Deep Dream

I blinked, and then I felt myself grin. I was back in that dream with the fox. I was standing in the middle of a field, watching a fox beckon to me with a flick of her tail. I somehow knew the fox was a she, like I knew the falcon flying above me was male. Crossing the field in a flash, I followed the fox through a misty forest. The slight gray colorlessness of my dreams was present here too, as if it were perpetually night. I turned back, to see if the sun was up yet, but the falcon was already looking for it, he assured me. I turned back to the fox but she was gone. Only her tail was visible, as she flitted through the undergrowth of the dark forest.

I became a fox too, and I dashed through the moonlit trees on my new little fox feet, and then just as quickly began sweeping through the shadows on falcon’s wings. The trees became air as I literally passed through them, then they solidified again as I passed. The feeling of soaring was so wonderful, I flew up through the forest’s canopy to fly above the clouds, but there weren’t any that night, so I just climbed higher and higher, towards the moon, until I could no longer see the forest. I was still aware of the fox sprinting through the trees far below me though, and the other bird trailing me. He caught up to me as soon as I knew he was still there, and we dove as one back to the ground. Before hitting the ground, I saw the fox watching, until everything turned black. I was myself again, and falling into darkness. The fox’s luminous green eyes disappeared from sight, and I was jolted awake by my abrupt dream fall. All I could remember of the dream was a pair of eyes and the descent into darkness at the end, yet I felt a bit of déjà vu when I tried to recall the rest of the dream, as if I’d had the exact same dream before and forgotten it again. I went back to sleep, still trying to remember.

I got up the next morning with a pleasant feeling, not knowing why. Then I remembered my dream, but before I could completely remember it, my mom called me down for breakfast. I swore because I’d lost my train of thought. There was something about foxes…

Waiting at the bus stop later, I had more time to think about it. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had dreamed about something important. Well, I thought resignedly as I climbed onto the bus, maybe I’ll have the dream again tonight. I picked a seat near the back of the bus, where I wouldn’t be disturbed and so I could finish some last minute homework. Doing homework over the weekend wasn’t something I look forward to on a Friday, so I always put it off until the half-hour long bus ride the next Monday morning. I pushed my long red hair out of my green eyes and focused on my homework. I would much rather be thinking about ballet practice tonight instead of this. I love dancing, from tap dancing to ballroom dancing; it lets me escape, become anything I want to be.

My best friend Anna boarded the bus as I was finishing my homework. She’s into all kinds of sports, but she wouldn’t make a very graceful dancer. She’s got short brown hair, dark brown eyes, and a little nose, so she looks kind of like a mouse. Plus she’s the shortest girl in our grade, and she’s really enthusiastic, so she has a habit of popping up unexpectedly. She ducked into the seat next to me, and I was able to scribble down some answers to my homework and keep up a conversation about dreams quite easily.

“I think I was falling, and that’s all I remember. The thing is, I feel like it was really good, or really important or something, and I know I’ve dreamt it before,” I finished, describing the previous night’s dream. I sighed, then asked Anna about her dreams.

“You know, I rarely remember my dreams. I think I had one about a tree a couple weeks ago, and I saw this squirrel hanging off it, but when I went up to it…” Anna rambled on about her dream, but my attention was elsewhere, and definitely not on my homework. I stared out the window for a while, until I heard, “Brigit? Hey, earth to space cadet, we’re here. Come on, I’m not that boring!” She called in my ear as the bus pulled up to the front of the school. I was brought back to reality with a pang of happiness; I had finally recalled the dream. I started describing it to Anna as we exited the bus, finishing it later in homeroom.

“And then the fox looked at me, I fell into nothingness, and I woke up,” I finished.

“What was the forest made of?” Anna asked when I was done.

“Huh? Trees, why?”

“Well, I had a dream about a forest made of broccoli once. Then it turned into a forest made of plastic forks, and they all started attacking me,” she explained.

“Oh! Well, just as long as you weren’t hurt enough to miss Biology,” I said in a mock serious tone, and we both smiled.

