When you believe in things that you don't understand
Then you suffer
Superstition ain't the way

-Stevie Wonder
　
The dark was penetrated by a brilliant flash of lightning. Seconds later the thunder clapped, shaking the walls and the bed with the sonic boom. Rain pelted intermittently at the floor to ceiling windows that ran along the length of the apartment. The storm was on its way, and still, Oman slept. The cloying aroma of the flower bloomed through the twenty second floor apartment. When lightning struck again, you could see the remnant's of the smoke that clung to the marble floors and around the bed she sprawled over in restless sleep. It wasn't a graceful or a lady-like thing to be passed out, half undressed, but she was alone and in the sanctuary of her own home. Every thirty seconds another flash gave birth to the ominous sounds of bowling thunder. It made her twitch in her sleep uneasily, her eyes darting back and forth under their lids. She was dreaming.

The rain poured down over her drenching everything she wore. She was standing on a long pier in the garbs of a peasant looking over the anger of the Sea before her. The tumult of waves crashed over the dock's edge and splashed up over her booted feet. She felt no fear, only a profound and certain curiosity. Something was coming, something was here. The Ocean roared at the shore in defiance. A huge wave rolled in. The sky was grey and lower to the ground than one might imagine. Lightning crept upwards from the horizon to the ominous cloud covered sky. It was a forest of arc's, its limbs and branches of electricity spread to loom between her outstretched hands. The onslaught of the impending wave came crashing down, it parted around her and rocked the pier she stood on. Something was so very near. The metallic taste of ions clung in her mouth and tongue.In this dream she spun around, so fast that it whipped a long trail of water from the braid which hung down her back. A Man who stood at the end of the wharf. He was completely dry and his feet were firmly sunk into the sand. The oceans tide was claiming him little by little. The defiant shoreline persevered. Facing him fully, the rain seeming to wash whatever sins she'd committed between the planks at her feet. The tale of each one slowly dissolved into the ocean under her. Oman stared vacantly at the figure, an amalgam come to haunt her. This man was unknown and yet she knew him. At least in the dream sense, he was a de'ja'vu. Lightning struck her. It coursed around her entire being, arcing from her fingertips to the pylons of the pier. The man dared her to release it.

Another thunderclap rattled the pictures hung on her bedroom walls. Oman jumped off the bed, the sheet sticking to her cheek, her eyes were so dry she couldn't focus. These premonition's always found their way to her in this halcyonic state. Still disoriented, the intensity of the dream made her heart thrum in her chest. Storms were horrible, terrifying, omen's. They told of change, rage, war, and death. Lightning was the curse of the Kings, come down to loose their judgements upon those who were deemed guilty. Only the innocent could survive it. Tuchuk's were intensely superstitious. Oman was no exception to that.

Staggering to a stand she managed to feel her way along the wall to the light switch. In the light she found herself alone in the sanctuary of her home.