The Rise and Fall of the Song of Mirriam Brown

This one's even longer. It has also been workshopped. I need to edit the post to include italics later, but for now, you may read to your heart's content.

Brandon Keim was a tall young man. His brown eyes, while rather unremarkable, always had a way of catching strangers' attention with the intelligence gleaming within. His hair was a dark blond in color, and his build was neither athletic nor lethargic. While intelligent, his grades in both high school and college suffered because of his lack of motivation to fill out meaningless worksheets and answer stupid questions about past tense and dates of major happenings in history. He also walked with a limp. Great people in history had limps, but he was only Brandon Keim, video game designer in training at GameTime Pro.
The limp had bothered him when he was younger; it caused ridicule and staring wherever he went. Even now, in the dusty old cubicles at GameTime Pro, he sometimes felt a few sets of eyes on him. There'd been times in his youth when he'd felt the only sure way to stop the staring was to stop limping. He once tried to stop, but it made walking slow and meticulous, which only gained more laughter from his peers, so he returned to his limp; It gave his walking a peculiar tun-ta-dun sort of rhythm. It was from this that his first song had begun. Tun-ta-dun, tun-ta-dun, tun-ta-dum everywhere he went.
In junior high, his clarinet joined the song: tun-ta-dun, tun-ta-dun, doodle-do, tun-ta-dun. In time, his song grew and evolved until he grew bored with it and started listening for his friends’ songs. For a long while, nothing came, until one day, like a radio finally finding a receiver, his friend Susan’s song fizzled into his mind as she described to him her hopes and dreams for her future . A violin rang out clearly into his mind with a manner that gave her beauty and grace clear evidence. It was soon joined by occasional squeaks of a piccolo that characterized her quirky smile and constant fidgeting. His friend Sal was a bit more modern, kind of like the rocking sounds of Jekyll and Hyde rolling onto his radio dial.
The first time someone's song immediately appeared was when he met his new boss. Having graduated with only a marginally good GPA and being completely ignorant to the ways of the real world, he expected very little from this interview. This man did not exactly encourage him, either. He walked into the room and took one glance at his crooked, blue-tinted glasses, tie-dyed shirt, khaki pants and flipflops, and immediately felt any fears slip away. Mostly, he just really wanted to laugh at this guy. The “Age of Aquarius” began to play in his mind. In fact, as he went through the standardized questions to test Brandon's worthiness, it became quite distracting. Nothing about this guy was intimidating as a boss ought to be. Adrian D. Jasperson's shaggy blond hair might have been a few inches shorter and his bell-bottoms may have been exchanged for khaki cargo pants, but the song still clung avidly to him, like screaming “hippy” at the top of its lungs.
When the Moon is in the Seventh House...Brandon Continued to answer quite automatically. Yes, he had finished college only a week ago. Then peace will guide the planets, Adrian Jasperson turned to his PC and his spectacled eyes shifted to and fro on the screen as the song continued, And love will steer the stars. He passed Brandon a couple of informative papers. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the song insisted. He asked Brandon more stupid questions about his people skills as well as his programming skills, which seemed, Adrian said, quite promising. The Age of Aquarius! Aquarius! Aquarius! He smiled in a patient way, as if he understood the vacant look on Brandon's face as the song faded away for the second verse.
“You'll be alright, son,” Adrian said, admiring his wall of past successes in the game business. “I think you'll be a wonderful asset to GameTime Pro. Welcome to the crew!”
A bit startled, Brandon left his office with a nervous grin and a shake of Adrian's hand.
“Just round that corner there and Amber will see to it that you get your contract.”
Brandon nodded weakly and rounded the corner. A girl with red, curly hair sat at the secretary's desk, an expectant smile on her face. Her eyes flicked down towards his feet for a moment, then back upward. She'd registered his limp faster than most people. Her song rose into the quiet of his mind. It was a song he'd never heard, but it was an upbeat pop song with boy band lyrics. I'll be your man-- you'll be my girl, yeah yeah be mine---
“Er... are you Amber?”
“Sure am, Mr. Keim!” she said, flashing a false-looking metal smile. “Here is your paperwork. Do you have your Driver's License and Social Security Card? I need to make copies of those.”
A vague feeling of happiness seeped into his being then, and in the absence of Aquarius, his own song peeped out at a cheerful tempo. He passed her the two cards.
“So, I'm hired?”
Amber nodded, her smile still brilliant as her boy band song rose into a loud chorus.
“I hear your phone interview was very impressive,” she said, “This was only a follow-up interview. He does those a lot.”
#
Brandon's life was finally moving somewhere. No more homework, no more classes, and what's more, he had a good paying job. A week later, he returned to the GameTime Pro building on the corner of Main Street and Hoover. He was lucky enough to have inherited a bike from his older brother, who now enjoyed a brand new Volkswagen Jetta. Otherwise, he'd have to take the bus, which would be interesting except for the fact that his radio of a brain had started picking up on everyone's songs, and though he could turn down the volume in his mind, he still couldn't quite separate station from station.
Riding his bike, he could take less crowded streets and just laugh at the snippets of songs he'd hear as he raced by. There was this girl he always passed in the mornings who walked with such surety and cheerfulness that the song assigned to her was that old song that used to play on Hershey's commercials: Put a smile on your face, it insisted, as she caught his eyes briefly, and then looked away, make the world a better place! He thus christened her “Hershey's Girl,” though the song was by Vitamin C. Paul Schmidt, his department head, was an adaptation of the 2001: A Space Odyssey song. It involved more instrumentation and less drum work, but it was marvelous. It somehow made every meaningless new programming term more interesting.
He didn't make any friends at work for a long time. His days consisted of waking up, wandering to the kitchen to scrounge up some breakfast, and then biking to work. After work, he went to the piano, and tried to compose his own music. Sometimes he tried to make sense of all the new songs he'd heard so far. Musical auras (for that is what he called them) were all quite interesting, but he decided that most people fit into different categories, according to their taste in music, clothing, and their general personality, and that most of those categories weren't worth his time.
There was also this teenage couple who were always making out on a bench outside the Geoffrey P. Banks Park. Whenever Brandon walked past them, he got this strange blend of Bob Dylan's “Fools Rush In” and Supertramp's “Girlfriend”: Take a look at my girlfriend, she's the only one I've got(na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na!), followed by, but I can't help falling in love with you! People in love are strange things. Besides, he knew that the tall, quarterback-built boy had more than her smile on his mind. The football player's large, rough hand had a habit of feeling much more of his girlfriend's “porcelain skin” than she really thought he should in public, and then he would smirk and kiss her again. She's not much of a girlfriend, I never seem to get a lot, Supertramp sang. That girl really was smart to make out in public. Quarterback would be hitting the ball way further into left field if they were in a dark room someplace.