Biology wasn’t as bad as it normally was, though, because we had a substitute that day. He just lectured about genes while the majority of the class made no effort to even pretend to be listening. Anna and a couple of other equally studious people took notes, but I knew Anna would let me copy hers if I needed to, so I just spaced out for the rest of the period, thinking about that dream. I started to get sleepy, just staring out the window at a couple of birds twittering away in a tree outside, when suddenly I leaped out of my chair and flew out the window, away from the school, away from my old life, to start a new one, closer to the moon- “Brigit!” hissed Anna. I started awake, just in time to receive the teacher’s handout. It just announced the dates for the annual science fair. The bell rang, just as I crumpled the paper up and tossed it into the garbage can as I left the classroom. I was still thinking wistfully of the beautiful spring day I was unable to experience, because of school, when I took a wrong turn in the hall and ended up facing the double doors that led outside. It was barely 10 AM and I was already anxious to get out of there. I sighed and continued walking to my next class.

We decided to eat lunch outside that day. As we made our way over to an empty place at the tables, we chatted about the unexpectedly pleasant weather. “It hasn’t been this nice at this time of year for a couple of years now,” I said, munching on my sandwich.

“Yeah, but it’s better than the gray, cold winter weather,” replied Anna.

“Undoubtedly,” I agreed. “It’s just a bit strange that last Friday we were wishing for warmer weather, and the sun came out from behind the clouds, and it’s been nice ever since.” Anna nodded.

We had been sitting here last Friday, when I had said that I hated it when it stayed this cold for too long, and we had proceeded to yell jokingly at the sun to come out. When it did, surprisingly, minutes after our outburst, we had congratulated ourselves for it, and said everyone should be thanking us for stopping winter early. I came out of my thoughts and looked up. Someone was weaving his way through the other tables towards us. I could tell he was coming towards us, anyway. He came and sat down, and started eating, for all the world as if he’d done that every day of his life. Anna and I looked at each other, both our faces wearing identical images of confusion. We looked expectantly towards him. He looked up from his tray of food and asked, “Would you like some?” and held it forward. We shook our heads, and he continued eating.

I said uncertainly, “Um, why are you eating with us? Not to be rude,” I added hurriedly when he looked up suddenly. “You’re welcome to. We just, well, wondered why.”

He put down his fork and gave each of us a thoughtful look. “Everywhere else is taken. Don’t you remember me? Besides, I thought you’d like a bit of company. You look out of place, just the two of you alone at this big table.” He said all of this very seriously and very matter of factly, as if it were all fairly obvious, and then went back to eating. I thought he looked familiar, vaguely remembering a tall, green eyed boy who sat behind me in math class and in front of me in history and English, Daniel or something. Daniel… I looked at Anna, and she shrugged, so we all just sat there and finished lunch. Right before the bell rang, Daniel-or-something looked me right in the eye and said very seriously, “Nice weather. Thanks,” and he picked up his tray and left.

I was still thinking about him when I got to my next class. His name was Daniel, I found out when the teacher asked me to pass out the tests. He gave me a little smile when I gave him his test. He had gotten all the answers right, and it had been a really hard test. He saw my astonishment, which I quickly hid, and winked. I was even more puzzled by this strange boy, whom I had never noticed before now. I returned to my seat. When he had made that comment about the weather and then thanked me, I had been sure it was for letting him eat with us, but after seeing that self-assured look and thinking about the strange way he had said it, it sounded more and more like he had actually been thanking me for the weather. I put him out of my head and tried to concentrate on what the teacher was saying, but I soon drifted off again, in my own little world once more. I didn’t fall asleep though, and instead daydreamed about flying out of the window again. When the bell rang about an hour later, I hadn’t heard a word the teacher had said, and Daniel was looking curiously at me for a change. I blinked and looked back, but he just smiled and left the class. I allowed Anna to steer me towards our next class. I didn’t voice any concerns about Daniel to Anna, but instead tried to focus in my next couple of classes and failed miserably at it.

I hadn’t thought about Daniel the entire rest of the day, until right before bed that night, exhausted after dance practice. Before falling asleep, I absentmindedly thought about Daniel, his red hair, quirky smile, an almost cat like confidence, and green eyes, very similar to my own…

