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Echoes of their dream are still filtering through the edges of their consciousness when they wake. Trying to recall it is like trying to grab smoke, and the harder they attempt to focus the more their brain rejects it. All they can remember is a faint, distant feeling of floating.
It sounds like their downstairs neighbor might be playing music. It’s hardly a first, but at this hour? Grumbling incoherently, they shift around under their warm layers of blankets. They have class at nine today, so if their alarm hasn’t gone off yet, it should still be before eight; they’ll have to get on the bus that leaves at 8:15 if they want to get there on time.
Squinting an eye open, they check their alarm clock. After a moment, they open both eyes and check again. Checking a third time doesn’t change what they’re obviously looking at, but it also doesn’t make it make any more sense.
The clock’s face reads, in bright red letters, GOOD MORNING, SUNSHINE.
Fumbling around on their nightstand, they snatch up their phone. The lock screen flicks on at their command easily enough, the background picture still that familiar landscape from the hiking trip with Elliott, but the time is, inexplicably, 00:00. A stray thought is nagging at them in the back of their mind, a little voice that says they recognize what’s going on.
Another clue comes when they get up for real. Being a full-time student doesn’t lend itself to good posture, and they can’t remember the last time they woke up without their back cracking at least once. This time it’s as smooth as butter.
Their room looks normal enough, at least. Same walls, same band posters, same general organized clutter. Books across most surfaces, desk completely covered in works-in-progress. Same big fluffy rug to cover how cold the floor gets in the morning.
In bare feet, pajama pants, and a loose tank top, they pad across the room towards the currently covered window. As they get closer, the music gets louder, loud enough to recognize it.
♫ Sweet dreams are made of these ♫
Frowning, they push the curtain aside from the window and are abruptly blasted with sunlight so bright they have to squint against its force. The view outside their apartment, normally a charmingly gray view of the street that passes the complex, has become a sprawling field of green with little multicolored wildflowers dotting the expanse as far away as they can see. There are no other buildings, no trees, nothing that breaks the horizon, just a blue sky and the endless waving grass.
It’s peaceful. They must be dreaming.
They lean against the windowsill, staring out at the gently-moving stalks of grass, and think vaguely that they’ve heard of this before. A “false awakening”. They’d been so sure they’d woken up.
In their hand, their phone buzzes, and they raise it to check. LOOK DOWN, the screen says. It’s a text notification with no name on it, which strikes them as another weird thing. But if this is a dream, isn’t it weird that they’re reading at all?
They’re very lucid, actually. So often they feel trapped in dreams, tumbling along a tide they have no real control over, images washing past them without any real input of their own past the whirlpool of their feelings. It’s been better, recently. The nightmares of splintered glass and shrieking sirens have been gone for years save occasional and brief incidents, and the river rushes through their mind only sometimes these days. (And something has felt different about those dreams, recently.) Standing here in their own apartment in comfy clothes, staring out at a beautiful view and serenaded by the distant sounds of Eurythmics, they feel like they could choose not to look.
After a moment, their phone buzzes again. LOOK DOWN, PLEASE?
Letting out a startled little laugh, they shove their phone into their tank top strap and push the window open enough to stick their torso out. In the waking world it’s January, and even though they don’t live in a cold part of the country, they’re not sure they’d go for this under normal circumstances. But the breeze that rushes in when they do is perfectly warm on their skin, and they find themself smiling as they look directly under their window.
The smile grows just a little wider when they see that it’s Elliott, holding an honest-to-God boombox over his head with a shit-eating grin on his face. Around his feet in the grass are little clusters of daisies, waving very slightly in the wind.
“Took you long enough,” Elliott calls up to them. “The song’s almost over!”
They take a moment to stare down at him and catalog the way he looks, smug and happy and bathed in dream-sunshine. Maybe if they look long enough, they’ll remember this when they wake up. Then, once they’re done being sappy, they flip him off. “I was asleep!” they yell back down.
“And you still are,” he says, tone losing a little of its levity. He shifts the boombox down to rest on one shoulder and looks up at them; when his eyes catch the light they’re a shining, unnatural violet. “Will you come outside?”
