Day 10 - Cactus

I'm pulled from my dream by so much warmth. It's not unbearable, but it's kinda getting there. It's more warmth than Flame usually lets out.

I open my eyes, blinking a bit. It's bright; the spring sunlight pushes easily past the drawn curtains and illuminates the room. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust.

My nose is centimeters from Cecil's.

I spring up, pulling the blanket with me and hurling Flame into the air since she was on top of it. She lets out a small shriek and I feel sorry for her but also glad that I managed to not scream. Cecil stirs as well, woken by the noise and I reach for Flame who is snarling at me.

"Ohh, I'm so sorry, girl, I didn't mean to do that!" I say, but she just hisses and jumps onto my head and to Cecil. He's sitting up now too, rubbing his eyes and scrabbles for his glasses on the nightstand.

"What happened?" he says, his voice hoarse with sleep.

"No, nothing, sorry," I say rubbing my own hands over my face. "I just woke with a bit of a jump and accidentally woke up Flame and she didn't like it and..."

"Woke with a jump?" he says, finally getting his glasses and pushing them on. He squints at me. "Did you have a nightmare or something?"

"No, no, nothing like that, I just..." I try to come up with something, anything to say. "Never mind, it's not important." I dig my phone from underneath my pillow and check the time. 7:24. No sense in trying to sleep anymore, huh? Not sure I have any sleep left in me anyway, after that.

I get up as Cecil consoles the overly dramatic fire elemental, who is very obviously fake crying in his arms. I lock myself in the bathroom to wash up.

~x~

After a quick hotel breakfast (that I didn't sleep past this morning) we pack whatever we have left to pack and then check out. We don't have too much in the way of luggage, but what we have we leave at the hotel for safe keeping for the day. They'd just be in the way at HUT, and the hotel is on the way to the transportation centre.

Since we woke up a bit earlier than we had planned, we take a bit longer -- and a more scenic -- route. It's fun to sit on the second floor of a double-decker, since we don't have those back home. We can see the whole city pretty well from there as we drive through it. Flame, too, is very excited, her face basically pressed against the bus window the whole way.

At noon we're at Lucas's lab. Well, no, it's not Lucas's lab, per say, but rather the HUT lab he works in, but... whatever. We wait a minute or so in the lobby and then we're greeted by Lucas himself. He's around Cecil's age (which is to say a few years older than me) with ashy hair, brown eyes and thick rimmed glasses. He gives Cecil a quick hug before turning to me and shaking my hand quite enthusiastically as Cecil introduces me.

"It's real nice to meet you," he says, still not letting go of my hand. "I have to say, this is quite exciting! If you can do half of the things Cecil said you can, then..."

"Jeez, Lucas, calm down," Cecil laughs and Lucas lets go of my hand with a soft "oh". He pushed his glasses up his nose and gives me an apologetic smile. It's a bit weird to be the one everyone is focused on, when I have a literal legendary elemental wrapped around my shoulders. But I guess Lucas isn't that interested in those things. Flame doesn't seem to mind the shift, and is happily just lounging around, playing with the strings of my hoodie.

"Right, this way then," he says and shows us deeper into the building.

We end up in a decently sized circular room. There's no windows, a few monitors and several chairs that are rather reminiscent of the chairs dentists have. Without all the teeth equipment over them, of course. The few people also in the room look up as we walk in and greet us. Lucas's colleagues, here to observe, apparently. I wasn't aware there would be observers, and a kaleidoscope of butterflies is starting to take residence in the pit of my stomach. Flame purrs and butts my jaw with her head, which makes me feel a bit better. I give her a grateful scratch on the head.

Lucas instructs me to take a seat on one of the chairs and I comply. It's more comfortable than it looks, which probably shouldn't surprise me, seeing as they are literally for people to sit in while they sleep. Flame curls up on my lap as one of Lucas's associates attaches an electrodes on each of my temples. They transmit my dream to the monitors, Lucas explains, so everyone will be able to see it. That worries me a bit, because I dream of some pretty weird stuff sometimes, but it is a lucid dream so... it should be fine.

"Alright, are you ready?" Lucas asks. I nod. And then a thought crosses my mind.

"Am I... am I going under alone?" I ask. I was thinking that they'd be coming with me.

"We'll join you in a bit," Cecil assures me.

"Yes, I just want to see what you're capable on your own first," Lucas says, pushing his glasses up again.

"Okay." I nod again. "Let's do this then, I guess." Flame sings out a soft note as my eyes start to grow heavy.

~x~

I'm in a room. A perfectly cubic white room. I look around. There's nothing in here.

"Can you hear me?" comes a voice I recognize as Lucas's.

"Yes," I say. I hope that the monitors also have an audio component to them. "Why am I in a blank room?"

"Because it's a brand new dreamspace, no one's done anything to it yet," Lucas explains. That makes sense, I guess.

"What do you want me to do with it?" I ask, glancing around.

"Whatever you want."

I stop turning and hum. I was hoping for a little direction, but... Well, first things first, I want to get out of this boring room.

