her hands were twisting streams of soldier ants and soldier men , destroying but also dissolving , then re-forming as fingers to grab , fists to pound , her body stretching from horizon to horizon , flattening everything in her path , approaching a city , yes , approaching it and raising a mighty tidal wave of a hand to sweep it all away- but hesitating now , holding herself back from the final destruction- and learning in an instant the fatality of this hesitation , because already she is dissipating , already she is falling to pieces , atom by painful atom- she woke , not with a start , but with a simple opening of her eyes ( never knowing this was an exact mirror of how her father woke from nightmares ) .