It’s a dream, but they could choose not to. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
“See you soon,” he answers, brightening. The song switches as they pull away from the window, not bothering to close it, and the faint sounds of “Soak up the Sun” follow them out the door of their apartment. The stairs look depressingly normal, cold gray concrete and red handrail. Even that little dent in the wall near the second floor landing is there, from where they’d whacked the arm of their couch against it while trying to turn up the stairs. Elliott had been holding up the other side at the time.
It feels weird to see him here, they think as they come closer to the exit. Most people they know have featured in their sleep once or twice; that’s just how it goes. Faces in a crowd, characters in a story. But they’ve known Elliott for years now, and he’s their closest friend, and this is the very first time they’ve ever dreamed about him.
Maybe that’s for the best. They do enough imagining as it is.
When they open the door of their apartment complex, they’re met not with the familiar street but with the same surreal sight as before. Long grass waves in a gentle, warm, breeze as little wispy clouds inch across a bright blue sky. It reminds them, achingly, of childhood, of a long trip across the country where they’d stopped wherever they wanted for pictures. They’d laid down in the grass until it was taller than them and stared up at the endless blue expanse.
The music gets louder again, and Elliott comes around the side of the building. Taking a few steps away from the door, they ignore him for a moment to look back at the exit. It’s odd to see a perfect copy of their low-rent apartment complex transplanted into a place that could be a painting. The brick of the outside looks almost hyperreal.
“Hey, sunshine,” Elliott says once he’s close enough.
“Hey, dreamboat,” they tell him, mouth quirked up at the side. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“If only you knew,” he answers nonsensically, grinning. When Elliott smiles for real, big and unrestrained, his nose scrunches up like he’s about to sneeze. They’ve wondered more than once what it would be like to touch that little wrinkle, to watch from close enough to kiss as his freckles distort across his cheeks. “But you will. Wanna come sit? I’ve got a spot set up.”
They tilt their head at him. “You do? You’re awfully prepared.”
“Yeah, well,” he says, a little more soberly, “I’ve had a lot of time to think about this.” He picks up his boombox from where he’d set it down in the grass. It’s a genuine-looking article, big and clunky and gray with black speakers and a boxy handle, and it’s still playing, albeit at a slightly more reasonable volume for conversation.
“To think about what?” they ask, following him out into the field. For all that they’re walking barefoot in long grass, it’s not uncomfortable — no rocks, no itching, no sharp textures, no bugs even. The only sounds are the rustle of the wind and Elliott’s music switching to “Here Comes the Sun”.
“About this place,” he says, “among other things. Do you like it?”
They probably shouldn’t have expected a straight answer from a dream version of him, but when everything else seems just on the edge of reality, when their thoughts are the same in their head as if they were awake, that feels… strange. “It’s beautiful,” they say slowly. “Are you implying you made it?”
“I did make it.” Dream logic, they think, pushing the confusion away for now. Elliott’s steps slow as they approach an old-fashioned picnic blanket laid out in the grass. Surrounding the area on all sides is a ring of bright blue cornflowers. Setting down the boombox, he sits next to it, looking up at them. His eyes are still that too-bright impossible purple, so different from his usual warm brown.
They follow him down to sit on the blanket, close enough to hold hands if they wanted to. And they do want to, and it’s a dream, so they reach out and lace their fingers together. He feels real. Elliott always has cold hands. He jokes about it often, sneak attacks them with freezing fingers during the rainy season, constantly has his hands in his sweatshirt pockets. Even here, in the warmth of a dreamed sun, his skin is cold against theirs.
Looking down at their joined hands, Elliott makes a face they can’t read, half a smile and half something else. “You’re acting different,” he says in a wondering tone.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” they ask, intentionally too-sweet to cover for the sudden guilty knowledge of exactly what he’s talking about, how they’d needed to be asleep to be the one to reach out first.
“Nothing, nothing,” he deflects. He doesn’t let go. The music has changed again, and Elliott glances over at the boombox. It looks like he’s thinking about something, and in a place like this, they’re content enough to let him. “Sunshine?” he asks, after a moment.
“Yeah?”