I turn around and open the door. Behind it opens a corridor, much more colorful than the original room, with windows on one side and a row of beautifully carved wooden doors on the other. I start walking. Behind the windows is the infinite beauty of space, stars upon stars, galaxies twinkling in the distance. The light show from Friday night sails its slow way across the vastness of it all, its colours changing leisurely.

"Whoa." I smile a little at Lucas's exclamation. "Did you just create an entire universe?"

"Nah," I laugh. "It's only visual. Though, I guess if you want me to go out there, I could make up some planets and stuff as I go."

"I... wow." A pause. "No, that's... maybe let's start with something a bit simpler first."

"Alright."

There's scratching behind one of the doors and I open it.

"I was expecting you," I tell Flame, who jumps on my shoulders and sings a little song.

"Wait, is that the actual elemental?" comes Lucas's voice, but it's a bit more distant, so I assume he's asking Cecil. True enough, Cecil's voice echoes in the hall next.

"Yes, we're not sure yet how exactly it works, but she has been hopping into our shared dreams before," he explains. "I suspect they have very strong psychic abilities, but I've yet to test it out."

"Fascinating," says Lucas. "I hope she doesn't compromise the creative integrity of the space..."

"Well, Flame, where should be go next?" I ask, ignoring his mumbling, and Flame sings a bit more, though of course she doesn't answer verbally. I chuckle, and walk through the door she came in from. It's another hallway, this one lines by plants and landscape paintings. Some of the plants are real house plants that my mum has, but others aren't purely fictious, conjured up by my subconscious based on what I'd like plants to look like. Many of them have flowers and the hallway smells delightful.

The hallway ends in wide double doors. They're made of glass and behind them is a lush greenhouse. I open the door and Flame jumps off my shoulder, dashing inside. I'd be worried about the fire hazard, but Flame is very good at not setting things on fire and also this is a dream.

"You've been making some pretty incredible stuff," Lucas says. I run my fingers along a huge leaf, making the drop of dew on it slide down onto my hand. It's cold.

"I haven't really been making any of this," I say, plucking a large flower with blue and purple gradient and tucking it behind my ear. "Not consciously, I mean."

"Oh," says Lucas. There's a pause and I continue walking among the plants. "Well," he finally says, "you certainly have a lot of imagination then, don't you."

I laugh. "I guess so," I say.

"Do you think you could make something for us?" he asks then. "Consciously create something?"

"Sure," I say and look around a bit. I pick up a flowerpot which wasn't there a second ago and place it on a table that wasn't there either. There's a tiny, round cactus sitting in the soil. I look at it. Flame jumps up on the table next to the pot and looks at it with a tilted head. The cactus gets bigger. It grows taller and rounder, its spines getting longer and pointier. A big bud grows on the top, larger and larger, until it rips open and bright red and orange petals explode from inside it. Flame chirps happily as a huge flower looking like a fireball blooms in front of us.

"That's pretty impressive," Lucas says. "Can you do something bigger next? Like a whole room?"

"I can do better than that," I say. Flame hops on my shoulder again as I turn my back to the cactus and walk to the end of the greenhouse. A doorknob appears as I reach for it and I open it into a vast white space. I step out into it.

"Uh..." says Lucas.

"Give me a sec, man," I say and stretch my arms for a second. Then I concentrate.

The ground turns green. Or rather, a mat of grass grows from the nothingness. Next a few trees, some bushes. A bench. I'm walking along, willing things into existence as I think there should be something. Small waves start to brush against the grass as a pond extends to my right. A white koi leaps out for a moment before disappearing beneath the surface again. The ground starts to slope upwards as I walk up a hill, and when I'm on top, I pause to view my surroundings. This is a pretty nice little park. Out in the distance there's a city skyline, but that's just background texture at the moment.

There's a long silence.

"Oh, sorry, did you want actual buildings?" I ask, suddenly realizing I've just made more plants. "Here." I continue up the hill a bit more, until I'm standing in front of a large building.

"Ah, that's the concert hall!" says Cecil. "The one where the Aurora viewing was held."

Lucas lets out an "ohh" of understanding as I open the door and walk in. I don't remember much about the place aside from the big hall, so the front door leads directly there, even though I know there were several rooms in between. It's as it was two days ago, or as accurately as I can remember. There's the tables, the stage, the band equipment, the foods. The big window with the Aurora behind it again. The lighting is low so it's very visible, although unlike Friday night when the only light was candles, now it just... is dim.

"That is uncanny," Cecil says. I nod.

"A bit empty, though," I muse, and then a stream of people starts to walk in from behind me, chattering away, dressed in their Sunday best like they were back then.

"Holy--" Lucas says. Most of the people are nondescript, figures without specific features, but some are people I remember from the party or my friends from back home. I see mum, and Tony, and Nick and My and Leea and Rachel. A few of our choir members, some teachers. A couple fictional characters I really like.

A soft touch on the small of my back and I turn to look over my shoulder only to be greeted by Cecil's smiling face. He offers me his arm and I loop my hand through it. Flame lets out a very confused whine.

"Forget what I said earlier," comes Cecil's voice, but not from this Cecil. "That is uncanny."

