Year One: Dreamers

by Cara Wylde

  I shook my head at how insane that theory sounded. It couldn’t be true. I touched my temple, and I noticed that my fingers were trembling. My pulse thudded in my head. Underneath my feet, I could swear the foreign symbols had started moving. I looked up at the tower, and I decided to go around it. I needed to find the plant. I walked and walked, but every time I checked my surroundings, I seemed to be in the same place. It was either that the tower looked the same from all angles, or… It doesn’t make any sense. It has to end. Was I going in circles?

  I decided to try and walk away from it instead of around it. All I managed to do was end up back in the jungle. No. The flower doesn’t grow in the jungle. I went back on the stone platform. The same trees growing through the cracks, the same symbols shifting as I stepped on them. The black tower was ever-present, ever-vigilant. This thought creeped into my head… It was watching me. The tower had eyes, and it was studying my every move, trying to learn about me, about my species. The black stone I walked on didn’t know what I was. It was trying to determine my provenance. It was alive.

  The story is true. It’s not my overactive imagination. It’s true. This… this is a living being I’m walking on.

  I remembered Aunt Katia’s words: “A world where nothing is born, and nothing dies. Unbridled existence.”

  I looked up at the tower, squinting my eyes to try and see where it ended. Its pointed peak seemed to penetrate the clouds.

  Should I try to communicate with it?

  As the symbols moved faster under my feet, I wondered whether it was already trying to communicate with me.

  Thunder. The clouds turned black. No lightning. No rain, either. Just thunder, and it made me think of an Ancient Roman cornicen sounding the horn to announce his general. Soon enough, the ground shook, and I braced myself for an earthquake of unimaginable magnitude. Thunder again, and from the ocean, something emerged. I couldn’t see from where I stood, so far inland, but I could feel it. I could feel its massive size, the water running down its body of scales and tentacles. And I should have run. I knew it, deep in my heart. I should have closed my eyes, counted to five, and willed myself to jump to the point of neutrality. Yet, I stood there. I waited. My eyes were wide, and I found myself unable to blink. My ears rang with sounds I’d never heard before, sounds that came from the depths. Impossible to describe, impossible to reproduce. I was sure that if I didn’t leave right then, my ears would start bleeding. Instead of jumping away, I lowered myself to my knees. I bowed my head, and as I did, I couldn’t tell why I was doing it, or whether it was by my own choice. Maybe I didn’t want to see the thing rising from the ocean. Maybe I wanted to commit the symbols in the black stone to memory. My palms spread over them, my fingers digging into their shallow lines, trying to stop them from moving. The ground shook again, and the tremor entered my body through my palms, traveled up my arms, then down my chest, straight to my core.

  Still, I couldn’t blink. And tears started running down my cheeks.

  I need to go back. But I couldn’t focus. Not on the point of neutrality, and not on my home dimension. I can’t lose myself. I can’t leave a piece of my soul here. I need to go back. That thing had emerged completely from the ocean and was now moving toward the beach. Its every step made the ground shake harder. I felt the earthquake in my heart, in my bones, in my spinal fluid. I was the earthquake. I was the thing. I was the stone under my palms. I was the symbols… I was the tower and the platform… I was…

  A feather-like touch on my arm. I stared at my wrist, where it started, and my wide-open eyes followed it to the hollow of my elbow. And back down again. A feather-like touch that felt so… familiar. It made me think of… a guardian.

  My lips. A kiss pressed to my lips, and it took me by surprise. I moved a trembling hand to my mouth, pushing my fingers into the plump flesh of my lips. It felt real. More real than this dimension. Another kiss, and I finally closed my eyes with a sigh. The world spun with me, the thunder faded in the distance, and the presence of the creature leaving the oceans peeled off my cells.

  I was free again.

  I was in his arms.

  I opened my eyes.

  * * *

  “Oh my God, I thought I’d lost you!”

