My Inner Demon

     My mother always hated Cassie. She'd say, "Alex, I don't care if you make friends with a human from the heartland, but I don't trust humans who live outside. They might not know that you shouldn’t steal power." It didn't matter that Cassie wasn't the type of person who stole power. She told me she hated the way power "felt" so while she could control it, she mostly just kept it away from her body. 

    I didn't want to tell my mother the truth, that I was friends with Cassie because she'd seen my inner demon and had managed to fight it back. 

    All Nightmares have Inner demons. Learning to control them is how the strong distinguish themselves from the weak. I can't control mine, no matter how hard I try, and I'm terrified that one day it'll break loose in the middle of town. 

  What scares me the most is the idea that if I lose control, I'll destroy Estellia. Nobody, not even Cassie, knows this, but when I was about eight I saw the Shadow leader walk up to me in an illusion and say, "Be careful, all of Estellia depends on you knowing what reality is, and on you making sure the humans know it as well."

   I don't know what he meant, but I read everything I could find about it in school. My mother wonders why. She says that I'm not a god, so I shouldn't be concerned with the construction of Dreamworlds. 

   But I always worry. My inner demon will never go away.