He walked past the couple that morning. The slurping sound they emitted was a little too much for him, so he took a detour, his mind on the load of work ahead of him. His Department Head had assigned him a bit of critical programming for the next major add-on for America's favorite Multilayer online roleplay game. It occurred to him as he walked between the duck pond to the ten-story GameTime building, that he should probably work on that. He still had to meet with some girl called Mirriam about the graphics that went with his project.
He opened the door and slid among other workers towards his department, not even allowing himself to tune in to the music that surrounded him, so that it blurred by like turning stations on the dial. He thought of his first paycheck and what he might buy with it. He'd have to put a bit of it into savings. And then he thought of that really attractive girl, Amber that worked in Adrian's office. And then a pair of eyes caught his, as they had before.
The Hershey's chocolate girl was coming down the open hall to his left, the smile erased from her face. It wasn't the lack of a smile that made him keep looking at her, however, it was her song: it had changed. The song that now rang out was from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera. Think of me, Christine Daae sang, at first quietly, and then stronger: Think of me fondly when we've said goodbye! It filled his mind and caught all his attention. It was like her radio station had changed genres! When you find, that once again you long to take your heart back and be free- she turned down the hall and walked alongside him. Hershey girl's long black lashes fluttered a bit as she blinked and tilted her head at him, one dark eyebrow raising into the almost black fringe of bangs that swept down the left side of her face.
She attempted to divert her eyes nervously. We never said our love was evergreen, or as unchanging as the sea-- her eyes twitched around the hallway for a moment, and then stubbornly landed back on him. He finally took his eyes away from her face, and faked a cough as an apology. He really hadn't meant to stare for so long. Think of all the things we've shared and seen-- an airy, nervous laugh escaped her throat as she turned into the door of the art department.. Brandon paused at the door. He was supposed to go and ask this Mirriam girl about graphics, but he didn't want to make Hershey's Girl even more suspicious, so he shook his head of the song, taking a moment to collect himself and walked through the doorway just to the right.
Brandon tried to focus on some of his other projects, but he was confused. Only one other person's song had ever changed, and that was the same Emily Newman he'd once crushed on in College. She'd found out about it and blatantly ignored him since. Her station changed as he'd gotten to know her, but he didn't even know Hershey Girl. Why did her song change? Obviously, she wasn't as cheerful as usual, but that was hardly an excuse. Anyone else he'd ever met had a song, but they kept that song. If they were angry, the tone of the song might change, or the tempo might change when they were sad, but no one's song ever changed to a completely new song in a completely different genre. And Hershey Girl's song had changed. And now, for some reason, he couldn't stop thinking about her.
Brandon tried to wait for her to leave before he picked up his scraggy notebook and pencil, but he really needed to talk to that girl about the graphics. Shrugging finally, he stood and walked briskly out the Programming door and into the Art and Graphic Design Department. He scanned the cubicles for a moment, and then realized that there was a receptionist staring up at him.
“Excuse me, but can you direct me to Mirriam?” he asked. “I think that's her name... I need to meet with her about a programming project.”
He limped over to the cubicle she indicated, attracting very few of the artists' attention. He turned and found Mirriam had a dazed look on her face, which spoke of sleepiness and confusion from underneath the dark fringe of bangs. Christine Daae's song again rang out, but this time, the song paused in all the wrong places, or at least for longer amounts of time. This change didn't confuse him for very long. He realized that some random guy staring at you for a prolonged amount of time wasn't exactly normal, but he still had to ask her about the project.
“Erm...” he said. Nice. “Are you Mirriam? I have to- I'm Brandon.”
“Oh,” she said, her eyes sparkling green as she smiled quietly. “I am indeed Mirriam.” Here, her dark eyebrows formed a curious arch as she made sure no one was listening. “Now, you're cute and everything, but who are you and why the hell are you following me?”
Brandon was immediately thrown a bit. He never quite expected the aura of Christine Daae to be so suddenly blunt. “Think of Me” quickly faded a bit as he struggled to think of a plausible excuse. She looked at him, her song becoming strangely louder in his mind as she did so. She was such an enigma to him! So strange, so unexplored! And by the clearing of her throat and the raising of her other eyebrow, he knew she felt similarly towards him.
“I-I'm Brandon Keim,” he said. “I'm from the programming department. I work here too.”
She sighed, rolling her intelligent looking green eyes.
“I know that,” Mirriam said. “You followed me in and through the park... that's not what I was asking, though. I was asking why you were still following me.”
Brandon didn't know he'd followed her through the park.
“Well, I thought maybe you might need help with drawing the newest battle gear.”
She laughed. Her laugh was nearly musical. Brandon liked it. “I am the head of the Art Department,” she said, “why would they hire a programmer to help me?”
He had offended her. Brandon saw it in the narrowing of her eyes and the impatient tapping of her foot, though he was slightly confused by the smile tugging at the edges of her mouth. She glanced at her silver watch, which matched the necklace which hung in a v-line over her collarbone. Summers fade, the fruits of summer fade, they have their season, so do we, the crackled on his dial. He suddenly remembered that though he was dying to find out why her song had changed, he was here for work. There was a moment of silence as his brown eyes met her green ones. The green eyes softened a bit, but there was still some suspicion behind them. Her lips formed a raisin to one side of her mouth. She knew that he was from the programming department and that they'd sent him for the graphic plans and illustrations, but she, too had an enigma to solve-- the enigma of the stalker boy.
“I'll tutor you,” she said, suddenly cheerful and joking. It almost seemed now like the two songs, Hershey's and Phantom merged on Brandon's radio now. Her smile was amused and brilliant. Brandon liked that, too. “Right now I'm busy, but you can come back tomorrow at noon, the cafe on the ground level. Does that work for you, Mr. Keim?”
He nodded. She smiled and began to turn away.
“Wait!” he said loudly enough to turn a few heads
She snickered a little. “Yes? I'm still here, Mr Keim.”
“I-- sorry. Can I give you my number? I might forget...”
Mirriam Brown laughed. “Well aren't you a sly dog?” She pulled out her cellphone and flipped it open. “What's the number?”
