Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Prologue

By definition, a dream is a series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occuring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Images from the day before may burn themselves into your dream, you have no real control over them. But what if dreams weren't just like that? What if dreams weren't just wisps of images, but something entirely different?

On my sixteenth birthday, my dream was so real that I found myself waking in a sweat and panting. In my dream, I had been tossed into some kind of fairy tale land with dragons, fairies, werewolves, and other midnight creatures. And as I tried to find my way home, I began to run. When my eyes opened, sweat dripped from my forehead into my eyes and my chest hurt when I breathed. I remember standing up, intent on going to the bathroom and splashing cold water on my face, and finding my legs sore and weak.

When I relayed my memories of the dream to my father, his face etched in worry, I recall him saying it was too early. I thought he meant too early in the morning to tell stories, but I was wrong.

"Dream slippers" is a term given to those of us with a special gift to slide in and out of a strange world in our sleep. My mother was one and apparently the gift was pushed to me when she died, only a few weeks before my sixteenth birthday. The gift wasn't supposed to set in until you were eighteen though and that was what my father meant by it being too early.

"Slippers are rare. But it stays in the family. If you are a slipper, you will always be a slipper." My father tried to explain it to me but I'm not sure if it worked. I spent the next few months trying not to sleep and apparently that was the only way to stop from slipping. By making myself so tired that I couldn't keep my eyes open, I was making it impossible for my body to have enough energy for the slip.

By my seventeenth birthday, I had mastered my slipping to the point where I only did it a few times a month. When I appeared in the other world, I would stay hidden in a mass of trees until my body in the main world started to wake.

And as my eighteenth birthday approached, I was mildly worried. I wished mother was still alive so she could explain this to me. Father didn't know enough about it to be of much help.

"Trexila Kingston, are you listening to me?" I winced as my teacher's shrill voice brought me out of my daydream. My eighteenth birthday was days away, I had a right to be preoccupied.

"Sorry, Ms. Matthews. It won't happen again." She glared at me and then continued with her lecture. I blinked away my daze and tried to keep my attention on the matter at hand. The lecture was starting to lose momentum and I started losing attention, staring out towards the window.

As my mind started to drift again, the bell rang, signalling an end to the treacherous day. Grabbing my bag and the items off my desk, I stood up and frowned when my back popped.

"You okay, Rexi?" My eyes wandered over to where Drake Corrins stood by the door, hand out stretched to me. I smiled and moved towards him, grasping his hand with mine, and heading towards the main doors.

"Tired, I suppose. Not sleeping well."

He smile and let go of my hand to open the door for me. He was a perfect gentleman. A perfect example of the male species.

"You that excited for your eighteenth?" He wrapped his arm around my waist and we walked towards his truck.

"I suppose." Excited may not be the right word, but it'd have to do. He laughed and squeezed my waist a bit.

"I promise you, being eighteen feels no different than being seventeen." I laughed as well and leaned my head on his shoulder.

"I hope you're right. But how would you know? You've only been eighteen yourself for two months."

He shrugged at that, laughing again, and opened the passenger door for me. After making sure I was in and buckled, he kissed me lightly and shut the door.

I had a feeling that my eighteenth was going to be different than his. I just hoped that I was wrong.