The Dharma Raja fell silent. “Then I hope I am wrong.”
“There’s always impossibilities in dreams. Dream more.”
He looked at me. “I’m beginning to.”
I reached out to trace the place where his fingers had graced the mirror. “Will you take me to see the ocean?”
“I know just the place,” he said. He held out his hand to me. “May I?”
Sparks of light danced down my spine. His thumb ran over my knuckles. Together, we stepped into the mirror. Black and cold. And thenfalling.My heart raced as a swoop and weightlessness feathered inside me. On instinct, I clung to him and his arms folded around me. Still, my heart raced.
A moment later, we stood along the shore. I caught my breath, dizzied from the sudden jolt of solidness beneath me.
“You were wrong,” he said.
“About what?”
“I have done the impossible,” he announced. “I have embraced the night sky.”
“You did no such thing.”
“Is that so?” he asked. His voice felt too close, and I realized that I hadn’t stepped out of the circle of his arms. It had felt too natural to lean against him. I looked up to see his brow arched, his lips tilting into a knowing grin. “Then what do you call this?”
I thought about the fall and how he had offeredzerowarning. I lifted my chin: “Opportunistic.”
A wolfish grin lit up his face. “You caught me.”
“Now who’s performing impossibilities?” I smirked. “Someone should write a story about me, for I have ensnared Death himself.”
“Not ensnared,” he said, and his voice burned low in my ear. “Enchanted.”
“You’re getting far better at flattery.”
I stepped out of the circle of his arms and into the silky sand that hugged the ocean. When I turned to look at the water, I forgot everything. The ocean churned the constellations, rearranging a thousand tales in its ink-dark water. Water always had a calming effect on me. But standing before the ocean, I felt awed. The ocean stretched infinite, so that nothing but a delicate thread of land kept the sky and sea apart.
“What do you see?” asked the Dharma Raja.
I told him what I saw—ink and starlight, torn stories and new endings. And as I spoke, his obsidian eyes seemed to gleam in longing.
“I would give anything to see the world the way you do,” he said softly.
“And I would give anything toseethe world as you do. You travel everywhere. Never tethered to one place or one allotted time.”
“True. But my eyes have squandered every sight I have been given,” he said, resentment deepening his voice. “I am trying to change how I see the world.”
“Are you following advice from the same instructor who taught you how to pay a compliment?” I asked, teasing. “If so, I might counsel you otherwise.”
“In truth, I think you have been my instructor in seeing the world differently,” he said. His fingers brushed against mine, just soft enough to be coincidence. “Lately, I have tried to summon wonder like a lens. But it does not come to me until I stand beside you.”
We walked along the shore. Water pooled around our ankles, and the shock of it was cold and welcoming. The Dharma Raja murmured something under his breath, and colorful glassdiyasand white petals sprang up along the waves. Like wading through a festival.
“I envy you too,” I said suddenly. I couldn’t stop thinking of the legendary Tapestry in Naraka, an object where every mortal life possessed a thread and every life was held in fragile balance. “When a thread is frayed in a thousand directions, no one but you gets to decide which path to choose. Only your voice counts in that tale, and there is no story more potent than life.”
“So this is why you ask for your patrons to tell you about their dreams and their days. You wish to know whether the dream fruit you created made a difference?” I nodded, and the Dharma Raja murmured: “You want your voice to be heard. I understand.”
His words—simple and unfettered—rang in my ears. Heunderstood.In the Otherworld, striving for things beyond what you were given was unreasonable. Even Nritti and Uloopi couldn’t fathom why Iwantedso much.
I hadn’t realized, until now, how understanding could coax a small, shared world into existence. When I answered him, even my words felt new. Like they were spoken in a language birthed into being for this very moment.
