The nightmare would not return to the city tonight. It would run to the shroud, regenerate, then slink in the following…night. He could tell the foreman…when he woke…
Sluggish, his mind a haze, he turned toward home, which was fortunately nearby. He barely registered arriving, climbing the stairs, and walking to his apartment. It took him four tries to get the key in, but once he stumbled into his room and threw on his pajamas, he paused.
Dared he sleep? The family…needed his report…for the funds…
What was happening to him? Why did he suddenly feel like he’d been drained of strength? Abruptly gasping for breath, he flung open his window for fresh air, leaning out. Then he heard something odd. A rushing sound? Like…water?
He looked up toward the star.
Something came from the sky and struck him. Hard.
All went black.
* * *
Painter blinked. He was hot. Uncomfortably hot, and something was shining in his face. A garish light, like from the front of a hion-line bus.
He blinked his eyes open and was immediately blinded by that terrible overpowering light.
What was （lowly） going on? He’d hit his head perhaps? He forced his eyes open against the light and pushed himself with effort to a sitting position. He was wearing…bright cloth? Yes, some sort of bulky formal nightdress made of bright red-and-blue cloth.
Beside him lay a young woman. You’d recognize her as Yumi.
She opened her eyes.
Then screamed.
Painter bolted to his feet. He was in a small room with a stone floor, wooden walls, and no furniture.
That impossibly bright light—flooding in through the room’s single window—washed everything out, making it difficult to see. He raised his hand against the bizarre red-orange glare. That was a color that light should never be. To him, seeing it was like seeing someone spill the wrong color of blood.
Plus, that girl. How had he ended up lying next to her? She scrambled to her knees and grabbed at her blanket.
Her hands went straight through it as if she weren’t there.
Right. Okay. This was…a dream, maybe? Painter knew dreams. His classes—which he’d mostly paid attention to while secretly drawing in his notebook—had covered their nature in detail. This didn’t feel at all like a dream, but he knew you couldn’t trust yourself while in one.
He needed to find some writing. According to his classes, that was one possible way to prove he was dreaming—you usually couldn’t read in a dream.
“Attendants!” the girl shouted. “Attendants!” She continued scrabbling at the blanket, but it kept passing through her fingers. As if…
Oh no. Was she a nightmare?
Paper. He needed paper. Still shading his eyes against the garish light from the window, he did another scan of the room—but this place was completely empty. Who lived in a room with no dressers, no futon, not even a table?
Wait. Book over there, on a shelf. He snatched it and flipped through the pages. Looked like a bunch of prayers? He could read them without trouble.
The girl fell silent as her cries for help fortunately brought no response. If she was a nightmare, she…well, she defied his knowledge. One that was fully stable like she was should have been physical. She also shouldn’t have had color, or the shape of a girl, but should have taken the form of something twisted and imaginary.
Unless she was beyond stable. There were stories of the last days of some of the cities that had been attacked, of solid nightmares that had begun to change color, more like flesh tones… But no, this girl wasn’t crazed, lashing out in a maddened frenzy, trying to kill. She couldn’t be a nightmare.
He glanced back at the book. He could read it. That wasn’t sure proof, and yet…well, he knew dreams. He knew nightmares. He wasn’t dreaming. Time was linear. Causality was in effect. He could read, feel, and—most importantly—consider whether this was a dream without feeling a disconnect.
Somehow, this was real.
The girl, who was wearing a nightdress identical to what he had on, frantically clawed for her blankets. Painter didn’t know how to respond. He’d never woken next to an incorporeal girl before. While that’s far more pleasant than some of the things I’ve woken up in bed with, it can still be rather disorienting.
“You wear my clothing…” the girl whispered. “You…you’re not an intruder, are you? You’re the spirit I talked to. You’ve taken shape?”
Painter wasn’t certain what she was talking about, but—on account of it being better than being screamed at—he decided to play things cool. “Cool” in this case meant pretending that he knew what was going on. He closed the book and put it back on the shelf. Then he folded his arms and gave her his best confident “I am a dark and mysterious warrior” look.
She bowed her head. “You are the powerful spirit. Please forgive me for my attitude earlier. I was surprised, confused. I did not mean offense.”
Wait.
That had worked?
Wow. What next?
Well, if someone thought he was cool, then he shouldn’t undermine or contradict that. It felt like a good rule to live by. Even if this was his first real chance to experiment with it.
“Where am I?” he said.
“You are in my wagon,” the girl said. “The wagon of a yoki-hijo. I am Yumi, and this is my chamber.”
“And…where is your furniture?”
“I need no furniture,” she said, “as my sole purpose is to serve and to contemplate your greatness.”
That…felt like it went too far. He shuffled uncomfortably, then considered that maybe he could see where he was by checking out that window. He’d been deliberately avoiding that too-powerful red-orange light. This entire experience was impossible, but that light…it was incomprehensible. How could anything so bright exist?
With trepidation, Painter approached the window, though part of him was certain the light would burn him. It seemed so much more…well, just more than the twin hion lines. It was like the very essence of flame. He put his toe into it, cringing—but nothing happened.
He stepped fully into it and felt like he’d slipped into a warm bath. How strange. Blinking against the brightness, he raised his hand to shade his eyes and looked out. I wouldn’t call that a mistake, not really. But like a ten-year-old asking for the explanation of where babies came from, he did not know what he was getting himself into.
Painter gazed up into a sky that was not dark. Instead it was a washed-out blue extending into infinity, dominated by an enormous ball of light. Like a huge light bulb in the sky except not soft and white, but angry and red-orange.
As if that weren’t enough, plants dotted the sky. Big bunches of them, tended by great black crows that fanned them toward each other if they strayed. Flying objects buzzed around, organizing the crows and chasing away undomesticated birds.
The land went on forever, brown stone occasionally sprinkled with hovering flowers. It was a lot to take in. More than he could manage. He didn’t even notice, for example, that Yumi’s wagon was floating in the air.
What he did notice overwhelmed his remaining skepticism like a group of thirsty customers shoving open the door to the bar right before opening. This was real. But it wasn’t any place he knew about, or any place he’d read about. It wasn’t like his home at all. It was like…another planet?