“If I waste time having fun, people starve,” she said, still watching the two figures made of light. “How are actors doing this?”
“They’re standing in another place,” Painter explained, “and projecting onto the hion lines. Uh…I don’t know how it works. Kind of like a photograph, maybe?”
She looked at him blankly.
“Right,” he said. “I guess you don’t have those. Just…imagine a pair of people standing in a room somewhere acting out this play. And these lines mimic the actions they’re making. Anyone in the city with a hion viewer can watch.”
“Is…that what the glass is? A hion viewer?”
“Nah, the viewer is these boxes on the side, which manipulates the shape of the lines. The glass is to keep you from touching the hion.”
She nodded absently, mesmerized. The play, she pieced together, was about a man who had woken up one day without memories. This was important because he’d been the only one who knew the location of a fantastic treasure. But the story didn’t seem to be about the treasure. It was about all the different people trying to persuade the man that they’d been his good friend, and about the man piecing together the fragments of who he’d once been and discovering—bit by bit—who was actually an ally and who was lying.
She knew that she should have been doing something else. Meditating, at the very least. But for some reason the story connected to her. The man with a blank life. Everything he tried was new…
She was so tired. Overwhelmed. There was something incredibly therapeutic about sitting, pulling a blanket around herself, and watching someone else’s problems for a while.
When the story finished she gasped softly. “It can’t end there!” she said. “What is in the safe?”
“It always does this,” Painter said. “Every time. It ends right before it’s going to reveal something important or interesting. I think they want to make it so you have to watch the next episode.”
“We have to!” she said. “When is it?”
“This one is weekly,” he said. “Some are daily, others every other day. For this, the actors have other obligations, so they can only do it once in a while.”
“A whole week?”
The spirits were surely punishing her.
Yumi pulled the blanket close, trying to keep warm. Maybe this was for the best. She wouldn’t be distracted by the story…except the lines remarkably started vibrating again and forming new shapes.
“It’s returning!” she said.
“That’s the next program,” he said. “Seasons of Regret. It’s one of the best.”
“Another program… How many are there?”
“A different one every hour,” he said. “All day. Though in the late night and early morning, they’re mostly reruns. Which is nice, in case you miss an episode.”
Every hour? All day?
This device was dangerous. She reached up and flipped it off before it could draw her in. She had to focus on her predicament. The spirits needed her.
“Did anything happen to you?” she said. “Anything unusual before you woke up, having stolen my body?”
“I didn’t steal anything,” he said, lying back on his plush altar, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms. To be honest, Yumi was feeling a little worn out herself.
“There was something,” he eventually continued. “Like I had you tell the foreman. A nightmare—one that was almost fully corporeal. That’s rare. I’ve never seen one like that.”
“Nightmare?” Yumi said, frowning. “You were asleep?”
“Nightmares walk in my world, Yumi,” he said. As if that weren’t the most terrifying thing someone had ever said. But he seemed unafraid. So maybe he wasn’t a complete waste. “But normally they’re formless, without the strength or ability to hurt people. I told you, I’m a nightmare painter. My kind keep them in control.”
“That…actually does sound a little heroic,” she admitted.
“See?” he said, sitting up. Then he wilted. “But I’m not a warrior. We use ink, and…it’s normally not dangerous. Boring and mundane, really. But I did encounter one. The foreman will take care of it though. Send for experts that…”
He stood up suddenly, causing her to yelp and pull back.
“The Dreamwatch!” he said. “They’re warriors, Yumi. They fight stable nightmares. Maybe if they come to the city, we can talk to them about your problem. Maybe the spirits want us to meet with them?” He hesitated. “That doesn’t make sense though. How would they help with your world? And why wouldn’t the spirits send one of them to you instead of me? So…I don’t know.”
Yumi nodded, though she was barely listening. She found her mind oddly cloudy. She…she had to…
Suddenly she was tired. Incredibly tired. Though she intended to respond to Painter, she instead stretched and curled up on the floor, nestled in the blanket. And fell asleep.
* * *
Yumi awoke to delightful warmth underneath her back. As her eyes fluttered open and she moved to sit, her hand—unfortunately—passed through the floor.
She could feel the warmth, but her body was again incorporeal. Next to her Painter sat up, disturbing blankets, wearing one of her thick, enveloping sleeping gowns. He looked toward the window, where sunlight streamed in, and groaned.
“I guess,” he said, “we’re going to have to do something about that bathing issue…”
I’ve often wondered at the purpose of nightmares. Again, the normal kind, not the stalking kind. Why do we have them? Is there a point?
Maybe it’s a brutal way of making us more resilient.
Humans are incredibly malleable. Despite my breadth of experience, I’ve never stopped being surprised at how durable human beings can be. They can survive in almost any environment. They can recover from debilitating loss. They can be crushed physically, mentally, emotionally—and still ask you how your day is going.
Perhaps nightmares are Cultivation’s method of giving us a way of surviving trauma in a strangely safe environment. （At least safe physically.） A way to put it behind us, forget the details, but retain the growth. Nightmares are vicarious living done in our own minds.
In that way, nightmares serve much the same function as storytellers. Evolution doing a favor for those who, unlucky and unfortunate, never encountered me.
Painter finished his meal and barely managed to keep himself from wiping his mouth—his attendants had to do that for him.
Yumi paced behind him, invisible to everyone else. She’d barely spoken to him since they’d awoken. He kept trying to catch her eye, but she ignored him like one would a bad scent made by someone too important to stink.
Eventually the two attendants retreated—and were replaced by Liyun, in her strict formal outfit, her hairstyle impeccably symmetrical. There was a certain art to the way she loomed over him. He wondered if she practiced. How else would one explain her perfect posture, looking down at him without tipping her head, which made even the act of studying him seem like a huge inconvenience. The way she folded her arms to make her shadow expand across him, isolating him in darkness. The way she lingered just a tad longer than was comfortable…