Dream of orchids - Phyllis A. Whitney (First edition)

I must have slept for two or three hours before the dream that I’d dreaded began. It was unbearably vivid and real. The time was night, and the only lights that burned were in the orchid house. I stood with all those flowers crowding around me, watching. Now I knew they had eyes and could whisper among themselves. There were so many of them in bloom—hundreds, it seemed. And among them, one great empress orchid was larger and more powerful than all the rest. Her color was as golden tawny as Fern’s hair, and there were red streaks along her petals—as though some animal had clawed them and left lines of blood in every mark. In the dream, the empress orchid spoke to me with a voice I recognized, even though I’d never heard it before.