He swallows before he starts, a compulsive movement of his throat that draws their gaze even as his words send anxiety shivering up their back. “I have to tell you something. And I know you think we’re in a dream and what you do doesn’t matter, but I mean it seriously, and I want you to… listen, seriously. Please.” As he speaks, he’s looking directly at them, those bright violet eyes boring into their own. Elliott is rarely completely serious, even when talking about the worst things in life. He makes a joke, he plays it off. They’ve seen him sincere before — eyes soft as he held them while they cried, intent on their face across a library table as they talked about nightmares — but they wonder how many people can actually say that.
“I will,” they say slowly, because there’s no world, asleep or awake, where they’d deny something he asked them in that tone of voice. “I promise. But what do you mean? That I — think this is a dream? You even said I was asleep. How could I not be?”
He shakes his head, frowning a little. “Sorry. This is, you are. I meant that it does matter what we do, here. Haven’t you noticed? Doesn’t anything feel different? Realer?”
Taking a moment, they honestly consider it. They think about the dent in the apartment stairwell, the way Elliott’s fingers are slowly warming against theirs. They think about how easy it is to stop and think. Their choice to answer or not. “It does feel different,” they admit. “I’ve never dreamed about you before, you know?”
“I know,” Elliott says. His expression is carefully neutral. “You can’t, unless I want you to, and I didn’t want to intrude. I only did it tonight because I needed to tell you and I knew you’d need proof.” He takes a long breath, then murmurs, “God, this doesn’t get easier. You’d think it would.”
“Elliott,” they say slowly. Whatever it is that he’s dancing around is starting to take something of a shape in their mind, but its form is so alien that they don’t even want to venture a guess. He knows their darkest secrets; surely they can take some of his. They want to take some of his. “Please just tell me.”
He looks them in the eye, his solemn expression lit by the sunlight, and says, “Magic is real, and I can use it to create and control dreams. I’m using it right now, to be here with you.”
Their first instinct, despite everything he’d just said, is to blow it off as a joke on sheer impossibility. But he’s still looking at them with those violet eyes, still holding their hand, still just sitting there. Waiting for a response.
Elliott has played any number of dumb pranks before, sure, but never like this. Never with that look like he’s hanging on their every word, like their answer might — what? Break him?
They stare at him. They have spent a not-insignificant amount of time staring at Elliott, both since they woke up and in general. They know him, and this is him. That means that they could probably conjure up an accurate version of him in dreams, yes, but there are details they don’t know if they’d think to imagine. Those eyes, that intent, sincere expression. His hand is squeezing theirs just a little too hard, warmed almost to the point of discomfort.
He’s probably expecting flat-out rejection. Maybe confusion, maybe shock. Any number of responses that make sense, when presented with such a patently ridiculous statement. That’s what they’d expect, if they were him. That’s what they should answer with. “Okay,” they say, slowly. “I believe you.”
His whole face goes slack, eyes widening and mouth making this little surprised ‘o’. They can actually feel their heart melting in their chest. “You — do?”
“If this is really just a regular dream,” they tell him, “then why should it matter? And if not… then I’d regret it if I didn’t hear you out. So let’s go forward on believing. Show me.” When he just keeps looking at them in stunned silence, they add, with a little grin, “Do a magic trick.”
Elliott looks a little while longer, his fingers moving a little against theirs, restless, then smiles a wide, slow-burn smile that spreads across his face like the sunrise. (For all that it’s their nickname, sometimes they want to throw it back in his face.) “Okay,” he says, his voice curving around the words like he can’t keep his excitement out of it. “Where do you want to go?”
They blink at him.
“Pick somewhere,” he elaborates. “Just — anywhere. Somewhere you love. Somewhere you’ve never been. Somewhere you hate, even, if you want, although I don’t know why you’d do that. Except maybe spite. Pick somewhere, and I’ll take us there.”
Usually they’d come up with a good response to that spite comment, some kind of zinger, but their brain is busy cycling through every place they’ve ever been. This one is already lovely. They almost don’t want to lose the wildflowers. But he’s so excited, so earnest. He’s going to do magic. “The redwoods,” they say slowly. “I showed you pictures, remember?”
“Perfect,” he says. For a long moment, Elliott closes his eyes, brow furrowing. The boombox plays in the background, a pop song they recognize, and they hold back their questions with a force of will that shocks even them. It’s a long, long moment until he opens his eyes again, and then he looks right at them and that violet in his eyes glows so bright it nearly hurts and the world shifts sideways around them in a rush of noise.