I was back in the meadow, and this time I was accompanied by an orange cat. I became a cat too and followed him back through the forest on my own ginger cat feet. We ran for a while among the moonlit trees, until reaching a little stream. We followed it to a pond, where I leapt in, and the other cat followed. I swam to the small waterfall the pond led into, and hurtled face forward to the lake below. The cat next to me plummeted towards the lake too, but faster, and right before hitting the strangely undisturbed surface of the water, he stopped in mid-fall and swooped over the water, paws outstretched. He, well of course it was a male cat, flew to the opposite bank but didn’t stop his flight. Brigit-the-cat also flew over the lake, following the strange cat to another group of trees. We flew over a large valley of rocks, before touching down on the top most rocks in the valley. The orange cat just looked at me mysteriously. I looked back, and asked him where we were going. He smiled, and said “To your real home,” which of course made perfect sense to my dream self. I nodded my little cat head and we took off again. I seemed to have become a bird again, and when we reached another set of trees we just passed through them. After a slightly boring time spent dodging boulders stuck in the ground at odd intervals, which of course we couldn’t pass through, seeing as how rocks are more solid than trees there, we reached a new valley. Instead of it being filled with rocks, this one was full of strange jagged metal objects all heaped together like a scrap yard. Getting closer, my flying cat self saw the metal lumps were old cars from several decades ago, in various states of disrepair. Some were overgrown with weeds, but others appeared to have been dumped more recently. I glided low over the broken down cars, peering into broken windows to see the seats had been taken out of all the cars. The other cat followed me, and after a while sped ahead, urging me to follow.

The orange cat showed me much of that dream world over that and the next few nights. I came to anticipate each night the dream that would come, slipping off to sleep during my free time at school, trying to catch a glimpse of the meadow, the cat, or the myriad other places I had seen on my nighttime trips. I felt like I always just missed something each time I woke up, something that just appeared as I left the dream state. The oddly alluring dreams seemed to call to me, beckoning more urgently each day. I felt compelled to fall asleep whenever I became tired, and while my teachers weren’t exactly thrilled at my new sleeping arrangements, I was, as I glided from mountain to valley in pursuit of the golden-orange cat. Besides, my schoolwork barely suffered, and in a month or two school would be out for the summer. Dance practice had been cancelled because our instructor had broken her leg, conveniently giving me more time to sleep, which I was doing one sunny morning in late April.

“Honestly, Brigit, wake up! You can’t even keep your eyes open when I’m telling you about my boyfriend!” Anna shook me awake during lunch, still talking as I opened my eyes reluctantly and sat up. Anna’s new favorite subject, her new boyfriend, had at first interested me, having never had one myself, but I soon got bored of hearing about how white Richard’s teeth were and how smart he was. They had just started dating a week or so ago, and she acted like she was in love him. I just zoned out until she was all talked out on the subject. Just when I thought I could safely steer her onto a new topic without being snapped at for not paying attention, Daniel came over.

“Wow, Anna, you haven’t scared him away yet with your incessant talk about Richard yet!” I interjected, pointing at Daniel.

He sat down, looking from Anna’s flustered expression to my jovial one, and said, “Hey, don’t bring me into your fight! What did I miss?” making me laugh even louder as Anna’s face got redder. Daniel had continued to eat lunch with us, and because he turned out to be much less weird than we initially thought, we let him stay. In fact, we soon became good friends.

“Hey Daniel, why don’t you come over this afternoon? I just got the new Living Dead video game, it’s even better than the first two!” I said.

“Sounds great. Was that the one I played at your house last week?” he said as he took a bite of his sandwich.

I nodded. “Yeah. This one has a new first person view option, and you can lock onto the zombies with different guns. I haven’t gotten very far yet, but I heard the boss was this huge mutant rat who gets more mutated by eating zombies. Awesome.”

Daniel grinned. Anna frowned. “Is that the one where you shoot the guys and they grab you from behind or attack your legs?” she asked.

I explained, “No, that’s Killer Dead. Living Dead is where you shoot the guys and then they get back up and you kick them in the head. Then they stay down.” I grinned. “Then they ask you over for tea. Would you like one lump or two?” I then did an impersonation of a zombie tea party. I decided to stop soon after because of the look on Anna’s face. Daniel found it much funnier than Anna had, and we continued the zombie impersonations during math class. We snickered all through the teacher’s lecture on bad exam grades leading to cancer or something stupid, I don’t know I wasn’t paying attention, while we were moaning and rolling our eyes into the backs of our heads and whispering ‘brains, brains, I must eat brains!’

That night, I found myself in the meadow once again, but the cat wasn’t there. Instead, I saw Daniel get up and walk towards me from the other side of the field. He looked amused at something. When he got to me, he helped me up from my position, lying down in the grass. Without moving his lips, dream-Daniel spoke to me. “I’m glad you came as yourself this time. I have something more real to show you tonight.” And with that we were somewhere I don’t think I had ever been to. A city, in the middle of a lake. Not on an island, but sitting on the water. People walked around on the water, as if the lake had solidified. Then we were in the middle of the town, standing on the lake/street. Daniel looked at me and said, “I want you to come here if you ever can’t find me and need to. Okay?” He looked down at me as if worried.

