Dante was a dream. She had to be one. She couldn't be anything but a dream. After all, she was there; she could feel herself, and she knew that she was real. But she couldn't touch anything. She had been told to follow the boy, make sure he didn't get himself hurt, and make sure that he eventually fulfilled her destiny. The old man had sent here there for a reason, and she wasn't about to give up.
But she wasn't real. She thought she was, and she was sure that she was, but she couldn't really refuse the evidence to the contrary, not when it was lying just behind her, so that if she turned around, she would be able to see it. Of course, she didn't have to see it to know what it meant. She didn't have to accept it to know that it was true, no matter how much she wanted to believe the carefully constructed lie that was her life.
She'd met up with the boy, started following him like she was supposed to. And she had realized before long that she was bothering him quite a bit. He knew she was there. He could see her just as well as if she was real, even though she now knew that she wasn't. And he knew she was following him, even though he had no clue who she was, where she had come from, or even why she was trailing him. She hadn't told him, mostly because she only knew the answer to the first one, and it wouldn't help his frustration very much.
She'd followed him to a cafe, where he had bought a disgustingly strong cup of coffee and a donut of some sort. It was the donut that was her downfall, even though she had politely declined his offer to buy one for her as well. She wasn't quite sure why he had done that, since he seemed to be so creeped out by her following him, and just annoyed at her in general. But she wasn't hungry (and she couldn't remember a time when she had been hungry, now that she thought about it a little more), so she had quietly said "No thanks," to his offer.
And then they'd left the cafe. She continued to follow him, not explaining a bit, but also refusing to leave her spot a couple of steps behind him. He'd yelled at her quite a bit, especially when he had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and demanded to know why she was following him for about the tenth time. She couldn't answer, since the only reason she knew was because the old man had told her to, and that wouldn't be much of a reason for him. So she had stayed silent, and he had thrown the half eaten donut at her. She hadn't had time to react, so the donut hit her, right in the middle of her chest. At least, it should have...
It went through her, and landed in the grass behind her.
He had stared at her, as if she were some sort of monster. She stared at him, with the sudden sinking feeling that she was the one not quite in touch with reality, despite what all of her memories, fuzzy as they were, and senses told her. And then she had demanded to know what he had done to her, using anger to cover her own shock. She knew better, that he hadn't done anything to her, but she just couldn't accept the only thing that made sense to her for what was going on. So she ignored it.
But, deep down inside of her, she knew what had happened. At least, she was pretty sure... She just wasn't going to admit it any time soon, especially not to someone who was real.