He told her his number. She grinned, shook her head in a you're-such-a-strange-man, sort of way, and turned back to her work. Brandon stood there for a moment, stunned. The two songs had combined and twisted together into a completely new song. Stay and smile, think for awhile. Every moment could pass you by! Put a smile on your face, one that I'll never erase, as you pause and think of me! It was a marvelous new tune that lingered in his mind as he left.
When noon came the following day, He was surprised to find he'd remembered her new song clearly and that it had developed a new piano accompaniment. It became pretty clear after ten minutes of tutoring that he couldn't need the help more. Mirriam wasn't really surprised by this, as she sort of already knew he was lying, and so she made a strange decision. She knew her friends were playing games tonight, and so she wondered--
“Hey, Brandon,” Mirriam asked, smiling. “it seems like you need these lessons more than you thought. Do you want to come over to my apartment and play some games? My friends were planning this fun round of improv games and they've been trying to get some new people coming to our little shindigs. We could get a few extra hours in for your lessons!”
Brandon's chocolate-colored eyes scrutinized her expression for a moment. He nodded.
“Sure, why not?”
After lunch, they returned to her desk where she showed him progress on the graphics, and then he returned and showed it to his boss. This was all done in a strange stupor. Mirriam Brown, the beautiful enigma, had asked him to a party at her house.
#
Brandon filled some of the empty spot of male in Mirriam's group of mostly female friends friends quite nicely. Though he was bashful and reluctant at the improv games, he soon found that he could easily make them laugh with inserting bits of song into dialogue. He enjoyed himself, and stayed much longer than he ought to have. Mirriam eventually went up to bed, and he left, all her friends smiling and waving and asking him to come back again sometime.
Though they'd planned on another “tutoring” session the next day, both departments were swamped as they raced to finish their halves of the project. Brandon kind of expected to see Mirriam at least once that day, and wanted to thank her for inviting him and such, but he didn't see her. She didn't call him all weekend, and when he finally saw her again on Monday, her song was silent. Completely silent. What was wrong with this girl?
After work, she passed him in the hall and rushed to the door. Brandon scrambled after her. When she saw him, the fake smile she gave him was alarmingly good. She meant to make him think nothing was wrong, but no one's song just turned off like that. He had to switch to a light jog to catch up with her in the crowd, bumping into lots of frustrated game designers on the way. He at last reached her side and slowed to a quick walk. She looked over quickly out of the corner of her eye and then away.
“Hey, Mirriam, what's up?”
Mirriam looked over at him, false surprise all over her features. This time, her smile curved at the corners in a strange sort of smirk. A phony, artificial sound filled his mind. It was like the Hershey's Song had switched to the AM frequency. It was coming down a tunnel; she was hiding something. But what? And why?
“Not much, Brandon, but I really have to go to an appointment.”
“Wait, Mirriam... I know that I don't know you well,” she laughed, her green eyes a little malicious, “ but I really want to. Will you have dinner with me sometime?”
She stopped, facing him suddenly. The false sounding notes of the Hershey's song faded for a moment as the rushing working class swerved to avoid them. She didn't seem to care much whether anyone bumped into her or flipped her off. Her green eyes were narrowed, though he couldn't really tell what that meant. A whiff of a girl power ballad came to his mind. He swallowed. It seemed that she really was either not used to boys asking her on dates, was completely opposed to the idea in general, but mostly she seemed bitter.
“So... are you asking me on a date, Brandon Keim?” Her mouth asked this, but her eyes asked if he was shallow, if he wanted more from her than she was willing to give. And the song asked that, too, though he swore he'd never heard Avril Lavigne sing this song before.
“Yes,” Brandon said, smiling in as innocent of a way as he could manage.
Her eyes immediately softened, and she smiled in a smug way that made him suddenly regret his decision.
“Alright, Brandon,” Mirriam said, “I'll go on a date with you, but we have to be back before nine.” She paused, holding out a hand to shake. “Deal?”
Brandon smiled, resisting a laugh. “Deal.”
#
Brandon took Mirriam to the local Mexican food place, Juanita's. Everyone knew they had the best tacos in a two-hundred mile radius, but when Mirriam walked in, it was clear she'd never been to Juanita's. Her eyes grew large as she examined the authentic-looking tile and ceiling. Brandon asked, and she affirmed his belief. They talked about Adrian D. Jasperson and about current projects and future ones. They talked briefly about her friends, and the ones he was particularly impressed with, and then they hesitantly left the comfort of Juan's Tacos.
It was then that Brandon noticed that her song had changed again. It had been a very long time since he'd heard Lisa Loeb, but he felt sure that it was her that sang as Mirriam chattered away. You say I only hear what I want to, he couldn't quite believe what that song seemed to say to him. He didn't realize that he was confusing this girl so much. If the change of her song was a reflection of things happening around her, then something was going on inside her that he really didn't understand. He really meant only to get to know her more, And I thought what I felt was simple, and I thought that I don't belong, and now that I am leaving, now I know that I did something wrong 'cause I missed you. She missed him? Or was her song about someone else?
“Don't worry about it,” she was saying, referring to his fear that he might not like his job, “You're here in life to learn and grow, and eventually, you'll find a place to belong, and you won't have to talk to this Age of Aquarius computer man anymore.”
It was funny the way he easily told her that Adrian just sort of reminded him of that song, rather that being actually represented by it.
“I know,” he said, “but you seem so happy with your life in graphic design.”
“I am happy with it, but that doesn't mean that sometimes I don't feel a little tired of it. I mean, fixing up a digital representation of armor on a videogame I rarely play isn't always fulfilling. What makes me excited is when we are allowed to create. I mean... when we're allowed to think up ideas for new games. It's all in how you approach it and how you feel about it. Do you want to be in game programming for your whole life? What is your dream song?”
I turned the radio on, I turned the radio up and this woman was singing my song. He realized then that he had no idea. Lover's in love, and the other's run away, lover is crying 'cause the other won't stay. He expressed the realization that he didn't know, then launched into a history of his career choices and why each didn't look so great to him anymore. He told her about his original goal of police officer, and how he realized that the only kind of cop he could be with his limp was one who did very little actual chasing, except maybe in the car. He told her about his brief and quickly extinguished wish to be an artist-- he quickly realized that he could barely lift a brush, not to mention using it! He went on and on until she interrupted him.
“You've got plenty of time to decide, Bren. Don't stress it.”
Suddenly, Mirriam's face became very solemn as she looked downward.
“So, I've been wondering. How--”
