16. All the help I never wanted

The dreams of November 13

She fell into the dream like it was a bottomless well of warm sea foam. She was running, feeling no exertion, no exhaustion. She ran next to Clay, through the fluffy expanse that shifted and alternated shades of delicate pastel colors. It was a run through clouds, a marathon through gossamer cotton candy. Something like wind caressed her face and body. She felt free.

The shapeless surroundings took on the form of a valley carpeted with impossibly fine, packed grass. It was about to come to an abrupt end at a cliff side, but before she had a chance to question what she was doing, Clay called out to her in a voice brimming with wild enthusiasm. “Where are we going?”

She closed the eyes in her mind and felt a rush of frenzy, a complete release of her physical binds. She called out madly. “We’re going to Greece!”

When Leila opened her eyes and was greeted by the impressive vision of Clay in head-to-toe white. They were both standing on a cobbled street and as she turned to her right, her breath caught in her throat and she brimmed with tears at the sight before her. It was Santorini, in all its bright blue and white glory.

“You really do have a thing for the ocean, don’t you?”

“It’s amazing!” she breathed in complete astonishment. She turned to cross her arms and lean against a stone wall that stood to just below her shoulders’ height. She started the moment her arms met the surface of the stone.

“What’s wrong?” Clay asked with a bit more softness than seemed necessary. Leila turned to look at him and, at another realization, she drew her hands up to her face and felt a rush of emotion that left her speechless. Clay stood and waited with a look that seemed to hold all the shimmery blue of the Santorini beaches. Patience, earnestness, steadfastness; everything Leila needed and desired seemed to be embodied by this peculiar boy in his dreams.

She found her voice at last. “It just feels so real. The stone is cold, the cobbles are pressing against my soles, I can feel the chill in the air and…”

“Your face feels warm?” Clay ventured with a mischievous grin that made Leila cover her mouth and snort.

“How very canny of you, Mr. Clay.” Leila was giddy, she couldn’t conceive, even in her dream, of a more perfect moment or a more fulfilling sentiment than what this instant awarded her. She delighted on the swish of her impossibly soft linen dress as she turned to walk down the narrow street, being conscious of Clay following her close.

“I’d seen this place in pictures many times. It looks exactly the same as I imagined it… maybe because I am just imagining it, right?”

Clay shrugged. “You still give me too much credit.”

“Someone told me that in real life today, that I give people too much credit. Whether for good or bad, everyone seems to be letting me know that I’m a terrible judge of character.”

“Look, I don’t know about others, or even myself, but you need to understand that you’re creating this world. You can claim this world for your own. Everything here is yours, because you willed it here.”

“Not you. I don’t understand the first thing about you, and I’m not one step closer to figuring out who you are. I don’t know why you always seem to show up in my dreams since I started gaining some form of awareness in them. I don’t know how much of this is real although it feels far more concrete than anything I’ve ever been able to summon in a dream before. I’m telling you, Clay, this feels so real I’m starting to question whether or not it could be…”

She caught sight of how crazy this statement was. Then she stood with a hand on the wall to steady herself, a stream of cold liquid pulsating through her spine. How long have I been having such detailed conscious analysis of the elements of this dream?.

“Clay… this dream is strange, it’s different. I had never been able to bring my waking memories into a dream so clearly. This is starting to freak me out a little, if reasoning and self-awareness isn’t pulling me out of this dream, then what will?”

“I don’t know,” Clay shrugged with unconcerned ease, “maybe your alarm clock? I think that’s a pretty safe bet.”

“You’re probably right; I hope you’re right… God, I hope you’re right.” Leila muttered these words as she shrank down against the wall and huddled up hugging her legs against her chest. “I’m scared, all of a sudden.”

“Look, don’t worry; you should know you’re safe here. You came here because you wanted to, and I’m here, for whatever that’s worth. Besides, what’s so horrible about living in your dreams? I could think of way worse things.”

