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When you wake, you’re gasping from a dream that already feels like a distant memory. Most of your dreams are like that, these days. Thick and strange, full of faces you can't put names to, gone before you can catch hold of them.
The sheets beneath you don’t feel quite right. An unfamiliar whisper of softness against your skin. In the sleep-heavy fog of early morning, your brain stumbles back to a memory — laying on a dormitory-style bed, rough sheets beneath you. Across the room, someone is grinning while they lace up their trainers.
It’s her voice that startles you out of it: “The dreams again?”
Moonchild is sitting where she always does, on the mustard yellow accent chair that looks plucked out of a ‘60s movie. Head tipped back and a mug of rooibos tea cupped in her hands, she watches you with a tiny smile. In the hazy, smoke-swirled light, the frizz at the top of her head is glowing like a halo, and the thought makes you smile, slow and lazy, to match hers.
The words come out of you before your mind can catch up. “I keep forgetting them.”
“That’s actually a good sign,” she says. “No really! Did you know that depressed people dream three times as much? Forgetting is good. It means you’re finally letting go."
Her words make your smile stretch a little bit wider, and you nod in fervent agreement. It’s better to forget, to soak in this heavy, sun-soaked feeling. Were you ever this happy before? Nothing that happened before could really matter, not when the woman you love is sitting right there, looking at you like you’re the most wonderful thing she’s ever seen. When was the last time someone looked at you like anything other than a weapon?
Moonchild puts her tea aside and reaches forward to stroke your arm. Fingers graze against skin, and all you want to do is sigh and relax into it. “When I first met you, Five, you were like, seriously deficient in happy neurotransmitters. That’s not what life's supposed to feel like.”
Again, the words pass your lips like they’re not even yours. “Will you show me what it’s supposed to feel like?”
“Ja,” she says, and then smiles again. It’s like a sunbeam, bright and unstoppable. “That’s what I’m here for. To be your guiding light. It’s what I was put here to do.”
For the first time in your life, you think you might be free.
WHAT DO YOU DO NEXT?