“How'd I get my limp? I was born with it,” he said, smiling slightly. “One of my legs is shorter than the other. I have an insert that's supposed to make it less obvious, but I don't think it works.”
“Oh,” was all she said, and she changed the subject.
I thought, "hey, I can leave, I can leave.” Oh, but now I know that I was wrong, 'cause I missed you. Yeah, I miss you!
She pursed her lips for a moment, which shone briefly with moisture as her eyes lit up with an idea. “Brandon, we really need to do more with your programming. What if we work a little later the next few days to get it done early?”
He was more than willing to do so. Both Wednesday and Thursday night he joined her in her open cubicle. Wednesday she spent a lot of time correcting simple errors in his programming, simply by reaching over his shoulder and showing him what she'd done with Photoshop and animation. Her long, dark hair, which was usually swept back in a ponytail, slipped off her shoulder and onto his. It surprised him. As he turned, a sweet sent filled his nostrils, and her Phantom-Hershey's song filled his mind again. He resisted the urge to pull his hands through the shinning strands, and she smiled over at him briefly when he stood to get a drink of water.
Thursday night she worked on some illustrations while he finished up the last part of his essay, though she kept glancing over at him and sketching very few finished drawings Today, Lisa Loeb's song was again replaced by silence. That is, until she pulled up a chair next to him and sat through the last part of his programming, fiddling with it in order to make it work a little better with her graphics. When she finished, she smiled at him. He smiled back.
“It's wonderful,” Mirriam said, and he felt sure she was referring to his finished product, “the way you stumbled into my life. I'm not even sure how you did it! Did you know that I'd just broken up with Joe when I first met you?” Think of me, the song crackled to another station again, think of me waking, silent and resigned. Imagine me, trying too hard to put you from my mind. Her smile was bittersweet, “But you're so much nicer to me. “ Stay and smile...
Suddenly, she was very close to him. He realized no one else was in the computer lab. Her green eyes filled his view, warm and eager and smiling. ...Think for awhile. Every moment could pass you by! Put a smile on your face, one that I'll never erase... Her breath was sweet in his nostrils, and her song grew in intensity. He leaned forward and she leaned further, as you pause and think of me! She grabbed his mouth in hers and pressed their lips firmly together. She was suddenly in his lap, her hands winding around him, one in his hair and one on his arm. He'd never been kissed like this before, and it was all so very wet that for a moment, he didn't recognize it for what it was. His lips trembled a bit under hers, making her laugh a little as she drew back and leaned into his shoulder. Suddenly, his work was nothing to him. He was confused, and she could see it in his gleaming brown eyes. His eyes wandered all over her face, but couldn't seem to find a better place than her lips to settle. The lips curved into a smug grin and she leaned forward, pressing her forehead to his.
“You can kiss me back, if you'd like,” she said, and he could feel her pulse where her neck touched his shoulder. It was racing almost as fast as his was. And then he nodded and kissed her again, and this time he didn't think about the wetness of her lips, only of the full shape of them and the exhilaration it brought to him. He suddenly realized that what the boy wanted on the bench outside the park wasn't as horrible as it had once seemed, but he didn't allow himself to dwell on that. He kissed the mouth of Mirriam Brown over and over again, only vaguely aware of Lisa Loeb's song weaving itself around him triumphantly, his own clarinet fiasco of a song swirling about with it. And then, just as it had suddenly happened, it was over. His breath came heavily to him, and hers poured warmly into his neck.
After awhile, her eyes opened, “I should probably get going. You know, for such a hesitant kisser, you sure are amazing at it.” She sighed and kissed him one more time as if to prove it, letting her lips linger on his as she spoke.
“Remember... to save... your program, Brandon Keim... and I'll see you tomorrow. You have my number. Call me.”
Brandon didn't know what to say. Suddenly his life had just gotten really complicated and he wasn't sure what it all meant.
“Alright,” he said lamely, taking a look out the windows, which were dark. “I'll call you.”
She smiled widely, and the sight made him smile back. He didn't realize until she left that he probably should have offered her a ride home, so he called her and apologized. She didn't answer. He sent her a text message inquiring as to how she was the next morning ans she assured him she was fine, but warned him she might be busy. He didn't realize that this meant all week. When he finally did see her again, she was cold again and her song was gone. The green gaze he'd grown so fond of so quickly avoided his brown one, and her smile only flickered to life occasionally. She took him aside after her roommates went to sleep when they watched a movie one night.
“I can't be with you, Brandon Keim.” The hand he had around her shoulder dropped. His mind fell silent. There wasn't music anywhere. Not in him, not in her roommates; nowhere. Her eyes found his again, as if they expected him to say something. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn't have been able to open his mouth. His entire face felt like lead.
“I'm leaving.”
“What?” he turned to her, tilting his head strangely.
“I found a job at Disney animating.”
He felt himself smile, “Well, that's what you've always wanted, isn't it?”
“Well, yes,” she said, but drew her eyes away, “but it's in California.”
“You really don't want to stay?”
“No,” she said, her eyes watering with doubt.
“I wish I could do something,” he said, “I wish I could come with you.”
“I know, but you can't,” she said sadly, her eyes wandering all over his face in an attempt to read its expression. “I have to be able to focus... these first two months or so are really rigorous, apparently.”
#
She never came back to GameTime Pro. Her seat sat empty and he would stare at it occasionally as he arranged things with the new Head of the Art Department. He text messaged her, but she didn't answer, except in one word answers. When he came over, she always glared a little and asked him to leave. When he called, she didn't answer and she never called back. One day, one of her roommates got a hold of her phone. When he saw it ringing, he opened it hesitantly and spoke urgently.
“Hello? Mirriam?”
“Actually, this is Amber. I just wanted to let you know that Mirriam doesn't hate you. This is her way of avoiding the pain she feels inside for leading you on and then dumping you on the side of the road like a sack of potatoes. I know that sounds lame, but I promise that's how she works. I'm sorry. My only suggestion is to stop trying to contact her for awhile. If you call her once she gets settled in Cali, she might be willing to talk.” The line went quiet for a moment, “She’s just in a state of shock right now… I think.”
#
Mirriam moved away the next day. He knew because when he stopped by her house, her car was gone. And the stickers on her window were gone. Gone. He kissed her and held her and for what? Nothing. Her song rose and twirled around him and then left him. And now the enigma returned to his life, but in a much less pleasant form. Why was there no more Mirriam Brown? He avoided the bench outside the Geoffrey P. Banks Park for a very long time. He thought of her once and a while; he really didn't have to try.

