Charlie~~

I arrive on Nora's porch with her shirt from last night folded in my hands. Tucked on top is the rose I gave her.

She opens the door, my own shirt in hand. I pass Nora her shirt and flower, and she tries to give me my shirt, but I tell her to hold onto it for now since I don't want to show up to a restaurant with two shirts.

We take the subway to one station over to get to the café—keeping us still in the outskirts of Somnia. I come here often. The café is one place I can go when I want to avoid any and all family.

It's painted blue with a teal tiled roof. Tables are set outside, every chair filled. Thankfully, there are still tables available inside.

Once we're seated, I bring up her friend she went to see last night, asking if she's all right.

Nora shifts in her seat and reaches for her menu. "Yeah, I think so."

"Is she friends with Tye as well?"

"Are you in the market for friends?"

"You only ever mentioned Tye." He shrugs. "It's weird to imagine you with other dreamers—normal dreamers.

"I do have a life outside of you and Tye, just as you do."

The waitress makes her way toward us from across the room.

"You could have fooled me."

Her eyes narrow before she realizes I'm teasing her, and she bites her lip, trying to hide her smile as she shakes her head.

*****

"So this is your third menagerie." Nora dips her bare hands into the snow. "It's breathtaking." She holds the powder up to her eyes, examining the snowflakes. "And definitely cold." Dropping the snow, she shakes off her hands.

"Have you ever seen real snow?"

"Yeah. Yours feels real."

"It's the same that falls in Somnia during the winter."

She stares up at the slope, wrapping her arms around herself. She must be freezing in her short sleeves, her arms bared to the cold. "I suppose I'll have lots of opportunities to witness it. Even though it looks and feels like snow, I know it's not the real thing. Would it be better to accept this world, give up my memories if I could so I can stop missing everyone and thing I've left behind? Was I wrong to convince Tye this world isn't real?"

"You told Tye?"

"I thought he needed to know he's a prisoner—to give him some sort of control, to know that Radia didn't abandon him. Maybe I should have been letting Tye convince me I was losing it for thinking this isn't reality."

"I could give Tye his memories back, though hearing you now, it's probably a horrible idea."

She turns to face me. "You'd do that?"

"I wouldn't just do it. He'd have to tell me it's what he wants. He deserves some sort of control over who he is."

"But your dad . . ."

"He'd hardly care." To him Tye is simply another average dreamer.

The woman with red hair walks between us, headed inside the lodge. My eyes follow her as Nora comes toward me, boots—not made for snow—crunching in the powder.

"Who is she?" Nora inclines her head to the woman as she opens the lodge's door.

"My mother." A lump forms in my throat. I swallow it down. "I didn't mean for her to be in any of my menageries, but my subconscious must not be able to let her go because it chose her face three times when I created the people for my menageries. She's the only duplicate."

"Your dad said she escaped. Why was she in the dream?"

"He thought it would keep her safe."

Nora shivers and not, I think, from my words.

"Let's go inside."

The lodge is warm—toasty even, and I tell her to have a seat on the couch in front of the fireplace while I grab her a mug of hot chocolate.

The bartender talks to two skiers, and I stay out of his way, taking a ceramic mug from underneath the counter.

I've never been able to determine if seeing my mother in my menageries is painful or if it helps me feel closer or farther away from her. I'll never see her again, and as far as I know, Dad has no idea where in the world she's chosen to hide.

I return to Nora, who's conjured a blanket that she's wrapped herself up in. She frees her hands to accept the mug.

"Thanks."

I sit down beside her, and a blanket appears in my lap.

Nora holds the mug up to her mouth, her nostrils flaring as she smells it. She looks at me from the corner of her eye. "Thank you." She smiles and blows on the hot chocolate. "How did she escape?"

"A friend outside the dream woke her up. She'd been asleep for a year so she had to be injected with an em-pen so she could walk. Otherwise she probably would have been caught before she could escape."

Nora looks confused, and I explain what an em-pen is.

"I never got to speak with her while she was in the dream that year. I was six. My dad would let me visit her bed though, and I'd speak to her. She had a room to herself, so it was easier to get her out of the facility."

Lines crease Nora's forehead. "If you were free, would you try finding her?"

"I'd never be able to. I'm sure she's hidden herself well, terrified my dad will find her. It doesn't even feel like she's out there to me. I was so young that now—at least in my heart—it feels like she's dead."

Nora sets her mug on the ground and twists toward me, pulling her knees up under her while the blanket falls down to her lap. She places a hand on my thigh just above my knee and her other on my arm.

