The dream began like any other on New Faerie, full of wants and color and light. I danced among the fae, the saru, and a few intrepid Sol humans. The jolly Wild Ones played their music. Their laughter tinkled, and from high above, the stars observed, captivated by life. Kellee was here, dancing with the others, his long hair braided and beaded as it had been on Valand. Sirius made the light from the campfire frolic among us, directing it with his hands as though he were a maestro directing an orchestra, and Sota showed the young fae his array of gleaming tek-weapons, igniting their squeals.
I danced and whirled, as free and unburdened as the wisps that twirled overhead. The music became my heartbeat and my body the music. Hand to hand, we danced, skipping and clapping, switching partners around and around.
This was freedom. It was love and life and everything I’d never known but now had lifetimes to experience.
A warm hand caught mine. Another slipped around my waist. I fell laughing into the familiar grip and rocked with him, ignoring the warning niggle at the back of my mind. Nothing could hurt me here. Nothing could hurt me again.
We danced, and when warm, fat raindrops fell from Faerie’s sky, I lifted my face and let the rain kiss my cheeks. A soft, teasing kiss brushed the column of my neck, and the fae whose arms I had fallen into said, “You danced with the Dreamweaver and carved out his heart, but there is no death in dreams, my queen, where we shall never part.”
I woke with a gasp, jolting up in bed, the words still alive and real in my head. Their touch fluttered against my neck. I rubbed the strange sensation away and searched the knoll’s shadowy room.
Kellee stirred on my left and rolled over, blindly reaching. “Okay?” he mumbled.
On my right, Talen blinked awake, instantly alert. “Kesh, what is it?” He shifted to sit up, but I laid my head back down, pillowed against Kellee’s chest.
“Just a dream…”
Talen wasn’t buying it, so I added the kind of sly smile I knew he couldn’t resist and pulled him close, hooking him by the leg to reel him in. Even with them so close I wasn’t sure where they ended and I began, the dream words slipped through. Sleep crept closer, and I wondered if my reply had been a lie and if anything would ever be “just a dream” again.
The End
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