Clay was squatting in front of Leila and she could feel him closing in on her like she was exerting gravity on his very core. She was baffled by what was happening, expectant but not entirely at ease with the prospect of being so close to him. Something felt off. It wasn’t Clay, something else was imposing on the scene.

Someone.

Leila turned her gaze back to Clay’s eyes and perceived a change that petrified her down to the last bit of nerve and sinew. His eyes had changed. The clear, transparent look that mimicked the ocean was gone. In its place was a too-real human visage. It was still Clay’s face, but Leila knew with undeniable certainty that the look belonged to another human being.

Her heart pounded like a caged animal fighting its way out of captivity. It was so far out of her expertise to experience such acute awareness and fear at the same time in a dream that she couldn’t even manage to decide on a course of action. She dug her heels into the cobbles and pushed her back against the rigid stone wall.

“This can’t be,” she mustered in a cracked whisper at last, “Why do you keep intruding like this? Why won't you leave me alone? You can't keep doing this, Soren.”

Realization came with as little effort as the utterance of the words. Soren was in her dream again, but the way he presented himself was throwing Leila for a loop. His face changed when she said his name, from Clay’s image to that of another young boy with fine copper curls and light, sand colored skin that appeared to be in need of some exposure to the sun. One of his eyes was amber speckled with green on the side closest to the bridge of his nose; the other eye was bright green with sparse flecks of amber. Taken in both at once his eyes looked like Van Gogh’s last project, dreamed up but unfulfilled, had taken life in this young boy’s gaze: a wave licking the shimmering surface of a pebbled shore.

Soren’s face twitched. Leila couldn’t trust herself to read his countenance. When he spoke his words were fluid, not only in intonation but also in timber; it was almost like a mountain stream had acquired speech. “There’s a lot you don’t know, and you’d do well to doubt everything you sense here. Come with me.”

He stood up but didn’t reach for her, waiting instead for her hesitation to give away and her will to return. She still distrusted him, but even as she looked deep within her somewhat limited conscious, Leila couldn’t manage to recall the paralyzing fear she’d experienced when she met him last. Indeed, all her aprehensions about Soren's presence had just vanished like a puff of smoke. 

Standing brought a new sensation. Her vivid perception of sight and touch started fading as she stood next to Soren, giving way to a wavering, shifting tingle throughout her body and a diffused landscape that had the appearance of living, swaying color.

“What is this place?”  Leila asked in baited wonder as she reached out to caress fluctuating hues like colored sprites that hung in the air. Each one had a scent, a texture, a definite personality. They seemed to dance to different rhythms, some stretching and spinning, some swirling high and low, some shaking side to side. A flock of greens and yellows in varying tints gathered around her and hung over her head and outstretched arms, bouncing in a merry sort of romp.

“Look! They like me!” Leila was positively delighted by the scene, gone were all her apprehensions about the strange situation she found herself in. When she turned to look at Soren he still had the same unreadable demeanor. He stood at least half a foot shorter than Clay and didn’t look anywhere near as perfect, but he had an elusive charm about him that Leila couldn’t piece together. His eyes were upturned at the corners and sat beneath light, slightly curved and bushy eyebrows. His nose curved inwards at the bridge a little and ended in a soft, rounded tip. His lips were firm and fleshy, his jaw defined at the outer corners but meeting in a gentle chin. His features as a whole spoke in terms of stern and stoic, but there were also hints of an inherent something that Leila couldn’t place, which could just as well be curtness as sadness.

“You have some of your own, it seems”. Leila gestured to the color sprites hovering over Soren’s head and shoulders. They were hues of purple and violet, with the exception of a much darker blob that perched motionless to the right of his neck.

“You seem to be okay.” He said as if he were just carrying on a long-going conversation. His disregard for her comments made Leila feel slighted, but if it showed in her face he either didn’t notice or ignored it altogether, for he just spun on his heels and signaled over his shoulder for her to follow him.