"Escape, Charlie. You deserve to explore the world, to experience actual snow. If you stay here, your dad will use you for the rest of your life. You deserve to have people who care about you and not what you can do."

"Escape? I'm not allowed outside the building. Everyone who works there knows that."

"Then you need a distraction."

"Like what? No one's going to help me escape."

"Shut down the dream."

I recoil, and her hands fall away.

"You think I know how to do that?"

Leaning back, she grimaces. "Wake the master dreamer, and everyone wakes up."

"I can't waltz in and wake him up." Her dad. "My dad's tightened security since my mom escaped."

"We wake him from here, within the dream. From your headquarters."

I know the room that would house the program that would wake him up. It has fabricated reality though. I know it's possible to dismantle it, but I don't know how to get into the program to wake him up.

What concerns me though is that Nora has any knowledge of this.

"It's not right to wake everyone up."

"Not right to your dad?"

"To them. There are dreamers here who have been asleep for over eighty years. Their families and friends from outside are dead. They've built lives in Somnia. How are they going to feel when all their memories come back only for them to find their family dead and that the life they know wasn't as real as they thought?"

"They deserve a choice like you said about Tye. If they want to go back to sleep then they can. But we all deserve a choice."

"And what about the master dreamer? Doesn't he deserve the chance to go free? And someone has to be the master dreamer for anyone to go back to Somnia." I rest my face in my hands. "There's no easy way out, Nora."

The couch shifts, and her fingers peel my hands away from my face, revealing her crouched in front of me. "If you—if we stay, your father will separate you from your children like he did to you and your mother."

"He'll . . . he'll take them from you as well."

She nods, her face tender now. "Maybe there's another answer to the master dreamer issue, but"—her hand comes up and her fingers brush over my forehead, pushing aside my hair; I hardly dare to breath, so focused on her fingertips gliding against my skin—"think about yourself."

"Nora . . ."

Her fingers slip down my cheek. "Let's control our own lives."

My throat is dry. I wet my lips, and Nora's eyes seem to focus on them. "I know the room in the headquarters. I don't know how to wake him though."

Nora pulls her hand away but remains crouched in front of me. "Raymond. He knows how."

"Raymond?" I bite back a curse. Dad should have known tormenting that man would come back to bite him in the butt.

"He spoke to me after we had our . . . erm . . . encounter."

"You've been trying to escape this whole time?"

She tilts her head side to side as if to say more or less.

"You realize that if my dad were to catch us, we'd never have any say in our lives again? He could alter our memories, and I don't know what that means for us as Lucid."

"I've been willing to take that risk. Are you—to get everything you want?"

A choice. A chance to never have to turn another Lucid in. But I can never fully be free. I'll have to come back to this dream to get rest at night. But it may not be too late for her, she might not be dependent on the dream yet. She might not be plagued by nightmares. If I could get her out to save her from being the next master dreamer, from having my children, that would be enough for me.

"All right."

"You mean it?"

I place my hand over her cheek, and she cups it with her own. "I'm guessing we'll need to set up a meeting with Raymond?"

"You know how to contact him?"

I laugh. "I can contact anyone."

She stares at me, her mouth parted just slightly.

I brush my thumb along her cheek. "What is it?"

"You—" She shakes her head, our hands falling away. "It's nothing." A dazzling smile spreads across her face, and she wraps her arms around my neck, her body pressing against mine. "Thank you."

Hesitating, my hands hover over her back. "You don't need to thank me."

"Yes, I do." Her arms tighten around me, and that's all the encouragement I need to wrap mine around her and pull her tighter against me. Her heart beats against my chest, and her hair is soft against my face. "You're giving me a chance to see my family again. You're giving me a choice, Charlie, when I had none." She leans back, her face less than an inch from mine. Her eyes drop down. "I . . ."

All it would take is a shift from one of us, and that gap would close. It was only last night that I pressed my lips to her cheek. It was only last night that I said neither of us wanted any sort of intimacy, when she said we should delay it as long as possible.

"We should get in contact with Raymond," she says.

"We should."

Neither of us move. Her heart still thuds against my chest.

If I were to kiss her, what would happen if she kissed me back? Would everything change? Would I want to stop? Or would it be the most natural thing?

Nora makes the decision for the both of us by letting go of my neck, and I'm reluctant as I let my arms fall from her back. Standing, she doesn't look at me. "Charlie?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't let me regret trusting you. Please."

I reach out for her hand, but at the last moment let my arm fall back to the couch. "I'm on your side, Nora. No matter what happens."

"At least until your dad alters our memories?"

"Until then."

Just imagine me sitting in the corner of the lodge with a hot chocolate in hand watching them.