  Adrian hovered over me. He wasn’t in his armchair anymore, he’d lied down next to me, in bed, and his hands were all over my face, my arms, my neck, in my hair… I moaned and tried to move, but I couldn’t. Thanks to the damned sleeping pills, my body was trapped in sleep paralysis. I struggled to move my lips, make my vocal cords work, so I could tell him that I was fine. I’d made it back. I was fine, I was good, he didn’t have to worry about me. I hadn’t found the flower, though, and now his daughter would suffer because of me.

  Nothing functioned. Not my body, not my voice… Only my eyelids. I could blink. But I didn’t want to, because if I did, then in that tiny fraction of a second, I wouldn’t see him, Adrian, and there was the terrifying danger that I would see the creature instead. The thing that had emerged from the depths of the ocean. I could still feel it inside me. Not in a sexual way. It was more like… it had penetrated my organs with the intention of living in them for eternity.

  I needed to move. I needed to make this stupid body acknowledge that my consciousness was back and that I wasn’t asleep anymore.

  “Are you alright? Say something, Yolanda.” He brushed my hair with his fingers. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help you. You have to tell me. Please, tell me.”

  I pushed harder. Oh, so much harder! Harder than ever, and finally, my voice cooperated.

  “Touch me,” I croaked out. I knew I didn’t sound sexy, but it was all I could manage. “Kiss me. Take me. I… I need you. Please…”

  I wouldn’t have begged, but it was true. I needed him to fill me with his presence, so that I couldn’t feel the creature’s presence anymore. I needed his cock inside me, and I needed his seed. I needed him to imprint himself in every cell of my body, so his essence would flush away the black stone, the symbols, the thunder, the earthquake.

  “Yolanda,” he whispered.

  And that was when I knew he’d wanted the same thing all along.

  I couldn’t move, so he had to move for the both of us. He had to take control. All I could do was to encourage him through little moans and whimpers. He pulled the blanket off my body and climbed on top of me. Looking me straight in the eyes, he sneaked his big, warm hands under my sweater and brushed my sides.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I can’t… You have to…”

  “You can’t move?”

  I blinked once. Even speaking was hard. Never in my life had I experienced such brutal sleep paralysis.

  He didn’t break eye contact as he pushed my sweater up, revealing my stomach, and then my breasts. I wasn’t wearing a bra. My nipples hardened at the chilly air in the room. He didn’t look at my breasts as he cupped them. He kept staring deep into my eyes, and I realized that he was giving me exactly what I’d always wanted: he proved that he saw me. I wasn’t just a body he could take pleasure from. I was Yolanda, and he saw Yolanda. He pulled the sweater over my head, guiding my heavy, unresponsive arms out of the sleeves. My yoga pants were next. He expertly rolled them down my legs, along with my lace panties. I was naked underneath him, my skin flushed and slightly prickled. Finally, his eyes traveled down to take me in, inch by delicious inch. As he looked at my breasts, at my flat stomach, at the soft blond hair between my legs, I could feel his desire. His heart beat, and my own heart matched its pace. His erection throbbed in his jeans, and my core dripped with need. He didn’t remove his clothes. He unzipped his fly, pulled out his thick, long cock, and descended upon me with a hunger I’d had no idea we’d both shared all this time. His body covered mine, and I sighed. He was so heavy, so strong, so real. He could bring me back. I knew he was the only one who could convince my body to allow my spirit to inhabit it. I could feel everything, and it was so
frustrating that I was unable to respond.

  He pushed himself inside me. My eyes widened at the near impossible stretch. It had been too long…

  “Are you okay? Am I hurting you?”

  “N-no…”

  “Yolanda, I would never do anything to hurt you.” He kissed my lips with such passion that I soon noticed I’d started to move my own lips against his. My body was coming back online. Little by little, but at least this was progress.

  He pulled all the way out, until only the engorged head was in, then slammed back inside me, his sheer force pushing my body up on the bed. He bit my lower lip and thrust again and again, until he built a steady rhythm. I needed him to go faster and harder. I moaned, screamed, and begged. He sat up slightly and slipped both hands underneath my hips to lift me up and angle me just right. I hated that he’d kept his T-shirt on. I wanted to see his body, I wanted his sweat to mix with mine. He fucked me hard, going deeper with each thrust. When his cock pushed against my cervix, I screamed in ecstasy. It was a delicious, sinful mixture of pain and pleasure. “Do that again. Please. Deeper.”

