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Miko has had the dreams for as long as she could remember.
Her parents had praised her for her imagination when she was young, had encouraged her to pursue writing, but as she had grown she had learned to keep them to herself and to the documents in her computer.
Sometimes the dreams are innocuous. She, as a fox, runs through a forest with her fellows. She alternates between forms sometimes, fox and human, whatever it takes to elicit the response she’s searching for.
She learns the names for what she is. Buried deep in the annals of history, of the long past that her society has tried to move on from, she finds the stories. Of youkai, of kitsune, of gods and monsters.
She isn’t sure why these creatures so mythical they’re rarely referenced anymore are showing up in her dreams, but they do make for good stories.
Sometimes the dreams are dark and tragic. Sometimes she wakes up in a cold sweat, hands trembling as she jots notes in the notebook beside her bed. Sometimes she remembers blood and death and loss, so real that she still feels the pain in the mornings, despite having no idea of who those people had even been.
One figure in her dreams is prominent. She’s in Miko’s mind nearly every night, whether the content of the dream is peaceful or not. She has long purple hair and violet eyes, like a shock of lightning against a clear sky. Miko never learns her name, or who she is in the dream world. She’s always simply there, nearby. It fills Miko with peace, somehow. She feels like home.
As Miko grows into adulthood, the dreams with the woman grow more intimate. The two of them grow closer, wind together.
These days, when Miko wakes up in a sweat, it’s not always because her dream had been a nightmare.
Of course, her life with this woman is not always pleasant. There’s dreams of loss, of frustration, of her fighting to free the woman from a self-imposed exile. And then there’s the nightmare of her death.
It’s harrowing but, thankfully, only comes once. The woman is lying in bed, looking almost translucent. She cups Miko’s cheek with a hand. Miko can feel the wetness there.
“It will be okay, my kitsune,” the woman says, her voice soft. “We will meet again in the next life.”
Miko awakens the next morning in tears. This is the one dream she never writes down. She almost doesn’t want to record it. But it sticks in her mind, in her memory.
Miko gets a creative writing degree, then starts a job at a modest publishing company. The whole time, she continues to flesh out the world from her dreams in the waking world.
She never shows anyone any of her writing. She isn’t sure why; her writing has only improved since her early days babbling to her parents, and the world from her dreams is so vibrant and real that it barely needs any fleshing out. But something stays her tongue. Something about this world she’s building is too intimate. If she tells someone else about this world it becomes more real. As of now it’s only her, her dreams, and the mysterious woman who always appears in them.
But, then, she sees her.
Miko is on her way home when it starts to rain. She hears a curse from beside her as she pulls out her umbrella.
There is a woman beside her, just stepping out of a building, clutching a briefcase to her chest and holding up a hand to the sky, frowning.
Her hair is long and purple and her eyes are violet. She is the spitting image of the woman in Miko’s dream.
“You!” The word is out of Miko’s mouth before she can stop herself. The woman looks up in surprise.
Her eyes widen. Miko sees a spark of recognition in them.
“I apologize if this sounds strange,” the woman says slowly. Her voice sounds exactly the same. The resemblance is uncanny. “But you look exactly like -”
“Someone you saw in a dream?” Miko finishes. The woman shakes her head in wonder. “I feel the same. Ever since I was younger, I’ve been having them.”
“That magical world,” the woman says, clearly still in awe, “Where I am a god and you are a kitsune.”
This whole interaction doesn’t feel real. Nothing about this should be real. But somehow, this woman is the exact person Miko has been dreaming about for her entire life. And she’s right here in front of her.
“Call me Ei,” the woman says.
“Miko,” Miko replies.
There’s a beat. They had been so close in the dreams, so intimate, but neither of them seem to know how to proceed in the waking world.
Miko takes the initiative. She leans forward, grasping Ei by the waist and going in for a kiss. Ei reciprocates immediately, leaning into Miko’s hold. The two of them slot together like puzzle pieces, reunited as they had always meant to be. They move against each other as if they had always been together; and in a way, they had.
Miko’s umbrella falls to the ground, forgotten. The rain pours over them both, soaking their hair, but neither of them can find it in them to care.
After all this time, they have found each other. And Miko is never, ever, letting go of her Ei ever again.