The field almost seems to melt, shrinking into the ground like someone smearing paint. Bright greens go darker, sparkling under a layer of dew and ferns on ferns on ferns. Trees shoot out of the ground, their highest branches stretching towards the heavens. The sounds of the boombox echo through a suddenly-cavernous expanse, bouncing off of the trees. They sit together on the picnic blanket with Elliott in the new shade, watching mist waft off of the redwoods where the sunlight hits their trunks, and marvel.
“How did I do?” he asks. There’s something just barely restrained in his tone. “I’ve never been, but you had all those pictures on your phone, and this is your head, so it’s a little easier to make something you remember.”
Shifting off of the picnic blanket, they reach out and run their hand over a green fern. The texture is right under their hand, ridged and a little bit waxy and slightly wet. They rub their fingers together, feeling the way the water disperses under their touch.
The movement detaches them from Elliott, and right after they hear him ask, nervous, “Sunshine?”
They whirl to look at him. “Do it again. Put it back.”
He blinks, but obliges, those eyes flaring again. They watch it closer this time, look at the way the trees almost disintegrate, the way some things, like the green of the ferns, seem to almost slip into the grass. Reused assets, maybe. The field waves around them again in moments. The music continues.
“Go to — go to somewhere I’ve never been.” Something I couldn’t imagine, they don’t say.
Elliott nods, thinks for a second, then snaps his fingers. It’s like — they can’t possibly describe how it is. Like being inside a PowerPoint transition, maybe, they think, resisting the urge to laugh. They’re sure it will come out breathless and weird.
Every trace of green vanishes, shifted to whites and blacks and browns. They’re still sitting on the picnic blanket, but they’re now on— a stage, they realize. The floor is wooden under the blanket, and the lights shine harsh into their eyes. Past that, in the shadows of the rest of the room, rows of seats stretch away into the darkness.
“Where are we?” they ask.
“This is my old college,” Elliott says. “I told you about it, but… not everything. The school I went to was for, uh, people like me. Empowered people. Dreamwalkers specifically, even.”
Dreamwalkers. They think, again just barely avoiding a hysterical laugh, that they’re not doing much walking.
They glance around again. Elliott’s told them before about doing theater, that he’d been a tech (which honestly explains a lot about his personality) but learning this place is magical feels like it should change the way it looks. It doesn’t — it still looks like a stage, if a nice quality one. He’s looking around the stage like he’s meeting an old friend, fond and nostalgic, and they follow his gaze. Glancing to the wings, they catch sight of a matching pair of massive black curtains, the fabric so dark they can’t see the folds.
Elliott points to a brightly-colored piece of tape on the wood of the stage with a fond look. “This is a position marker for rehearsals,” he says. “When the illusion’s up, you can’t see it, so the point is actually the texture.”
“The illusion?” they ask, head suddenly spinning. “Is this — is this what the room really looks like?
“Yes,” he says, smiling gently. “Well, to be fair, it looks how I remember it, which could’ve changed since graduation. But this is what it usually looks like. That wall up there behind us—” he points up to another massive, draped black curtain, hanging over the entire back of the room— “gets used as the basis of illusion backdrops. The full thing covers the entire room, even the audience.” Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “It’s more impressive when it’s in use, but I’m working on short notice here.”
A magical theater production? Where the stage can be enveloped in an illusion? There are colleges just for magic people? He must have had classmates. A whole school administration. A whole world they’d known nothing about.
“Back to my apartment,” they say quietly. “Please.”
He shoots them a worried look, all that nostalgic fondness dropping off his face in a second, and snaps his fingers.
The world briefly flickers around them, little spots of darkness crawling over the scene, and a moment later they’re sitting on their bed again. The picnic blanket is gone, but the boombox remains, playing faintly outside like it had been before. Elliott is perched on their desk chair across the room, looking concerned.
“If there are illusions, are there other kinds of magic? Can you do them?” they ask. The familiar surroundings settle them some, allow them to try to prioritize.
