Glimmers of a Dream

[Thalia]

Jon was very old-fashioned, and it made her nostalgic for something she couldn’t quite grasp enough to give shape or form in her mind. She glanced up at the sky. It was an odd thought, that his body in the waking world was out there somewhere in an aeroplane. Headed to Moscow. That tapped recognition on the inside of her skull, dull but insistent. A recent memory? An old one?

Moscow.

Moscow.

The Waking World?

Her eyes, face still tilted upwards, had half closed as she struggled clumsily to piece information together, but once again she was easily distracted by a stray thought. Now they opened and regarded Jon curiously, alight with this new tangent. I could be anywhere in the world. Anywhere. Probably not Alaska, though.

The simple question – and it was simple – nonetheless felt infinitely vast. It was like fanning through a book but only catching brief glimpses of each page, and with only the vaguest notion of where it all began and ended. Even her name was lost in the blur, but her identity was all of it. She couldn’t exist here without that sense of purpose; it just was, even if it thrust her out of sync with the norm, and every instinct urged her to step wisely around the things she didn’t understand. A river that burst its banks could not then be contained, and the damage was irrevocable.

But at the same time she responded intuitively to Jon’s earnestness, and wanted to offer something. How to explain without sounding crazy though? Or creating more questions that had no answers; or at least answers she was not wholly convinced it was wise to chase. For a moment she glanced at the wolfbrother, sobre. But whatever quiet contemplations caught her, they were brief. She smiled at Jon, waggling gloveless fingers once again splattered with colourful paint.

"I was painting," she reminded him. "Where’d you find me?" She remembered the canvases and paint, of course; she remembered everything following the moments her memories sieved away and left her reborn in this Spirit World. Before that, though. Shadows of shadows. But Jon had already cast light on dim recesses she’d never have thought to explore on her own, and maybe he’d elucidate something useful that she just couldn’t see.