His name is Paul.
Fuck losing. I’m not redefining anything. I am going to feed this monster, and make him strong, and no matter the cost, we are going towin.
Coming out of this dreamwalkwith Paul isn’t likeleavinga place. It’s more like anexchangeof a place. One moment I’m in that forest, and the next I’m in the swirling purple and gold mist.
I’ll need another word for what this is, because ‘dreamwalk’ doesn’t feel right. Dreamwalking is what I’ve been doing all my life. This is something completely different.
But there’s no time to make up new words. I need to get back to Paul. Seven years went by for him and it was mere moments for me. At least it felt like moments.
So as soon as I manifest, I go looking for the pathways. It’s just… no matter how long I stare, I can’t seem to find the doors again. The mist just continues to slowly swirl around me. I look around and down at myself, watching the mist. And this is when I realize that the baby bump is gone.
I just stare at my stomach for a moment, trying to find a way for this to make sense.
I mean, none of it makes sense. And the easy answer, of course, is that it’s just an illusion. I’m not pregnant with a demon baby, was never pregnant.
It’s a nice thought, I’m just not convinced it’s true. I think I really am pregnant. I think there really is something very, very sick and bad growing inside me.
But it’s such a relief to not see the proof that I can easily push that problem aside to concentrate on the other one.
Which is Paul. I need to find him. He knows what’s going on and he doesn’t seem as committed to keeping his secrets as the Paul I know in my own time.
I need those secrets. Desperately need those secrets.
So I stare at the mist. I squint my eyes, I cross them, I let them go lazy… but nothing works.
“Come on!” I say this out loud as I rub my hands down my face. “Where is Lucia when I need her?”
I look around, hoping that my wish becomes manifest and Lucia appears, but she doesn’t.
But a shape does begin to form. I stand still as the mist bonds and more and more rectangles appear. But when I approach, there’s something wrong with them.
They aren’t doors, they’re… I lean forward, squinting, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. Some of them are easy. They show bedrooms, or hallways, or the interior of cars. But some of them show sky and the boughs of trees. Some of them are a blur, like everything is moving. And some of them are the ceiling of a bathroom.
Mirrors. The doors have become mirrors that show the human world. They are all places, obviously, but none of them arePaul.
An idea hits me—maybe that’s how I got to the Roman bath? There was water in there. And the Coyrah was out on the ice.
It’s the water!
The dreamwalk belongs to the vampires. Purple is the earth. The dirt. A highway across the present or a vision of the past.
But gold is the mist. Water. Doorways through time. And it belongs tome.
I turn my head and finally see something familiar. A pink-haired girl on the other side of a rippling pool of water.
And she is standing in a cave.