“Yes, of course,” my dream self answered.

He looked satisfied with my answer. “Good. Now, what would you like to do? We can do anything. I just want to spend some time with you.”

“Oh yeah, this is a dream,” I said aloud. He just looked at me oddly, not quite meeting my eye. Odd, I thought, that I would notice something that specific in a dream. “Well then, let’s go see the beach. I want to go there,” I said firmly. Daniel nodded, and we were at the beach. I grinned and dashed over to the waves, leaping among the foam and spray. We played in the waves for a while, until I stopped in mid leap. He stopped too. “I have to go. I’ve got to go remember something. I think. Will you come with me?” I asked Daniel, hopefully, pleadingly.

He shook his head regretfully. “You know I can’t. Only you can decide when to remember,” and with this strange, seemingly nonsensical ending conversation typical of dreams, I left Daniel alone on the sand, as the last stars of night disappeared from the sky.

I sat up in bed quickly, wide awake and drenched in sweat- no, I was soaking wet, but not from sweat. It felt like someone had doused me with salt water while she slept. I saw sand between my toes, and clinging to my hair were strands of seaweed. Very puzzled, I realized that I must still be dreaming, and went back to sleep.

It was near midnight when I awoke. I had a strange feeling in the back of my mind that I had forgotten to do something. I raced to my backpack to check my homework planner, when I glanced out the window. The full moon, glowing bright in the cloudless sky, called to me, and I answered. As if in a trance, I clambered out the window, fell to the ground and pushed through the ferns surrounding my house, moving towards the forest in my backyard. The moon, still shining to my right, seemed to creep farther away with every step I took. I moved more quickly, reaching the trees at a dead run, but the glimpses of the gorgeous moon through the tree branches told me I was getting farther away. Screaming in unexplained frustration, like a mental patient, I dove through the undergrowth, thinking of my other nightly flights through the forest, and crying into the night, I leapt high over a log, and didn’t quite land. I kept floating, over the mossy roots of an old tree, and a bunch of rocks, and cleared the forest in no time. I think it was at this point that I realized I must still be dreaming. Somehow, I got closer to the moon with each glance at its position, until I had finally reached it. I stopped, stretched out my hand to touch it, my face glowing like the moon in anticipation and wonder, as the silvery surface of the moon yielded to my touch. It was like mercury, warm, shiny mercury, and I dove into it. There was no need to hold my breath- it was like being surrounded by thick water, but I could still breathe. It felt so good, the warmth flooding me, the glow enveloping me.

I opened my eyes. I was staring straight into the shining light of my lamp. I turned it off and closed my eyes, trying to recapture the wonderful dream, but it was gone, like sand through your fingers. All I could remember was a bright light, and warmth, both all-encompassing.

I spent the rest of my day in a residual euphoria from the moon dream. I passed all the tests I took that day, and I didn’t need Anna telling me I hadn’t been this happy and attentive for a long time. Daniel was positively beaming at the change in me, mentioning it several times throughout the day. “You know, I think you should shoot zombies before bed every day. It seems to agree with you, or something does at least,” he said to me in the hall that day. We entered the English classroom and sat down together, Anna sitting nearby. “So, have any good dreams lately?” Daniel asked casually, changing the subject in an unexpected, but good, direction.

“Not me,” declared Anna. “I had one about killer plastic forks a while ago.”

“Yeah, I had one about this great big fire or something!” I exclaimed. “I was just running to it, or flying I guess, maybe, and then I was in it. I even almost felt the warmth when I woke up, too!”

Daniel grinned. “I had one about a girl on the beach, and a town on a big solid lake. Dunno what that means.” I suddenly remembered my other dream. I remembered a beach, and maybe a boy, but anyone could dream about that. But the town on the lake… that was a pretty big coincidence. I turned to Daniel.

“Do you remember anything else about your dream?” I asked.

He grinned again and said, “Not really. Oh, yeah, there was the same girl in a meadow. She looked kind of like you, Brigit. Other than that, though…” he trailed off, looking at me. “Brigit? Are you okay? You look kind of pale all of a sudden.”

