Nocturn Core (Abridged)

I was reading The Law of Nines in the commons. A guy sitting next to me reached over and turned the page as I was about to finish it. I figured he had been reading along and wanted to continue without me. With a brief glance in his direction, I turned back to the previous page. I made a point of taking a slow drink from my glass of water to show him that I wasn’t going to speed read for his satisfaction. He turned the page again. This time, I glared at him. It was Absence. As usual, his hair was white, but it was shorter. He had his own copy of The Law of Nines, but he was much further in the book than me. I made sure my glass was almost empty before spilling the water all over his copy of the book.

I set the glass down and rose from my chair. There was no need to worry about what he might do to my book. I was only dreaming, after all. I left my backpack on the floor. I took the quickest path outside – straight back to a garden. I realized I still had the book and dropped it right there. Bringing it would just get in my way. Once I was outside, I looked up at the open sky. Smiling, I took flight. The walls narrowed near the roof of the building, so I had to turn my body to fit through. To my surprise, I looked over my shoulder and saw a library on top of the campus center. Weird. I flew further up, kicking off walls to better navigate what quickly became a maze of black metal. It looked like another bizarre architecture project. I wanted to find a portal to the Monolith Gardens. If I was lucky, I might even meet up with WritersCube! I saw an old furnace inside the third floor, but I realized making that into a portal wasn’t going to be as easy as finding a preexisting one. I was sure a portal would turn up if I kept searching.

The fourth floor was a GameStop. I saw the sun rising on a TV and focused my attention on that. I remotely paused the video when the sun was clear of the horizon. It began to glow white. Since I proved to myself in my last lucid dream that I could easily pass through glass quite easily, I ran headfirst into the TV screen. The sun portal widened as I approached and engulfed me. I fell through it with no more sensation than an internal shift in my weight. I pictured huge trees in that brief moment between entering the portal and appearing on the other side. Instead of reaching the Monolith Gardens, I found myself back at the open window through which I entered the fourth floor. I hit the ground running and picked up still more speed. This time, as I fell through the glowing, pulsating sun portal again, I summoned a vivid picture of the Monolith Gardens in my mind. It still didn’t take me there; it just dumped me into emptiness. I frowned.

I waited for the dream to come back, but after a while, I was sure I was awake in bed. I went back to sleep, intending to do better next time.