each night in my dreams strikes a resonance in my heart that none at the tavern ever have. And his voice! He sings like an angel, filling me with longing until the music pours from me, dragging me in its wake and I can almost believe he is real, his fathomless eyes crying out to me. Who is this phantom who robs my sleep, and what does he want of me?
    The rooster crows again and I rise, folding my blanket and wiping hay from my braes before climbing down from the barn loft. A bit of cold water from the well brings me fully awake. Overhead, the last stars fade to nothingness, fleeing the rising sun. A few depressions of a pump handle fill the chickens' water bucket, and I fill another for the cow. The innkeeper and his wife pay me, not to milk the cow or gather the eggs, but to sing to them, though I must do so in secret.
    I arrived four seasons ago, with no knowledge of my past or where I hail from, possessing no more than the clothes upon my back and a trinket. Helv, the innkeeper who took me in, offered to safe-keep the polished rock that hung from a bit of deer hide, and gave me a job, mucking stalls and cleaning the carriages of passing travelers. Then one morning I'd hummed while I worked. The innkeeper's wife, Freda, gathered three times the eggs of a normal morning, and required several buckets for milking instead of the usual one.
    From that moment forward I sang whenever bidden, repaying the kindness of strangers while keeping a hat firmly pulled over my ears to hide my deformity, though my unnatural height and pale skin weren't so easily concealed.
    "Good morn, Esmeralda," I say, patting a docile milking cow. She chews her cud, eyes as brown as my own gleaming in the weak morning light. The innkeeper calls her simply "cow" no matter how