I blinked. I realized that I had gone rigid as soon as he’d said he had seen a girl in a meadow. This was fairly creepy. I forced myself to smile. “You know, I’m not feeling too well. Think I’ll go to the nurse.” And I got up and went to the school nurse, who said I looked sick. She told me to lie down, while she called my parents to pick me up, but I was afraid to close my eyes in case I had another dream like last night. I don’t know why the thought that we had had the same dream scared me, but it did- I felt entirely unnerved, and I didn’t know why. I wish I had realized why a lot sooner than I did. I ended up going home early, and eventually I did go to sleep, exhausted, at around three in the morning.

The meadow. The forest. Nothing. No one. I screamed silently for anyone. Anything. Dashing from familiar place to place, I searched for Daniel, for the cat, for the fox, for anything. I had reached a far away mountain top when I remembered Daniel’s words on where to fins him. He seemed to have predicted I might find myself lonely and alone some day soon. Blinking and finding myself at the lake-town, I searched frantically among the now derelict buildings, searching for something. I didn’t know what, only that I would find it here. I was almost sure I would, at least. Finally, having checked everywhere, I found that I had nowhere left to retreat to, so I sat down on the solid water street and closed my eyes. I didn’t think it was weird that I could close my eyes in a dream. When I opened them, there was Daniel, kneeling in front of me, peering worriedly into my eyes. Seeing me look up, he sat down anxiously and asked me if I was okay. I merely nodded. He seemed relieved. “I never want you to feel afraid again,” he said, in his familiar, strange, serious way of speaking. “You don’t need anyone else but yourself to stop feeling afraid. Look inside yourself. Everything you need is right there, right where it’s always been.” Daniel stood up, and he was gone. I blinked, and I was gone too.

Once again, I woke up in my bed, confused and tired. Getting up, I saw it was only two in the morning. Sighing, I got back in bed and tried to fall asleep again. I heard footsteps outside my door and went to check them out. My parents were there, and they looked angry. Angry enough to kill, or like they’d just killed. Their mouths were dripping with blood, and an evil red glint in their eyes told me I was next if I didn’t do something. So I ran. I dashed to the bathroom and bolted the door. It did no good; they broke down the door and lunged at me, completely monsters now and no longer my parents. I was cornered, I had nowhere to run, and I was about to be eaten by monsters. I threw up my hands to defend myself, and fire came out of them. It never occurred to me that this might be a dream, even after I had barbecued the monsters by throwing fire at them. They stopped coming at me and slumped to the ground, still clawing at the door in a feeble attempt to get me, as their torsos melted. I flung more fire at them, conjured magically out of the air, and stepped over the still burning corpses filled with hate, went back to my room, climbed into bed, and closed my eyes.

I had a lot of weird dreams back then, and they only got weirder from there. Daniel still came over to my house regularly to play Living Dead and Killer Dead. Anna had also started joining us, and we delighted in seeing her video game character being eaten repeatedly by the zombies. Despite our shouted help to, “Kill that one! The one behind you! No, aim down, it’s going after your legs- Aw, no, you died. Don’t worry, in this game, nothing stays dead for long. That’s the great part of it!” Anna still couldn’t get the hang of it.

“I give up! This is so stupid! Why would anything get back up after you’ve killed it? That doesn’t make any sense! Why can’t we play Fighting Frenzy? I’m actually good at that one…” she complained.

“No, we already beat that one,” I explained. “Besides, it’s much more fun seeing the zombies eat your brains. Look! They’re doing it to that dead body over to the left. Quick, shoot them while they’re distracted, Anna!”

I sighed. Anna’s character always ended up as the next zombie feast. I loved playing video games, especially ones where the dead came back to life. Playing video games let me relax, like dancing, and enter another world to forget my troubles. Who says the real world is all that great, I had thought. I thought about that creepy dream I had had. Although facing zombies without a gun wasn’t my ideal video game, or dream, I still liked it. Maybe I really wanted to do that. True, the fire had been awesome, but a good reliable shotgun would have done the job quicker, if messier. I realized how violent and gruesome that sounded. Oh well, it’s okay to be a little harsh sometimes. The world can be a harsh place. I looked up just in time to see a zombie take a bite out of Anna’s character’s arm. I opened my eyes. I hadn’t realized they were closed, and it’s kind of hard to miss something like that. But instead of seeing my room, I saw a different room. I saw a woman hovering over me. I couldn’t see her very well, but I had heard the woman crying and wondered why. I appeared to be lying down and tried to move my head, but I couldn’t. I tried to get up, but I couldn’t move my body at all. In a moment of panic, I heard a small frightened noise emitted from my throat. A fresh wave of panic swept over me as I saw a boy walk over to me. The panic subsided as I realized that it wasn’t Daniel, who haunted my dreams, although not unpleasantly. I dreaded seeing Daniel, but in the same way looked forward to it every night. No, but this boy did look a lot like Daniel, only older. And he was blonde. His eyes, a luminous green, seemed to reflect my own slightly paler ones. The woman spoke. “She will come back to us. I know she will. She has to.”