Dreamscape

Alright, so here's the deal... this is the first draft of this story, which has already been workshopped, but I haven't done any changing since, which explains confusing bits. I will post the edited version eventually.

It was in Meredith Saunders that I found my most lasting friend in college. I was at first attracted to her quick wit and quicker laughter, but as we spent more time with each other, I found there was more to her than these, her most outward traits. It was not until I left after that first semester that I realized how fond I had grown of her. It was not the kind of fond I’d ever felt for a girl. It was a lot like the fondness you might have for your sister, but I always told myself it was a bit deeper than that. Though you might have called it a crush, I refused to call it anything of the kind. We had sort of come to this nonverbal agreement that 6,000 miles was a very, very long distance, and that two and a half years was a pretty long time. Besides that, we both liked playing endlessly with possibilities, and didn’t especially like settling for one so distant just yet.

“Maybe I can meet you at the airport before you go abroad and you can stow me in your suitcase,” she said over the phone one night.

“Yes,” I replied, smiling, “and then we can run off to Madrid to be married.”

“Hmmn…” Meredith said, and laughed. “Well, I suppose we will eventually have to be wed if every male I meet keeps dropping dead so suddenly.”

Meretdith and I were both quite the jokesters. We had decided ways in which our (for all discussion purposes) necessary wedding might occur multiple times. One or the other of us often indicated laughingly that we would most likely end said event in a quick divorce. She just couldn't deal with loving the man who'd killed all other potential lovers. Having long been a “secret assassin”, I was offing all her “true” loves as soon as they had the chance to so much as speak to her. The jealousy was apparently too much for me. After disposing of the body, I would replace said object of affections with a horribly unattractive clone of some sort. To this she once said:

“Samuel, I hope for your sake that you don’t grow too jealous of yourself when I finally agree to marry you, for then our divorcement would be entirely useless.”

Our humorous future was not the only thing we made fun of or discussed in depth. We sometimes discussed superheroes and Harry Potter; religion and movie stars. We even, occasionally, spoke almost completely seriously of our current lives. Hers was all school, work, and drama; Mine was all boredom, video games, and doctor’s visits preparing me for my time abroad. I had not even bothered to secure a job, as I was planning on boarding a plane to Spain any day now. In the beginning of our summer, she had often bothered me about getting a job, but summer came and went and I went home. That was the summer of dreams.

You know, I’ve never had so-called “normal” dreams. People tell me about their nightmares and I can almost laugh as I think about my own haunting night terrors. There were dark hallways and satanic demons to defeat, soul-sucking goblins and images of death and hopeless struggles. In cases of these terrors, I almost always woke, defeated, and less ready to start a new day than the night before. Even in normal dreams, I found it hard to repeat to others the bizarre workings of my head. I once had a dream that one of my friends and I had slept together. The strangest part of the dream was that I got to school the next morning to find out that she’d had the same dream. Yeah, pretty weird, we decided. Officially freaked out, I found it hard to ever look at her quite the same. It probably didn’t help that she saw the whole thing as some sort of Manifest Destiny!

“Hey, Sam,” she would say, bounding over to me all cheerful and giggly, “are you busy tonight?”

“Well,” I’d say quite honestly, “Basically the only thing on my schedule is sleep… eventually.”

She smiled in a smug, self-assured sort of way. “Well, that’s kinda what I was hoping you’d do. Can I join you?”

Now, I make it a habit to appear as vain and flirtatious as possible in front of the women folk of the world, but when they try so bluntly to seduce me into submission, I can’t help but shudder a bit. My vanity, however, demanded to be heard.

“Well, Caroline,” I said, playing with a strand of my own chin-length hair. “I must say that I do look rather dashing in my sleep, but it might be creepy to have you watching me all night.”

That was when she laughed. I think she must’ve pondered some retort before she answered, for her eyes glimmered a bit before she consented to sleeping in her own bed.

Now Meredith Sanders had been known to my subconscious quite long enough that summer for her to have had a few cameo appearances in my dreams, but she hadn't really had a starring role as many of my female friends often have. It seemed, however, that the frequency in which I appeared in her dreams was surprisingly high.

“I had a kissing dream last night,” she said after the first of these dreams, her voice a bit shy and distant. It got that way when she was about to admit something slightly embarrassing.

“Oh yeah?” I asked, all nonchalance and ignorance.

“Well,” she said, giggling a bit, “I’ve never had a kissing dream before! I had just kinda figured that you don’t dream about stuff you’ve never experienced or something….”

“That doesn’t really make sense,” I interrupted, thinking of some dreams I’d had recently.

“That’s not really the point, Samuel,” she said, slight irritation coloring her tone, “The point is that I had a kissing dream! Well, that and the fact that I have no idea who I kissed.”

I laughed. Meredith was so odd sometimes. She went on to tell me (eventually), that the possibilities for her kissing companions were narrowed down to three eligible males. Her last two crushes were the first two possibilities. Daniel George was the first. Short, curly hair, blue eyes, brown hair, and musical talent... what more could a girl want? And Trevor Garner, hazel eyes, mousy blond hair and artistic tastes... another womanizer, though he couldn't help it. They had both appeared often enough in her dreams to affirm the possibility. As she went on, I felt sure the topic should change soon. I didn’t like any of the possibilities she’d mentioned, and I really didn’t want to find out that she was dreaming of kissing Ewan McGregor or Nick Carter. In fact, I realized, I really wouldn’t like her dreaming of kissing anyone… unless that someone was…

“…you,” she finished, and fell silent.

I wish I could say what I was actually thinking was more like “unless that someone was some way super awesome guy who might play video games with me.” Or “unless that someone was good at baseball,” but I wasn’t thinking that at all. She was completely right. Sometimes it was almost like she could read my mind. And if she was dreaming of kissing me, well let’s just say that in that moment I was strangely grateful for the thousands of miles between us. I might have kissed her just for mentioning it. After a few moments of semi-awkward silence, I decided a change of topic was most definitely in order.

“So, I've been having this weird dream lately,” I said hopefully.

“Yeah?” As she asked this, her voice had become softer, and I knew she was still distracted by her own thoughts.

“Well, you know that time in between sleep and waking..?” She made a sort of murmur in agreement. “Sometimes I can tell I'm sleeping still... and I still have dreams. This dream is like that. It also continues. And sometimes it seems so real...”

“Samuel,” Meredith said, a smile in her voice though she tried to sound firm, “get to the point. I want to know what the dream is about!”

Now, This dream I had was most strange in the fact that it was pretty tranquil. I was used to dreams that involved pain and fear and exhaustion, but this dream was so nearly real and so utterly peaceful, that I almost hated to wake from it. A wonderful scene first opened to my view: All was lush and green. Tall, willowy trees grew. I was unused to being alone in dreams. And this place... it was beautiful! Fireflies were mixed in with the leaves of the willows, which glittered gaily as I passed. No place had ever occurred in my dreams; it was too calm, too serene... too beautiful. So I wandered around. After awhile I realized I was alone. Dreams are pointless without interaction. I wanted someone with me in my dream.

At this point, I seem to have wandered around a bit more. I remember noticing the softer, glittering edges of things. It was as if someone had painted the most beautiful parts of our world and used a style that made everything different and new. It gave this world wonderment and light and a beauty which made me want to share it even more. Everything sparkled brighter for a moment as a girls' giggling rang out in the willowy woods. I followed the sound. It led me around and through the forest, gaily echoing and reverberating off trees and rocks, streams and sunshine. When at last I found her, she was surrounded by three or four red-headed boys. Her laughter had ceased, and was replaced by a look of sincerity on her face as they discussed things importantly. I can no longer remember the topic of their conversation, but it was interesting to me, so I crept quietly behind a willow and leaned casually against it.

