In Your Dreams

 There's a lesson here somewhere about not posting part of a multi-part story without first having written all of it. I swear I'll post more of I Am the Kracken as soon as it makes sense as a story again. But here's a short story I wrote for a competition - less all the typos that I managed to write in the original. What happened to my spell check? Who knows...

 

The first time it had happened, she was running. Whether it was to or from something she couldn't remember, because suddenly the corridor she was in had disappeared. The world around her faded to black and she was jolted by the sudden realisation that she was in a dream before noting the eerie sensation of being watched. She looked around to find nothing but darkness and a weightless feeling, as though gravity had been suspended. It hadn’t lasted long, but a few nights later she was back in that place of uneasy blackness. She tried not to move and just sense her surroundings, and there hadn’t been a flicker of any light, any sound, and she couldn’t feel any movement in the air when she twitched. It was as though she had lost all of her senses, but strangely, when she looked down, she could see herself. The pale skin of her hands and arms seemed to glow while the world around her existed in a void of nothingness. The second night she felt more than an observer: she felt a presence. She had many more nights when she was pulled abruptly from dreams into the empty, weightless, dark world before she heard the voice, and it seemed to vibrate the very atmosphere around her. There were no words, only the sound of the voice, and she knew it was him. After that night, he called out to her every time she would sleep. He was determined to reach out to her, and that was what she had always loved about him. Though he had no words to give her, she was comforted by his presence, following the strength of his call during the day in the feelings she knew he had planted in her mind.

He reached out to her through the void, through the nothingness. It had been difficult to penetrate her dreams at first and he hadn’t known how she would react to having her dreams pulled apart. She could have forced him away from her mind and blocked him forever from her subconscious before he could ever have the chance to contact her, but she had been calm and patient. They were traits he’d always loved seeing when he was with her. He had watched her from the first night he pulled her to him, standing still in a world filled with endless streams of sunset orange as if the celestial body refused to leave her presence. She stood motionless, simply listening and waiting to sense who was searching for her. The colour around her seemed alive, and it swirled with light and shade in breathtaking beauty. But the world of her mind was nothing beside his love herself: whose smooth, delicate facial features held a look of serenity as her brown hair flittered about in the pulsating air, shining with glints of red when the light and colour caught in the strands. He had no form of his own in her mind, and her look of peace had melted into pure joy when he finally found a voice in the strange land. He saw her small, soft lips curl around words, but heard nothing, and could not read her meaning. He spoke sweetly to her of his love, but it was clear the connection would not let her hear his words. They were so close, yet so very far away, and all he could do was call and lead her onwards, bringing her ever closer while he drifted further away.