He responded, in similar plaintive tones, “Don’t worry. She will.”

The woman looked up at him with surprise and hope in her eyes. “How can you be so sure?”

He responded after a moment, with a thoughtful smile, “It’s weird, actually. I saw her in a dream a few nights ago, and I remember she told me not to be scared, that everything will be all right.” He looked down at me, and a look of astonishment swept over his face, as he called to the woman, “Come quick! She’s awake!” I only had time to hear the woman gasp, and notice the white ceiling of some strange building above me, when I felt a tug on my consciousness and drifted away again.

“Brigit! Wake up! Please hurry,” someone familiar said.

I woke up to see Anna standing over me with a panicked expression that lifted slightly when she saw me open my eyes. Anna propped me up on a pillow from the bed and told me I had passed out. “We were just playing the game, and I looked back at you to ask you if you wanted a turn, and you got this glazed look on your face and keeled over. You looked pale, and faded, and we were so worried. I yelled for your parents and they called 911. Daniel said you’d be fine, but I stayed with you anyways,” she finished.

“Feeling better?” asked Daniel as he entered the room. He looked as sad and tired as I felt at the moment.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Tell my parents to cancel the call. I was just tired, I need to rest or something,” I said, hoisting myself into the bed with Anna’s help. She left to tell my parents I was fine, with one last concerned look at me. Daniel moved to sit next to me. He sighed.

“I know you’ll be fine soon. Just remember what I said back at the lake, okay?” And with that he left. It took me a moment to register what he said, but it didn’t faze me when I realized what it meant. I had known it all along. I had first suspected it a long time ago, but it was confirmed with this last comment. I leaned back and closed my eyes.

Not wasting time with the meadow this time, I found myself at the lake town, right at the spot where I had last seen Daniel. In the dream world. He was there, waiting for me, obviously, and smiling. He moved closer to hug me. I returned his brotherly embrace. He stepped back after a moment. “Hi again,” he said.

“Hello, Danny,” I said to the boy I knew so well.

“Are you ready to go home yet?” he asked.

“I’m not sure. Almost,” I replied.

“You know I want to be there, but can you hang in there until you can see me again?” I knew what he was talking about. I didn’t want to know. I was happy in my own little worlds, for they were better than facing the reality of my brother Daniel’s death. I thought about this, as I had been thinking about it for the past few months, but found I couldn’t anymore. I broke down right there and started to cry. My legs gave out under me, and I sat down hard. Danny comforted me. I wept in his arms, screaming my pain to the lake, the trees, the moon. I cried until the lake was made of water. After an age of weeping, I stopped. I had no idea how I had been able to see him again, or even if this was real, and I was really talking to Danny, in this awful blessed world, but I wouldn’t let this opportunity to be with him one last time slip by. I looked up at him. I really looked at him, taking in his face, every detail, memorizing him. Then I spoke, still sobbing.

“I’m so sorry. I just couldn’t take it. I guess I… gave up. It was so hard, not being with you. You weren’t there, and I needed you. Why weren’t you there? It wasn’t fair. Why did you have to…” I paused, and continued. “…die.”

He just smiled at me sadly. “You know you can’t hide here forever. You’re still in denial. Please, you need to face this. Go back home, to the real world. Just sitting there in a self-induced coma isn’t going to help, staying here, in your mind, in your little dream worlds. You can see me anytime you want, you know. Just close your eyes. Just until I get back, okay?” He stood up as he finished talking, helping me up too. I looked at him, as if for the first time, maybe for the last time, never for the last time. Finally, I took a deep breath.

“I know. See you soon, I hope. I’ll try not to retreat again; face what comes face first. I feel as if it’s all really sinking in. I, also, I feel sure I’ll see you again. So just wait for me. I’ll wait for you,” I finished, smiling and crying at the same time. We met each other’s eyes, reflecting our own, and we both opened our eyes, just as the sun came up.