As Dune smiles in his sleep, a twin smile also passes across Sereia’s lips as she sleeps suspended in the sea.
As the wind stirs Dune’s hair, so the sea gently tugs Sereia’s with the drifting of the tide.
There is no outward sign that Sereia is dreaming, but for the smile upon her mouth and the way her lips twitch with dream words. But within her, the girl’s heart flutters against her breastbone.
Dune tells her of the Canyons, where he found a rose and from it fashioned hers. She remembers her earlier dream, how he flew her through the desert, the canyons, the busy, dusty streets of Solterra. When she woke after that first dream she wondered if they truly looked like he showed her in her dream. She vowed to herself to go one day and see what the streets really looked like.
Still, you see, she does not think this boy real. Sereia has never even heard of anyone who could dreamwalk, though she has heard fairytales like it. But that was just it, they are merely fairytales.
Dune deprives her of the story that rises to his lips, hoping to be told. If he had, she would have tumbled into it and fallen in love with the moon and the Solterran canyons. There is no fear of miscommunication here, not when she thinks he is only a figment of her dream. Though he feels something like salvation when he is here. Dune gives her hope, hope that she might one day be able to be close to another, be loved by another and not want to kill them.
He looks at her and does not see the vicious, dangerous smile, nor the way she moves, feline, predatory. Sereia has spent a lifetime trying to be different, something other than what she was born as - a kelpie. He does not see it, he does not ask her if she eats gods as well as men. Her heart still twinges with Raziel’s question. She still flounders, stumbling over his words again and again in her nightmares. But this is no horror of a dream. She is determined not to let it succumb to horror as her last one did. She wants to keep Dune as long as she can.
Me too, he says and all she can think is if he will come again. The question is there it is upon her lips it begs to be asked. But the boy, her dream boy, steals her words away as he sweeps her forelock back behind her ear. Ah, she cannot remember how to breathe. The air tangles in her throat. The butterflies in her stomach turn themselves over and over and over. Does he see her? That kelpie part of her that makes her monstrous. Does he?
Does he?
Dune holds her in that look. Long enough that she sees verdant greens and sunset oranges flecked across his irises. Long enough that she wonders where she has seen such colours before in the sun as it kisses the sea in slumber. there in the momentary flash when the sun disappears fully below the sea and nighttime blooms. She will always look for him there, now, she thinks. There in the moment just before sleep. It might become and even hope, that should dream of him that night.
Just when she can bear the way he stares at her no more, he steps back. Suddenly she breathes out that tangled breath he snagged within her throat. He turns, trotting dark and sleek up the beach. She does not think, even for a moment, before following him. Running after him, her gilt and blue tail catching in the strange wind. Dune asks how far it goes and she has no idea. She throws her chin up and laughs and does not feel the familiar need to hunt him, stalk him, feast upon him. No, she laughs and feels the sting of spraying diamonds as she flees up the beach after him. Reaching him, boldly, bravely, she reaches in, nudges his shoulder with her muzzle and marvels at how he smells of sand and earth and cold, winter nights.
“I don’t know, but I race you to the end of this dream.” And she runs, pushing her legs as fast as they might go, until it is nothing at all like running, but flying.
At the end of the dream is a lighthouse that turns its light slowly, slowly through the fading twilight, casting shadows that fly like monsters, dance like elves and drift like moons. Beware, beware, beware it silently warns with its every rotation. Beware the girl, beware the boy, beware the strange dreams that are nothing like reality.
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~Anna Funder