  I realized I could move my legs, and I hooked my right leg around his waist. My arms were still not cooperating, but when they would, the first thing I wanted to do was to remove that damned shirt. This time, he went deeper than ever. I screamed, and it was a good thing the MDC tower was empty, otherwise I’d have become the talk of the Academy. And the weirdest detail? Not one of the students could’ve claimed to have fucked me into oblivion.

  Adrian picked up the pace. His cock felt amazing inside me. My pussy stretched to welcome it and clenched around it as it rammed in and out. I felt a familiar tension gathering in my core. He was abusing just the right spot, and he was about to throw me over the edge. He sensed that I was close, and one of his hands let go of my hips to come between us and press against my clit. He rubbed it fast, and I couldn’t take it anymore. My eyes rolled in my head as I came all over his hand and cock.

  “Oh fuck,” he growled. He leaned over me, and I wrapped myself around him. I’d even forgotten about the shirt. I pressed my breasts against his chest, my body fully alive and functioning now. He came deep inside me, and I came with him a second time, because the sensation was just too intense, too intoxicating to resist. He collapsed on top of me, and I hugged him closer, wanting to feel every inch of him. I needed his body to cover mine, I needed to feel dominated and owned.

  We stayed like that for what felt like forever. Neither of us wanted to move. His seed was deep within me, and his cock was still hard. I loved how he filled me with such ease.

  “I didn’t get the flower,” I eventually whispered. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t find it.”

  “I know. It doesn’t matter. You’re here.”

  “I will try again.”

  He was silent for a long while, and I was ashamed to admit that I kind of hoped he would say “no”. I kind of hoped he would want to stop me from attempting something so dangerous ever again.

  “Okay,” he said, instead. “I will be here to pull you out.”

  And that was almost as good, so… I clung to him harder.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The last week of winter break went by in the blink of an eye. I didn’t try the jump again. I guessed I needed time to recover. The relationship between Adrian and I had become quite tense after the night we spent together, and when classes started again and all the students returned, things got even more awkward. I couldn’t blame him. He was my professor, and I was his student. And I thought he couldn’t blame me, either. He had a daughter, and even though she wasn’t my age, she probably looked my age. Metaphorically speaking… At this point, age wasn’t even a number anymore. It was more like an abstract concept.

  January… A cold, bleak month. My Hayley was gone, and her counterpart from the parallel universe was here instead, and she was so terribly different. My Hayley was sassy and confident. This Hayley was shy and… frankly, a bit scared. She was having trouble adapting. I tried to be her friend, and I tried to stand up for her when I noticed students bullied her, but I only seemed to make things worse. Jace Merlin and Ivor Gray seemed to be especially cruel to her. I couldn’t understand why. Was it because they’d liked the original Hayley and were considering her an impostor? Their logic – if they had any – eluded me. Either way, bullying a peer was unacceptable. Their reasons didn’t matter. Unfortunately, I was too caught up in my own things to do more for Hayley.

  Davien followed me around, while Seth did the exact opposite – he avoided me like the plague. Deep down, I believed they both felt something had changed about me. Davien tried to confront me a thousand times, and I finally gave in and had a short talk with him. It was hard not to give in when he grabbed me by the arm and spun me around like I was just a rag doll in his grip. There were people in the hallway, staring at us. I really didn’t want a scene, so I stayed calm and explained the situation to him.

  “We have nothing to talk about. Not now, not ever. I know about the bet.”

  “I know you know about the bet, Yoli! But you embarrassed me at the Yule Ball. Big time. I deserve an apology.”

