Daydream (ONC 2024)

Chapter 14: At Any Cost

Everyone was sluggish when we woke after a night of harrowing revelation, and I fumbled around making little pss pss pss noises until a furry head bumped my hand. I lifted the tiger cub Faella had named Fisher backwards to poke his back, and the time 1:10 flickered above his stripes as he wriggled with an enthusiastic purr. Way later than I thought.

Fisher scampered back to Faella and Lexington who were up eating breakfast with Ray, but Sven was passed out in the shade as a dragon. They were all yards away, which gave me my privacy to wake like an unenthusiastic zombie, and I rolled my head to locate Kearo. Without so much as a picnic blanket, he lay on the grass so close to my side that my breath fell on his half-closed eyes.

"I would have shared," I said fluffing my blankets, but Kearo paid my words little attention as he lifted his muddled gaze. It looked less like he was drowsy and more like he'd spent the whole night thinking.

"Do you think this is real?" Kearo propped his face on a hand and lifted the other out to me, palm open.

"What do you mean?" I mirrored his position with my hand parallel to his as his eyes grabbed mine and didn't let go. Warmth grazed me as our palms touched, and calloused skin from working lumber and stone wrapped my fingers in a delicate hold.

"Just what I said." His brow furrowed, and his hand clenching mine tighter. "Did the reality generator blanket the world with its power and change everything or is humanity lying in suspended animation as this plays out in some interconnected dream?"

"I guess I didn't really think of that." I hadn't much time for philosophy while fighting for my life or sanity at every turn.

Kearo's lips tightened, and he pulled me a few inches until our foreheads pressed together. "Your skin is warm, and my heart flutters when we touch, but is that how it's supposed to feel? Is that real?" Kearo's hand trembled in mine, and my heart did some fluttering of its own as his eyes searched mine for an answer to a question he hadn't asked.

It felt real to me. Did it not for him?

"Wake up lovebirds!" Ray kicked Kearo in the back, and Kearo spit a curse as he jumped up. They had not reconciled after Kearo's poor first impression, and with Sven trotting behind Ray as a dragon, there wasn't much of a tension dampener. "Sven can scout ahead, but this is the end of the ridge surrounding the valley. From here on out, we won't be able to snuggle the day way."

"Keep at it," Kearo said with a smirk as I rolled up my bedroll. "While you waste your breath on petty jabs, I will demolish anything in the way of our objective." Kearo stalked off into the foliage that funneled into the narrow entryway of the valley, and my stomach grumbled as Lexington and Faella packed up breakfast.

Unlike Sven, I couldn't subsist on hot chocolate and dream deer.

"Here," Faella skipped over and handed me a plate with dry pancakes and a bowl of syrup to dip them in. I mumbled my thanks as I stuffed the sweet treat in my mouth.

High cliffs and crowded trees made our trek a nightmare, and exposed roots tripped me so many time I lost count. Kearo caught me with a brush of wind on some, Ray others, and I smacked my face on a tree once when I lingered too close to Lexington. Even with Faella in his arms, he could have helped me, but he was still holding a grudge about that lemon.

Like I hadn't given him a real gift after.

"Do you ever consider that perhaps the people we'll face are no different than us?" Ray asked Kearo with a bite to his tone as the path widened and our clash with the dream weavers grew ever closer.

"I don't care about who we face nor their motivations. If they stand in the way of restoring the world, they're enemies." Kearo returned Ray's hostility though he stayed as he was, hands in his pockets and all-seeing of the roots' locations even though he kept his eyes dead ahead. I didn't have magic senses to avoid tripping, so I kept my eyes on the ground and my hands out to balance.