pre-canon, ~1100 words, it'll be zenoswol in about 20 years
Kiyoko has a dream, and maybe someone else does too.
-
In her dream the girl walks down a corridor that echoes like a cavern. Here and there torches burn with a strange, unmoving light, throwing harsh-edged shadows into the vaulted ceiling. Her feet are cold on the stone-and-metal floor– odd, to feel the cold in a dream.
At the end of the corridor she reaches a door, large and ornate, the handle just slightly too high. It looks like the sort of door that should be locked. She pushes on it anyway and finds it opens without a sound.
On the other side is a bedchamber. The light burns here as well, for some reason, despite it being the middle of the night. Is it night? It must be; if she’s in her own bed dreaming, it must be night here in her dream too. The bed here is large, hung with heavy fabric from its four-post frame, the mattresses stacked two high. It doesn’t look comfortable– it looks forbidding. And sitting upright, his knees to his chest, looking far too small amid the pillows, a boy is looking back at her.
“You shouldn’t be here,” the boy tells her.
She tilts her head, considering. “Why not?” she says. “It’s my dream.”
The boy simply looks at her. His eyes are bright blue, more piercing even than that strange light. “You don’t know who I am.” It’s a statement, not a question. Not an answer, either.
“Should I?” the girl asks again. But he says nothing to that. Instead she crosses the room, bare feet on cold floor, and with some effort pulls herself up onto the too-large bed. She sits with her knees folded underneath her, facing the boy, who watches her silently with those bright unblinking eyes.
“How do you know it’s your dream?” he says at last, as if the intervening time had not passed.
She considers again. “I suppose I don’t. Maybe we're sharing it. Are you dreaming?"
"You're strange," the boy says.
"Yes," the girl agrees.
He folds himself into a new position, mirroring hers, no wasted movement. He might be a little older, or just a little younger; something in his eyes might be centuries old. On his forehead something shines like a pearl. She wonders if it's hard like a pearl too.
"I don't dream," he says at last, then adds, "Not like this."
"Then perhaps I really am here."
"No one's supposed to be here."
"No one," the girl repeats. "Except you?"
The boy frowns at that, but he says nothing. He holds up his hand toward her, and, when she doesn’t draw back, lays curious fingers on the tip of her horn.
She draws in a short involuntary breath. It isn’t painful, just… unfamiliar, and sensitive, and it makes her feel a bit as if the room is slowly tilting. She fixes her eyes on the boy's face instead, on the pearl on his forehead and on his eyes, unmoving points by which to orient the vessel.
The boy seems not to have seen the like before. He moves his hand from end to end, examining the shape and texture of the horn as one might a fascinating artifact, and then turns her head first to one side, then the other, studying her face just as she studies his.
“One of your eyes is different,” he says at last. “Why?”
“Mama says it’s because of my father.”
"Your father," the boy repeats, like a ritual, withdrawing his hand. Then his gaze sharpens. "Does it hurt?"
"Sometimes," the girl admits. "When I look at people, I see lights around them, all different colors. Sometimes it's too bright and it hurts to look at."
"Do I have a light around me?"
"Mm. Yes, but no. You have…" She frowns, thinking hard. "You have a space where a light should be. I can see where I can't see it."
"That doesn't make sense."
"I can't explain it better than that," the girl says. "I've never met anyone like you."
"There isn't anyone like me," says the boy, proud, sad, insulted.
"That sounds lonely," the girl says, and the boy looks away. The silence is too large, like the bed, like the room, and absolute.
"There's no one like me either," she volunteers, eventually. "Maybe… maybe we could be friends?"
He looks back to her, surprised, blue eyes piercing like the searchlights sailors look for to find the land. "Friends," he repeats. He turns the unfamiliar word over in his mouth. "Friends. I've never had a friend before."
"Neither have I. But now we both do, all right?"
"My first friend," the boy says, and the girl nods.
Suddenly impulsive, she lifts her own hand toward his face. “Can I–?”
He says nothing, but he doesn’t draw back. She lets one finger gently touch the thing, like a pearl but not a pearl, on his forehead.
It’s harder than skin, softer than horn or scale. Cooler than flesh but warmer than bone. The boy gives a barely audible hiss, and for a moment his expression looks much like she felt when he touched her horn. For a moment, the girl thinks she sees–
She draws her hand back. The dream is starting to fade.
“Will you come back?” asks the boy. He must feel it too; there’s urgency in his voice that wasn’t there before.
“I don’t know if I can,” the girl admits. “I’m not even sure how I got here.”
“Then I’ll find you.” Not a threat, not a promise, just a statement. That strange unmoving light starts to waver, like the moon from underwater.
“You’re my friend now,” says the boy’s voice. “If you don’t come back, I’ll find you.”
-
“I met a boy,” Kiyoko says, lingering over the last of breakfast, “with a pearl on his forehead.”
Her mother puts her chopsticks down, every ilm collected. She knows her daughter is perceptive. “Where?” she asks.
The girl frowns. “I don’t know,” she says, as if suddenly realizing it. “Maybe… it was a dream?”
“Maybe it was,” says her mother. “But if you see him again, or anyone else like him, will you tell me?”
For a long moment Kiyoko stares at her, the way she does sometimes, as if seeing something only visible to herself; and Kagami wonders if her practiced calm covers near as much as she thinks. But at last the girl nods.
"Go wash up, if you're not going to finish," Kagami tells her daughter. "Masuyo's going to take you swimming outside the dome today."
She sits at the low table for a long while after Kiyoko departs, thinking of a years-forgotten dream of her own. But it doesn't quite come back to her, and eventually she stands up and goes about her work. That afternoon her daughter comes back, tired and still slightly damp and quietly pleased with herself; she doesn't mention the dream again, and in a fortnight Kagami has forgotten about it too.
