Time Threads #1: The Coming of Age Dream

In the final months of her apprenticeship, Siobhan had a prophetic dream that all apprentices must experience before embarking on their first solo time sail. It is called, The Coming of Age Dream, and everyone anticipates its arrival. Yet Siobhan was reluctant to relate the dream to her mentor. Dark images filled her with foreboding. Was her dream a portend of torture or death? Did it represent irrevocable disaster? Thinking about the dream only confused her. Finally, the anguish of silence became so overwhelming that Siobhan told Matsuka her dream. This is what she revealed:
"It is twilight at the edge of an empty landscape. I am a giantess, perhaps 12 feet tall, maybe more. I wade through the middle of a small river that opens to a vast lake. I can see another tributary emptying into the same lake. A great flood has washed away everything in its wake. There are no signs of human activity; no animals, birds, trees or flora. Patches of lichen begin to emerge from the clay. Suddenly out of the haze of the adjoining tributary float a line of four large paintings. They are portraits of girls who are either related to me, or perhaps they are me. The paintings sail in a self propelled flotilla of objects pitched slightly skyward as if drawing power from the dimming twilight. I am riveted in place as the floating salon presents its offerings:
The first painting shows the face of a demurely smiling girl surrounded by a corona of flower fragments and machine parts.
In close pursuit is the second painting: A woman throws up her hands in terror. I cannot see what torments her. She is dwarfed by the imposing shadows of two towering highways. Her eyes bulge in horror. Arching above the scene are neon letters that read, "See the Light!"
In the third painting a woman is tied face down to a rack. Her feet are untethered.  Long cuts from a lash mark her back and buttocks. She raises her head and twists her body to see the face of her tormentor. A half human creature prepares to strike again. Two impassive men look on; one is a shaman, and the other is a costumed superhero.
In the distance emerging through the haze is the fourth painting, a towering vertical panel depicting fragments of heroic women's heads bathed in rays of light from a stigmatic ebony hand.
I turn away from the paintings frightened and confused by what they might mean.  I discover a solitary canvas remains beached face up on the banks of the river. Its point of view looks down on the head of a girl's face emerging like exhaust from a motor vehicle moving very fast through a wash of rain water on asphalt. Her three quarter profile is turned towards the green patina of a bronze water nymph. Its hands are locked behind its up tilted head. The arch of its body is provocative, an invitation. Its smile anticipates a moment of total abandon. A warning punctuates the bottom of the composition in large red letters, "DANGER!" "