  “Excuse me? You deserve an apology?” My blood boiled. I stole a glance around me and cursed under my breath when I noticed the other students just seemed to be hanging around, knowing something was about to get down. I stepped closer to him, and stuck my finger in his broad chest, poking him with every word I spat through gritted teeth. “Listen to me, you piece of shit. I don’t owe you an apology. You made a bet about who fucked me first. That was stupid, childish, and disgusting. Fortunately, it revealed exactly who you are. I will have nothing to do with you. You’re scum, okay? It blows my mind how you don’t see it! Who the fuck raised you, you sorry excuse of a… of a… I would say man, but you’re not a man.”

  “Don’t insult my mother.”

  “I’m insulting your mother? She raised you? She did a piss poor job of it.” I looked deep into his green eyes. And I could swear he took a step back when I said the next words. “You are a horrible person, Davien Krause. Never forget that.”

  I walked away. This time, he didn’t follow me. Fucking moron, asking me to apologize. I was furious! I could have choked someone on the spot. Fortunately, everyone felt my negative energy that day and skillfully avoided me. Even Hayley stayed away, and it broke my heart a little, because I felt like she really needed someone on her side, and I was just emotionally and mentally unavailable.

  Seth didn’t demand an apology. He pretended like I didn’t exist. It worked great for me, although I couldn’t help but wonder whether he might have been avoiding me because at least he was aware that what he and his buddies had done was unforgivable. Since he was no longer sitting next to me in Geography, Professor Maat was happier than ever. It was good to know someone was having a good semester two around here.

  All my encounters with Adrian were awkward. I wasn’t taking his Friday class anymore, and Professor Lovecraft was happy to have me back in his Literature class. Two PE classes a week were enough for the both of us. It was the only interaction we had, and sometimes he didn’t even look at me, other times he pretended he was trying to show me something – how to hold my scythe, how to swing, how to pivot – just to get close to me. Today was one of those days. He stepped behind me, placed his hands on mine, and guided my movements. I could feel his hot breath on the nape of my neck when he whispered in my ear: “Like this.”

  “Like that?” I breathed.

  I felt him tense up, and when he moved away like I’d just burned him, I knew he’d gotten an erection. He excused himself and left the gym. I looked after him forlornly. What if I followed him? But the second he was out, Jace and Ivor caused a huge commotion by picking on Hayley again. I wanted to step up and stop them, but Hayley fixed me with a sad gaze that begged me to stand down. Right. If I showed I was strong, she would’ve appeared weak. Why was she wearing a skirt in PE?! Okay, a lot of girls ditched their PE unif
orms for the normal ones simply because it didn’t require them to change before the next class, but I still thought it was a bad choice. Not that wearing a skirt gave any guy the right to do what Jace was currently doing to Hayley. I wondered… was it even remotely possible that these guys actually liked her, and that was why they behaved like idiots? Boys were strange…

  Hayley ran away crying, and I felt like shit. I stared Jace down.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? You used to be decent.”

  The mage shrugged. “None of your business, Yoli.”

  God, I hated it when people called me Yoli. It sounded right when people who loved me called me that, but when random morons went “Yoli this, Yoli that”, it sounded like they were being sarcastic. Like they were trying so hard to be major jerks because they had something against me. Or maybe I was just being paranoid. Since Adrian didn’t seem to be getting back for the class, I said “fuck it” and teleported out of there.

  January had been a mess, and February was no different. Valentine’s Day came and went. I didn’t attend the party in the VDC tower. The last thing I wanted was to be trapped in the same tower with Davien and Seth when everyone was drinking, smoking, and gulping down questionable potions provided by the mages. Hayley went, and I couldn’t deny I was a little worried about her. For some reason, Jace and Ivor had started to warm up to her, even though they still bullied her regularly. A love-hate situation was beginning to develop there, but as Jace had said, it was none of my business, was it? She was mature enough, grounded, and she knew how the world worked. She was a skilled dream jumper! She could take care of herself. I needed to believe that. The next day after the Valentine’s party, she seemed… okay. More than okay. She was glowing. From the way Jace and Ivor suddenly revolved around her, I could only guess what had happened. She’d won them over! And that was how Hayley became my spirit animal. If she’d managed to tame her bullies, then maybe I still had a chance to fix things with Davien and Seth. The only condition was that they had to grow the fuck up first.