"Sorry," I say, feeling a bit bashful. "You were there, so I guess... you just popped into my mind."

"No, no, that's fine," he says as the other him just smiles at me. "It's just... really weird to see myself like this. It's an amazing rendering though."

I laugh, to hide my embarrassment. I let go of dream-Cecil's arm and he walks into the crowd. I look after him a bit wistfully and then blink and shake my head. God, I need to get it together.

"So, uh... you gonna come here with me now, or what?"

~x~

We spend hours in the dreamspace. I build Lucas several increasingly big places; houses, shops, our school building, the Natural History Museum... Lucas is very fascinated by my ability to populate the spaces I create with humans, or with simulations of humans, acting very naturally. He goes on a whole lecture on how people in dreams come from the dreamer's subconscious so when it's a shared dream it would be everyone's subconscious but somehow they block eachother so you don't usually see dream-people in dreamspaces or something? I'll be honest, I didn't quite understand what he was talking about, but I got the impression that what I did was sufficiently impressive.

Cecil on the other hand spends the time walking a bit behind us. I assume he tries to not get in the way, and a few times I get worried that he's bored or something but whenever I look over he's smiling in that goofy way he does. Flame is keeping him company, having curled around his shoulders as soon as he arrived, so I guess if he was too bored he could just play with her.

Finally Cecil says that we should get going, so we don't miss our transportation time. Lucas reluctantly agrees. He's apparently gotten quite a lot of data he can work with at this point, but once we wake up he tells me that if I ever want to come back and show him some more, they would be ever so grateful. I tell him I'd like that -- not out of courtesy either, I really did enjoy our time in the dreamspace -- but that right now I have to concentrate on graduating. But I haven't decided on whether I want to go to Uni or not, nor which one, so who knows.

Lucas sees us to the door and waves his enthusiastic goodbyes, and then we leave.

We stop to eat quick before heading to the hotel to get our luggage and then we're off to the transportation centre. That experience is very similar to when we came over, although customs tries to stop us because of Flame. Cecil flashes them some kind of NALMC badge and they let us go pretty easily though.

We emerge from the centre into the cool spring air. It's drizzling lightly and Flame burrows herself into my bag so get away from the rain with a grumble. A loud honk carries across the small parking lot and we both look over to see Tony standing by mum's car, trying to shield himself from the rain and wave to us at the same time. I turn to Cecil. There's a pause when I don't know what to say.

"Thank you," I settle on. "For the trip. It was fun."

"No, thank you for coming," Cecil hurries to say. "I was very glad you accepted my invitation! And thank you for enduring Lucas's... Well, Lucas. He's a bit eccentric, sometimes."

I laugh. "It's fine, really." Another pause.

There's two honks more, shorter this time. I shoot a glare at Tony, who's gesturing for me to get a move on. I sigh.

"I guess I should get going," I say, only a little disappointed. "Do you... do you want a lift somewhere?"

"No need, thank you," he says. "Rachel is on her way to pick me up."

"Oh."

Another honk. I take a deep breath. Fuck it all.

I grab Cecil by the coat lapel and pull him down the 5 centimeter distance in our heights. He exhales in surprise and it is warm on my face. My eyes are screwed shut so I can't see him, but he is soft, so soft. A moment passes.

I let go and step back. I stare at him, frozen in place. He's flushed, his mouth slightly open, and he blinks, slowly.

"OkaycoolthiswasfunIgottagonowbye!" I shout and just hoof it. I spin on my heel and sprint to the car.

I pull open the door and throw in my luggage and Tony is just laughing, he's howling with laughter and my face is burning.

"Oh my god, just shut up and drive!" I hiss at him and he calms down enough to start the car. He's still giggling as he shifts it into reverse and backs away from the parking spot.

"You are hilarious," he says as he starts to drive away from the centre. "Welcome home."

I stare at Cecil in the rear view mirror. He's still standing exactly where he was. He lifts his hand to his face and touches his fingers to his lips and I sink a bit in my seat.

I can't believe I just kissed him.
_____________________________________________________________
WHAT THE FUCK OH MY GOD WHAT EVEN HAPPENED DAMN I KNOW I'M THE ONE WRITING THIS BUT LIKE ????????

Sorry, I'm just writing self-indulgent fluff hahahaha I don't know what happens next though? Can MC ever face Cecil after this?? Will I ever write more??? Maybe! I might if people wanna read and I find myself without a topic one day. BUT I won't be continuing this anytime soon, probably. I dunno, if I get inspiration from somewhere.

Anyway. Did you know that a group of butterflies is called a kaleidoscope? How awesome is that?? :DD

I, uh. I really don't have much to add at this point. I kinda wanna turn Carol into like, a comic or sth, but I have so much on my plate right now with Sorcerer and everything I don't really have time to start drawing a comic lol. But yeah, I've entertained the idea, because as I was rereading it, it had a lot of very visual scenes and stuff. I'd have to design Main Character though, and I'm not sure I'm ready for that, I like that they're super vague.

But yeah, that's that for now, sorry for leaving this on maybe a bigger cliffhanger than the last one but... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I liked your turtles (and tortoises). Bye now!

Pie out.