It seemed to me a long time before I was finally noticed. I think it was the oldest one that finally noticed me. A leaf was scuffed by my cumbersome shoe, or maybe I just moved, but something made him turn around. Everyone went quiet.. Cursing silently to myself that sneakers were meant to be sneaky, I leaned around the tree and held my hands out, defenseless. The boy was coming towards me with a stick, and I wasn't having any of that. I don’t think he can have felt threatened at my presence, for while I am strong(I can lift girls heavier than me without much effort), I still appear quite… well, scrawny, but he stopped. His eyes kept switching between my dull, baggy jeans and t-shirt to his own glowing, glittering apparel. Yes, I think that the style in which our world is painted- it’s flat, dull colors –were strange to him as his glowing world was to me. And people fear what they don’t understand. We sat and stared at each other for a long time. I wasn’t about to move; I like weapons, but not when other people are holding them, and I don’t think he liked random college kids showing up in his fantasy world, either.

It was the girl who moved first and I found that she, of all things in this world glittered especially brightly. Her hair, which lay sleek down her shoulders and back, was a breathtaking shade of blond mixed in with blue and green. Her eyes, which shone like emeralds from her pale, beautiful face narrowed slightly with her approach. I was suddenly overwhelmed by her. Nothing else mattered in that instant but her, and if her partner had raised his stick up to hit me, so help me, I might have snatched it from him and bashed him to a pulp.

What… or who... are you? She asked, tilting her head.

“I explained (as modestly as possible) that I was Samuel Coy, college student extraordinaire, and that they were all just figments of my imagination. They, of course, believed none of it, and began to fire questions at me. I answered them, then asked my own question. It actually seems like in my dream, we spoke for hours,” I said. “And that’s when the strangest part happened...”

“What, did the girl suddenly throw herself on you and tell you how madly she loved foreigners with baggy t-shirts and jeans?” Meredith laughed. You know, if I didn’t know that woman better, I might have thought she was jealous.

“Psht… “ I said, dismissing her. “No! You’re skipping way too far ahead, and besides… she never admits how madly she loves me, only that she finds me ‘interesting’… whatever that means.” I paused for a moment, then continued. “No, this was the weird part: Suddenly, I got this feeling... like I could feel the futon below me and the warm air of the heating vent. I knew somehow that I was waking up, and, like... I'd have to leave soon.”

“That's kinda random, “ she said.

“You’re telling me! And then I told them I had to go, and they asked if I would come back soon, because they needed my help.”

“Sweet! So,” she said, her voice lowering a bit, as she might if there were a secret to be told, “you said it’s a continuing dream… do you know what they want yet?”

I wracked my brain for an answer to that question. More than anything at that moment, I felt the need to share this dream with Meredith. She seemed almost as interested in my dream as I was. After a moment of my brain thudding dully back at me, I realized that this part of the dream was in a thick haze.

“Yes! Well, I can’t remember what it is they need me to do, though. It seems like they were in trouble for some reason, and I was the only one that could help them.” I realized that I hadn’t told her something I felt was crucial to the dream. “And another thing… they keep telling me that I need to leave myself behind.”

Meredith’s laugh rang happily through the ear piece of my cellphone. “Well, maybe I’ve made you break some secret code you had with them. Like, maybe if you tell anyone about it, your memories start getting erased,” she said, her amused tone laced with a semi-seriousness that made me wonder while she paused for a moment. “Wait… leave yourself behind?!” Her voice was almost excited. It rose, then fell. “Do you think they mean to leave your body and go on some wicked cool adventure? ‘Cause if they do, I’d say go for it. I’d way rather go save a pretty, sparkling world than go to math tomorrow morning.” I opened my mouth to speak, but she voiced another thought. “Then again, I guess you could put yourself into a coma that way.” She laughed again. “I guess I can always tell your mother, ‘Oh, sorry, Mrs. Coy, I told your son to go on an otherworldly adventure and leave his body on the futon. Don’t worry, he’ll come back… eventually.’”

I laughed, too. “I don’t remember making any deal with them not to tell. And yeah, I’m pretty sure they want me to up and leave my body behind. Apparently, that’s the only way I can help them, so if I do go into a coma soon, I guess you’ll know why… but it’s not like I believe any of this is true.”

Meredith sighed, “It’d be cool if it was.” There was a pause as we both pondered. When she spoke again, it was quickly and excitedly. “I mean… what if it is? Do you think I could come with you? Of course, we’d have to work it out so that I was asleep at the same time as you; it seems to me it might work that way. Hey- tomorrow is my short day. If I got out at 1 pm and took my nap when I got home, it’d be… 4 am there. You should be sleeping by then, right?”

I pondered the impossibility of what she said, and then I pondered the wonderfulness of said impossibility. I missed Meredith. Though I couldn’t quite define why, or what exactly she meant to me, I could say that much. I’d pondered the $1,500 plane ticket to her little town multiple times. I’d pondered flying her to see me, or both of us flying to some in between destination to meet up and chill for a few. But this option, impossible as it was, opened a beautiful world of laughter and smiles before my eyes. I embraced it, took a breath, and then put on my most rational of voices.

“Well, Meredith Sanders, I will be asleep… but none of this is real, you know.” I paused, listening to the lack of response on the other line. My voice returned to its teasing normalcy. “We’ll be playing with fate and dream worlds and all sorts of unfathomable things like that.”

“I like fate,” she said, and I heard the smile and the hope in her voice. It was almost like listening to a child talk about her Christmas presents. “Let’s tempt her as much as we can, while we still can. You’ll be miles away without cell service or Myspace access for two years, Samuel Coy. The least we can do is mess around in fairy tales while you’re still here.”

I smiled.

“I suppose you’re right, Mer.”

“So... tomorrow at 1-ish?” Her voice was again hopeful. She may just as well have been saying, “And Santa Clause comes when I'm sleeping?! And he brings toys?”

“Yeah... I guess so.”

“I'm so excited.”

And we said goodbye.

After four o'clock that evening, I felt considerably anxious about going to sleep later. Meredith would be in bed now, so where would the harm be in sleeping now? Unfortunately, however, my mother had plans for me, and so, as I went to bed finally at eleven, I quickly did the math in my head and realized it was now Meredith's 8 am. She was at work by now. As I pondered the feat we were about to attempt, I felt at first greatly discouraged, and then enthralled by the futility of it all. Again and again my mind voiced to me that there was no way our plan might work. Again I tried to muster up some hope, but I found when I fell finally into dreams, that the discouraging voice won out. I did not even dream of my fair-faced friend. Meredith was absent from my dreams at all. I dreamt of futile wars in the middle east- of guns and bombs and broken things.

