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It's hard to make sense of the dream that settles in front of my eyes this night. I try to, but when I suddenly jolt upright in my bunk, the walls of the Hail Mary around me, it all falls away. I touch my chest and feel my heart racing, and take a few quick breaths. I shake, like I have the chills, but feel neither cold nor hot. There's loud thumping in my ears.
Wait... I'm in my ship and the thumping is Rocky, banging his claws against the Xenonite. My head whips over to his part of the dormitory. The place is cramped with the stuff he built in here, holding all the bags he brought over from his ship as well as Erid's atmosphere, but I know to find him in the bulb-like shape he built out. "Grace!" He quavers, "♪♪♩ ♩♪♪♩♬♫♩♫. ♫♬♩♪♩♪♩ ♩♪♩!"
"W-wait," I fumble... with my hands, with the blanket over my legs, everything. I get the laptop onto my bunk: You make sound while sleep. I try wake you!
He is turning away and then back toward me quickly, repeating. Frazzled, I think. Worried that I didn't wake up right away. Human sleep is unlike Eridian sleep, he knows I can still hear sounds, feel touch, wake when I need or want to. And Rocky tried.
"Uh, a sound?" I ask him, with my heart still thumping when he stops banging his hands against the panel between us. "Yes, loud sound. Scared," he whines.
My dream... Or half of a nightmare. There was an explosion and something that happened before—in sequence? I'm not sure at all. But the sound in my head, in the end, was Rocky banging his claws against the Xenonite. I frightened him in some way.
"Grace," he cuts into my thoughts. The pitch I recognize as worry. "You sound scared." I haven't had it aimed at me before, though.
I blink, my eyes feel hot. "Oh, gosh." Rather than just thumping my heart, my chest feels tight and instinctively I go to rub my hand over my sternum, an effort to try and ease that sensation. Now, well after the fact, I feel a shout, a scream sitting raw in my throat. I cast my eyes down at my feet, dangling over the edge of my bed.
"God, I'm sorry..." I fidget. Now I'm frazzled. "I... Humans sometimes..." I know, we don't both have dreams. So, how do I explain nightmares?
"You are not hurt, question?" Rocky asks, anxious for my answer when I don't really manage to give him one. I suck in a breath and shake my head. "No, I'm okay."
My shoulders inch up either side of my head. I AM okay, I say to myself. Eventually, I let myself slide off my bunk, and I land on my knees in front of Rocky's Xenonite bulb. He still has his claws up. I nudge a finger against the half-inch thick wall between us, but let my gaze fall to the floor between my knees.
"Humans dream, see images while asleep."
I think that all the science I get to do all day, now that Rocky and I are on my ship and on our way to Tau Ceti e is great. It's fun, and exhausting in a good way for my brain. It keeps memories from slipping back into my mind when I'm not ready for them... And we haven't talked about my lapses in memory in any great detail. Frankly, I still hesitate to.
"It's healthy, helps process the events of the day," I go on instead. Rocky doesn't believe me, or at least his body language tells me he's dubious about it. That's okay; I was relieved when I didn't need to explain sleep as a whole to him, to begin with.
"But sometimes images are random and don't make a lot of sense." "Is distress," he warbles, having observed me, shouting unconscious. I try for a smile which quivers.
How much detail of me do his senses let him 'see' through the Xenonite...? I wondered about that before, but more now. I sigh, changing to laying my flat palm across his hand. "Not usually."
He shakes his carapace. More doubt. After all, this is the first time Rocky saw me have a dream because the good ones don't usually wake you. And Eridians watch others sleep in order to protect them from harm. Rocky's follow up is very natural, in that sense. "How I help you, question?" I feel culturally insensitive about my answer, though. "You don't have to. I'm not really getting hurt."
I won't call those memories and dreams unwanted. My recollections are still fractured, I haven't recovered all the pieces yet, since waking up on the Hail Mary. I want to—badly—understand what happened before I woke up out here. Yes, I've got all knowledge of the most important science I need to be doing, of astrophage. But what else is there?
Absently, I drag the back of my hand across my eyes again. Rocky watches me. I think, he listens to my pulse finally slowing down. "Is new word," he finally points out to me, "Will say this ♬♩♪♫♩♩" Dream. I turn away from the Rocky bulb to pull the laptop down from my bunk and type it in. I nod briefly after entering it into the database.
"But you scream," Rocky repeats to me. I peer back at him. "Was bad dream." He stares at me. "Yeah? I don't know," I shrug my shoulders in a small way, feeling uncomfortable with him pressing me on it. So, I look away again. "Sorry. I don't really remember..."