“Isn’t that how dreams work?” he asks. He almost laughs. It’s not overly witty, but all he knows of dreams are the run-of-the-mill kind, dreams of mothers and monsters and nothing-dreams, dreams he doesn’t recall but leave him waking with sadness, or with wonder.
He doesn’t know the real power of them. He doesn’t know such a thing exists.
He is, as we’ve said, a foolish boy.
Her distant gaze is on
him now, and he feels strange beneath it. As if he is the other world. The dream. And then –
I could show you.
What could she show him? Dreams?
(He thinks of the monster. How often he’s dreamed of him.)
He should say no. She is a stranger with a strange proposal, one he doesn’t understand. He could walk away.
But there is nothing for him to walk towards. He is a lonely, foolish boy with a taste for danger.
“You said you could show me,” he says, “what do you mean? Your dreams?”
What he doesn’t say is:
I have already decided to follow.
He answers her question.
“I was born in the deserts,” he says, “but wasn’t there long. I never cared much for it.”
He doesn’t even recall it, not fully – he remembers heat, and shifting sands under his spindly legs. Everything shimmery and unstable. Like dreams, you could say.
Her lips feel hot on his throat. He hasn’t been touched in a long time. It feels strange.
“What do I have to do?” he whispers. The distance between them isn’t much. She is still watching him. He is still watching her. Waiting.
The ground, though - it shifts beneath his feet. Like sand.
rapt
caius x else