When I awoke, a cold wash of disappointment came over me. I took it in stride. Meredith didn't call me that night. I called her, but the line was busy. When I finally reached her a few days later, she mentioned the lack of adventure only briefly.

“Well, Samuel Coy... I'm glad to know that you aren't in a coma. Amanda and I were starting to wonder, since you hadn't called lately.”

“I've been busy.” And indeed I had been. Since I was leaving so soon, my mother had me doing all sorts of random visits to relatives. “And I just felt kinda weird calling you up at my Aunt's house, you know...”

She laughed. “Like that's any excuse. So, how've you been?”

We didn't talk about the dream again that night. A month passed, and I still hadn't had the dream again, and still, she didn't bring it up. She brought up a dream she'd had since she started rereading Harry Potter in which we were the heroes saving him from a sinister Lord Voldemort. She even told me that I'd held her hand as we ran through the corridors of Hogwarts. She couldn't keep up with me through the winding halls, so I'd taken her hand, hoping somehow to get there in time to save Mr. Potter before he died from loss of blood. Apparently, Voldemort had resorted to petty muggle torture for a change. I told her about my strange dreams of kidnappings in Iraq, and how the strangest one yet was of my own kidnapping. She said that if she could be in this dream, she'd definitely save me. That was when I admitted that I'd much rather do the saving.

“Knight in shining armor,” I'd said, in my most joking voice, “here to save the Lady Meredith from a bloodthirsty dragon... you know, the usual.”

After awhile, it began to bother me that I hadn't had the dream again. I felt somehow jipped. Like I had bought an amazing video game at an amazing price, only to find halfway through that it was a demo. Agitated, I began to try to continue the dream. If there is one thing I should have learned by then, it was that I shouldn't ask for things like dreams to obey my every whim. The glittering world of my dream was always just out of reach, defying me with it's stubborn beauty and sparkling magic. My dreams instead became darker again. I refused to talk about them to Meredith, whose fascination with dreams was bound to get her in trouble. My dreams were, in general, something no one should delve into.

Meredith asked after my greenish-blond haired woman and her red-haired companions a few times, but I truthfully explained that they had not reappeared. Her voice always turned melancholy when she accepted this, and she finally stopped asking just before I left for Spain. Having finally given up on my dream, I was surprised when three months into my time abroad, it came back to me.

As the dream opened, it seemed as if the stress of travel was left behind me. I was content in this place, as I had been before. Perhaps it was this sense of strength and carelessness that caused the green-blond woman to come so near to me so suddenly, for she had never touched me before, and now she took my hand and smiled widely. It was cold and all at once thrilling.

“Samuel,” she said, her golden eyes lighting with excitement, “I am so glad you have finally returned! We have been so worried... come, we have much to show you...”

“But I can't come with you,” I said, meeting her gaze suspiciously. Sierra, for I remembered now that this was her name, had in the most recent of my dreams(and how very long ago that was) told me of how interesting she found me, and since those first dreams, Richard, who had once held her hand as she now did mine, had grown away from me. I could see now that his eyes narrowed perceptibly upon finding her fingers intertwined with mine.

“Oh, but you can now,” she said, smiling widely, “you've left yourself”.

“I did what?” I never quite understood what was meant by “leaving myself,” so I was even more confused by the fact that I'd done it so easily, and without even trying! She opened her mouth to speak, but I interrupted. “Wait... so what does that mean?”

Sierra's eyes widened slightly. Her companion, whose name was Richard, laughed.“It means,” he said, “that you've left your body behind. And it means that Meredith has come as well.”

Meredith was there. But how did he know? And how did I know? I looked around, but I couldn't see her. In the glittering trees, no Meredith; in the sparkling lake, no Meredith. If I knew she was here then she must be! Our plan, however weak it may have been so many months ago, had finally worked. It was my guess that she was still wandering about in the forest, so I strode off in that direction. Something stopped me. It was cold, and it sent strange sparks through my skin. I turned. Those radiant green eyes pierced me through like a knife. Sierra stood there, her billowing lavender gown reflecting her anger. She'd never touched me before today... no one ever had. They had always insisted on keeping their distance. And now her touch was so electrifying to my warm, human skin. And there was something very urgent in her touch, and in the flaring anger of her eyes.

“Samuel Coy,” she said, the green flames of her eyes narrowing in disappointment. “You must save her.”

After that intense moment of her eyes gazing like darts in my eyeballs, I thought for sure that she had changed her mind about her lack of interest in me. It took a long moment for my brain to finally decipher what it was she was talking about. And then, like a cardinal's red head peeping up through the fog, I remembered Meredith. And I remembered that Meredith was real. And that this woman was fake. The cold, funny tingling feeling on my skin left. She sighed, obviously picking up on the expression of very vague comprehension covering my face.

“She has indeed entered the Dreamstate, but that doesn't mean she's safe here,” Sierra said, her voice a bit condescending. That only bothered me for about a minute, because I realized she was telling me what I needed to know. “Meredith enters her dreams as a way to find herself. You've entered this one to loose yourself.”

“I still don't know what that...”

“She is there,” Sierra pointed. Suddenly, it seemed to me, a huge mountain range appeared above the treetops. Just before them a tall menacing tower worthy of Mary Shelly spearfished into thunderheads of a dark disposition.

Before I was thinking properly and before the dreamy maiden had the opportunity to continue, I felt my feet dashing beneath me. I was no longer controlling my every action. In fact, it was not until the trees began lashing my face that I realized I had moved at all. It is in dreams that such strangeness blossoms into being. There was no wind that rushed past my face, and no thorny branches to bar my movement along the unseen path before me. In fact, I realized as my feet carried me to the base of the black tower, there wasn't even a dragon guarding the keep. Still moving, I thought of knights in shining armor and valiant steeds, falling beneath flame and elephantine dragon feet. How unfitting that I should save the Lady Meredith from nothing but Frankenstein's empty tower. And still I had not seen her. The walls themselves glittered in this place, the only place in which such glittering could still be menacing and forbidding.

After many flights of circular stairs, I reached a door. I turned the knob. It had, of course occurred to me that such a knob should be locked. For why was Meredith in a tower, if not for me to save her from it's menacing walls? And why should whatever ghoul or goblin, witch or sorcerer, leave the door to his beautiful prisoner's room open? In fact, it still made more sense to me that I should have been stopped at the bottom of the tower by a dragon, or else by the lack of a door on said tower. In which cases, I might have climbed Meredith's sudden yards and yards of hair or else slay the foul-smelling dragon. The door opened.