He continued talking to an irritated Leila trailing behind him, “You’ve mixed up dreams with reality, haven’t you? That’ll happen if you spend too much time in places you know in real life. Until you get the hang of lucid dreaming you should use strange settings, like the last one or this one.”

“Hey, as long as you’re being chatty, how about answering a couple of questions. Why does Clay leave when you show up? Do you two know each other?”

“No. I kinda wanted him to stick around but he’s the one who takes off when I show up. He might still be around, though. People can choose not to make themselves perceivable in others’ dreams. It would be nice to have that choice in real life, huh?”

“Why are you here, Soren? Why do you keep following me around? And what was with the whole creepy routine from before?”

“Hold on, you came to me first, and since you’re kind of… all over the place I thought I’d give you some basic pointers. Excuse me for trying to help.”

“Oh, you’re delusional, when did I ever come to you? And wait, you’re coaching me? You?” Leila cut in front of Soren as she spoke and stopped so quickly some of the yellow sprites flew off her.

“Me?” He responded, mimicking her tone. His eyes narrowed.

“I… just… I’ve known Clay for longer than I’ve known you; I guess I just expected that if anyone was going to start explaining all this dream stuff to me it was going to be him.”

Soren’s mouth and chin twitched, then his lips tightened and he spoke in dripping-acid sarcasm “Well don’t you just have it all figured out! CLAY!  Of course he’s just gonna straighten out this whole tangle of a mess you’re in!”

“What are you so mad about? It’s not like I called you. What are you doing here anyway? You were terrorizing my last couple of dreams with your whole billowy storm cloud act, you threw the freakin’ MOON at me, you just drove away Clay without even consulting me or considering how I would feel about it, and now you’re being all pissy about me calling you out? Take a seat, princess; grab a stack of cards and deal!”

Leila stood her ground with arms crossed; relishing the blessed sight of a slack-jawed, speechless Soren, and then released her facial muscles, thought for a beat and added in confusion, “Wait, what tangle of a mess? What are you talking about?”

“You seem to have it all figured out, deal with it yourself, princess.” 

"Sure thing, Sulky. Clay and I will deal with it."

Soren loosened the muscles in his face as Leila uttered the final phrase. He took Leila off guard when he then reached out, grabbed her hand and then placed something sharp on her outer arm right under her elbow. Before she could even utter a complaint, Soren said with icy inflection, “I can hurt you.”

“Ooh, scary! This is a dream, genius. Whatever you have against my arm is not real. I still doubt even YOU are real.” Leila responded, unfazed. She was settling into this scene with little effort, and way too engrossed by her standoff with Soren to notice yet how her behavior through this whole scenario was so far off from her usual character.

“You can’t even tell your ass from your elbow here yet. Can you even be sure Clay is real?”

His response punched Leila in the gut; she had been so sure Clay was a dream reflection of a real person, even going as far as looking for him in the waking world. Soren’s insinuation that maybe he wasn’t someone she knew at all, perhaps not even real, jarred her conscience and blurred her sight with concern.

“What do you know about Clay? He’s more real to me than you, that’s for sure.”

“Listen kid, if you’re going to take just one thing away from this dream let it be this one truth, you can't trust your senses in this place, let alone your feelings."

“What? Ow!” Leila looked down at her arm and went stone cold when she saw and felt a trickle of warm blood ebbing from the spot where Soren was holding the sharp object against her arm.

“Did you feel that?”

“What? Yes! Stop it, you jerk!”

“Alright then, buh-bye now!”

Soren dug the object deep and ran it with calculated celerity down towards Leila’s wrist.

The unbearable, searing pain lasted only a second. When it disappeared, Leila gasped and opened her eyes. It was six minutes before her alarm would go off and demand her official re-entry into the waking world.

Just one thing worse than being evicted so violently from your own dream, and that’s beating your alarm clock and losing precious minutes of rest.

Good job, Soren, you jerk!