The Art of Knowing [Completed]

1. • insomniac •

[to all waiting for that certain someone, the one that will make you want to live in your reality and no longer in your dreams.]

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An airy hitch of Cassandra's breath lingered throughout the dark room. The light taps of raindrops against the window accompanied the sudden burst of air out of her lips. Her chestnut curls pressed against her glistening skin, which was coated with sweat, as she recuperated from the jolting wake. A despondent shake of her head followed her rigid breaths. After a mere decade of impromptu dreams, you'd think Cassandra would be accustomed to the sporadic images that entered her mind during her peaceful slumber.

With a swift hop off her bed, she made her way to brush her teeth, adorned her face with light makeup along with the addition of a loose jacket over her outfit. Her hair swayed slightly as she hastily walked back towards her bedside, snatching the worn down sketchbook as she made her way out the door. The lingering memories of the dream continued to raise in her mind which only aided in her picking up the pace on the way to the diner, hopefully before the images she'd obtained diminished into unrecoverable blurs. Her fingers flipped the various pages of the book in her hands with hasty steps. She allowed her eyes to dance through each of the sketches she'd etched on the blank surfaces weeks before.

Each page had its certain title, from 'little girl in blue dress' to 'cashier lady'. Cassandra had had dreams about those two figures, which ultimately served as a catalyst for her to grab a pencil and sketch anything she could remember about them. At first, she thought of these unusual occurrences as nothing more than strange dreams with no real meaning, nevertheless, they were intriguing enough to make the young 23 year old grab her art supplies as she created a sketch out of the images in the depths of her mind. She called them her muses for a while, until the day she actually saw them in person.

Her heart stopped that fateful day at the supermarket when, seemingly out of chance, the familiar cashier woman stood right in front of her. She wore an earnest smile and the willingness to cash out her items, unaware of the eerie moment she was now a part of. Cassandra couldn't help but stand in awe and terror as she studied the young woman. The same auburn ringlets she'd sketched out along with her piercing blue orbs looming over the grocery items- they were exact. Her throat went dry once she heard the unmistakable giggles of a young child. More specifically, a little girl. And much to Cassandra's terror, a bright blue dress adorned that fateful little girl's body as she clung to her mother's hand and walked out of the store. 

"Everything alright, miss? Did you find everything you were looking for?" the cashier inquired kindly, her all too familiar blue eyes staring straight at her customer.

Cassandra couldn't muster a single word out of her lips, with the exception of a quick distraught nod as she witnessed her art seemingly come to life. The idea of explaining her skittish behavior to the cashier had come to mind, and yet the thought of describing that she'd drawn the young woman days before their encounter had already started to sound ridiculous. So she held her tongue, allowing a plastered smile to form on her lips as enormous amounts of terror and confusion lingered in her mind.

How in the world would she be able to sketch someone who already existed... Through a dream?!

The more she tried to piece it together, the more it's impossibility began to grow. There was no way she could've retrieved those images from any other place besides her dream. Immediate certainty about the fact that she'd never seen the woman in her entire life until that day engulfed her mind, which only made the whole situation even more eerie by the second.