The room was entirely too huge to fit in the space allowed by the tower's physical appearance. It's floor was covered with an old tapestry, which seemed to have lost it's glitter somewhere in the process of being torn to bits. Beneath it, something gleamed dully in the dust. The panes in the windows were broken, too, and glass sparkled on the shreds of tapestry. There were open wardrobes and chests full of glittering clothes, and a whole shelf of pretty porcelain masks, some cracked and some shattered completely. Their gruesomely exaggerated expressions were shadowed by a large baroque suit of armor, rusting in all the wrong places. As my eyes swept to the other side of the room, I took a step inward. The door was closed behind me. I turned. A wrinkled woman stood there smiling prettily. In the shadows, a bulk of a silhouette squirmed for a moment. The woman's face split in a cruel grin.

“You,” she said, her voice a venomous whisper. “You of all people! You come waltzing into here day and night like you own the place. Things like this are not to be stolen away whenever you wish. It's the kind of thing you must slowly win over... and you cheated. You cheated!! And look what you've done to the place!”

I took a few steps backward as the wacky old woman spoke, and as if to prove her point, I ran into a table. Several large, boring looking books fell to the ground with a crash. Funny that they should fall so easily, when they looked so heavy. The old woman laughed, and her cruel, ice-colored eyes twinkled in a disturbingly cheerful way. She did not glitter.

“There must be some misunderstanding,” I said as I leaned over to replace the books onto the table. Why I left myself so vulnerable is anyone's guess, but I kept my eyes on her, and she only watched in amusement.

“Oh, there is no misunderstanding,” the hag said, bitterness seeming to ooze from every word. The body in the shadows made muffled noises. “I know you, Samuel Coy. And there was nothing wrong with you as long as you just observed us and made us all laugh. Then one day, it was gone. She'd given it to you like some chess piece to be played and discarded!”

I laughed. What an idiotic thing to do in front of such a menacing old woman. Though I'd never seen magic used here, this woman just reeked of witch. But still I laughed. “I really am sorry that you think I've stolen this something... and that you think I've ruined your beautiful room, but I swear to you--- I've never in my life seen this place, and I certainly don't have whatever it is you think I've got!”

I was surprised to hear the shadowy mass laugh. The fact that that mass might be Meredith had indeed occurred to my sleeping mind, but I knew there were few ways to get past this witch, and I wasn't about to try dashing past her. Besides, there was something very familiar about this woman.

“Hold on,” the old woman said, glaring in my direction, and walked over to the lump. There were words exchanged, though I did not understand them. The mass of Meredith struggled against whatever held her there, then stopped again.

The witch returned, a tiny cracked chest in her hand. She opened it.

“It's empty,” I said.

The witch's slippery grin reappeared. “And I wonder,” she said, in a tone that made me feel like the three-year-old who broke the expensive vase, “what used to belong here?”

I looked over to the lump of Meredith, and tried to think of all the things she'd ever given me. All I could remember was a copy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. What could she possibly have given me that apparently belonged to this woman as well? The woman's eyes shot to my left pocket, which now seemed suddenly heavier. I was ashamed to think that my dream would betray me in such a way. Sighing, I reached into my pocket. The sensation that greeted my hesitant fingertips was invigorating. Warmth spread from my fingertips, up my elbow, into my chest, legs, feet and nose. It was a joyful, buzzing feeling. I felt it spread across my face in an array of color. And then I knew what it was. I pulled it from my pocket.

“What are you doing?” the old woman asked, her eyes widening a bit.

“I found it,” I said, smiling. “Do you want it back, Meredith?”

The mass in the shadows made murmurs of disagreement. The old woman's face, however, took on a strange expression. I found in it disbelief and some other less negative emotion, for the icy edge to her eyes melted a bit. Her mouth agape, she shook her head. I watched as she reached out, cupped my hands in hers, and pulled something from her own pocket. It shone brightly, just as I'd expected mine to, and had thus left it covered. A star. But this small piece of star in the haggard old woman's hand was not as warm as Meredith's, but, looking up at me with repentant eyes, she left her star hovering beside my hand.

With a nod of her head, the star rose towards the ceiling and sparkled twice. My hand was suddenly burning. Instinct made me pull my hands apart. I squinted as Meredith's star joined the old woman's in a blaze of heat. Exactly identical in size, they differed only in color. Meredith's shone in rainbows of colors, which I could only see safely with closed lids. The other star was a weak blue. Smiling sadly at me, the old woman turned and left the room as the two stars swirled around each other on the ceiling.

The lights suddenly became bearable, and I opened my eyes. Meredith stood slowly, apparently freed. There were no longer any shadows in the room. Everything glittered again. The tapestry had been completely blown away, to reveal the beautiful arabesques on the flowered carpet. The room looked as if in the three seconds my eyes had been closed, it'd received a complete makeover. A chandelier hung shimmering from the ceiling, casting rainbows on all the walls. All but two of the masks had vanished, and even these looked ready for abandonment. The books lay on the floor again, but Meredith picked them up and placed them back on the desk, her face drawn into a very strange expression, indeed.

“Sam,” she said, and something in my chest wriggled at the sound of her voice. “You can have it.”

The star swam back to me, rainbow and blue sparkles of light and hope and all things Meredith cherished. I welcomed it into my hand, then tucked it into my pocket with a faithful pat. The strange warmth and joy had me all in a haze. The next thing I remembered, we were back in the clearing. I felt sure that the dream had taken over again, and was surprised to see Meredith so close to me, her hazy brown eyes a wonderful contrast to the glittering style of the Dreamstate. It was then that I felt her hand in mine, and I was surprised to see that this did not bother either of us. At once, I could suddenly feel the dream slipping from me. She dropped my hand and hugged me. She was so warm. And then she slipped away with the rest of the dream.

* * *

The months that followed were much more difficult. I tried to write Meredith about the dream, to see if she'd had it, too. I tried to make sense of the old woman and the stars and of the lack of dragons. Most of all, I tried to make sense of her hand in mine. But I could not get it down in words. At least... not in any way that might make sense if she hadn't also had the dream. And so I didn't write her. I did get a letter a month later, however. In it, Meredith's green ink wrote of all the normal topics like school, work, and in-depth education classes, but it also made mention of a dream she'd had. All she could remember, she said, were stars, rainbows, and that I was in it. Three months later, I described the dream in its entirety to her. She just took it all in, nodded, and lay her head in my lap. She'd always liked me to play with her hair, but that night, her eyes were distant. I ran my fingertips from the roots to the ends... and then again. She closed her eyes.