“There are,” he confirms. “All kinds. I can do some, and I swear I’ll show you in the waking world, but I’m a little — overspecialized. Dreams are what I do,” he says slowly. “I can create them, control them, and walk in the dreams of others. I can protect people’s dreams against outside interference from people like me. That’s my real job, actually,” he adds.
They’d thought he was an architect. They’ve seen him draw building plans, worked side-by-side with him in the library as they studied for finals and he agonized over his modeling program. Was that… no. It wouldn’t be a lie. Right?
Their silence must last a little too long. “I know it’s… a lot,” Elliott says, slowly, gauging their reaction. “I swear I’ll explain everything as best as I can. I had to learn, too, and I’ve explained before. There’s a whole new world to get used to.”
“You’ve explained before?” they ask, an easy question among all the others, and then cut him off before he can respond. “Your mom? Your family?” They think of the way he always dances around the topic of his brother, and they — wonder. They think of how nervous he is.
“Yeah,” Elliott says wryly. “Had to fill out separate paperwork for each instance, too. Not my idea of a good time. But yes, my family knows. When you wake up, after we— if we hang out, I can ask my mom to talk to you. I think it could help.”
God. They were supposed to meet up, weren’t they? After classes today. They’re not going to process a single word of their lectures. “I’ll do it myself,” they say, nearly on autopilot. “Your mom loves me, we text all the time.”
“I know. She’d probably trade me for you if she could,” Elliott says with a snort, but he looks relieved. All they can think, though, is that If she knows, if he’s encouraging them to ask her, then it has to be real.
And if it’s real, then so much else is, too.
“I didn’t really have the chance to be… intentional about telling my family,” Elliott says. He’s looking down at the floor, hands in his pockets. Nervous. “That was out of my hands. But I had a long time to think with you. I did it this way because I wanted to make sure you had proof. It’s hard to demonstrate Dreamwalking in the waking world, and I wanted to make sure you had a good reason to believe me. I want you to know. I have wanted you to know. I swear I’ll tell you everything I can.”
They think of Elliott, somehow constructing the dream they’d meet in. What does that look like? What does magic look like? They want to see how he does it, want to see what goes on behind those violet eyes. They think of him making a tracklist for that boombox. Dramatic. Maybe something like this deserves a little drama, though.
Standing, they cross the room to their own desk chair. In front of him, they put their hands on their hips and wait until he looks up again. “Elliott,” they say, as clearly as they can. “You fucking better. Because I’m not going to stop asking.”
That smile spreads across his face again, nose all scrunched. “I’d expect nothing less.”
The room flickers around them again, little black spots flashing across their vision. They blink, alarmed. “Are you doing that?”
“No, sunshine,” he says, something a little wistful in his voice. “The dream is ending.”
Outside, the boombox plays an 80’s hit with an appropriate name, and Elliott stands, his sudden movement putting them close enough that they could — reach out. They’d reached out before, to take his hand. But that had been a dream. It’s still a dream. “Will I remember this?” they ask, quiet in the now-tiny space between them.
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Okay,” they say, then take a step forward to wrap their arms around him, pushing their face into his shoulder. He feels solid against them, an anchor in the fading dream. He brought them here, looked them in the eye and told them what they are increasingly certain is his truth. He trusted them with it. As scary as it is for them, it had to have been terrifying for him.
It takes a moment before Elliott reciprocates, but when he does, he melts into them with a little happy sigh, locking his hands together at the small of their back. They want to write that sound permanently onto their brain, to save it and replay it like a favorite song. His cheek presses against their hair and his arms tighten around them and they catch themself thinking that it might be a sweet dream after all.
“Text me when I wake up,” they say instead of anything else, muffled by the soft fabric of his hoodie.
“I will.” After a moment, he adds, uncharacteristically hesitant, “You’ll still come? After class?”
“Can’t get rid of me now,” they tell him. They’re sure they sound too soft, sure the weight of their heart is dragging the words out curved and loving instead of joking, but it’s alright. It’s just Elliott. The view of the room past his shoulder is starting to melt away for real now, features disappearing one by one into a dark mass of static.
“Like I’d want to,” he murmurs into their hair, just as soft, and they lean into him and let the dream fade out. Another world awaits.
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Eli 💜