Dear Kathy,

  Kathy…

  The name resounded in Lucy’s mind as if it had come from far across the sky, from a different sky altogether that was distant but familiar. At first, she was caught off-guard, since that was the name of someone she hadn’t seen in nearly a year.

  But in truth, it made perfect sense that Kathy would be named here, as her name had seldom left Lucy’s mind even when life circumstances had driven two childhood friends apart. Unlike with her mother and Thomas, Lucy was quite certain she knew where she had stood on the topic of Kathy the night before her Final Dream. And because of that, it was as if the hand holding the pen was not just Cloud Lucy’s, but her own hand, as the words on the page were once again mirrored by the tapestry of clouds in the sky:

  I know we haven’t seen each other in a while, and to be honest, I don’t know if this will even reach you. I want to say that I hope you’re doing okay at John Hopkins, that it’ll work out and you’ll go on to a good career and a fulfilling life. Despite everything, I still wish all the best for you, no matter what.

  But I know that being there isn’t what you want. I know that you aren’t the one looking forward to ten years of medical exams—it’s your parents. And I know I sound very presumptuous, but remember that first day of Biology with Mrs. Willow? Everyone else was trying to memorize the parts of the inner ear, but you spent the whole time drawing it all with so much detail, just using your pen.

  That wasn’t the only time something like that happened. For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve always looked happiest with a pen or a pencil or a brush in your hand. I’ve still got all the birthday portraits you gave me hanging up in my room back home. I remember telling you once that you don’t have to go through all that trouble every year, but you said that you had to because not doing it would be wrong.

  And I think this path that your parents chose for you is wrong, too. What you want to do, what you value in life, your own happiness—all of that matters, Kathy. I wish I’d been able to say that to you, before we drifted apart. It hurts knowing that you’re trapped, and I wish I could do something, anything, to help you be free again.

  No matter what happens, and no matter where life takes you, I’ll be your friend always.

  Lucy

  When Cloud Lucy set down her pen, she sat as still as an undisturbed pond. Her movements weren’t stiff like when she had written to Thomas, nor was there the trembling and wiping at her cheeks from writing to her mother. Instead, her hands lay motionless in her lap, her gaze pointed forward and far beyond the stage, far beyond the horizon outside her little theatre world.

  It was peculiar, but Lucy understood her likeness’s disposition for it was precisely her own. There were so many more things that she wanted to say, things that she couldn’t even put into words. And yet, it was suffocating to know that all she could do was write, and nothing more, trapped by the walls of her hospital room, walls formed by the clouds of the world that signalled her own inescapable fate. Faced with that, she could do no more than become as resigned and subservient to the whims of the world as her first and closest friend, staring unmovingly outside like a bird in a cage.

  Time passed indefinitely: clouds moved in pattern and the wind came and went in silence as both Cloud Lucy and her audience stayed in standstill. At an arbitrary point in this eternity, as if it were but a pebble dislodged in the river of fate, Cloud Lucy closed the book and placed it back in its drawer. She floated through her movements without any trace of intention, as if her body had become nothing but a cloud once more while her mind waded through another time and space.

  When Cloud Lucy lay in bed again, gaze pointed toward the window, Lucy stared at the drawer. How unfortunate it was, that the notebook had been tucked away without letting anyone else know about it, not even the nurse. Would all those earnest, painstaking words ever reach the eyes and hearts of the people they were addressed to? Lucy’s chest ached, and it pained her even more upon realizing that Cloud Lucy hadn’t said anything to the nurse about the notebook because she was expecting to wake up and see the next day. The dramatic irony was not lost on Lucy as she stood here, in this dreamscape that proved there was no next day for her to wake to.

  With chilling speed, the wind picked up and gathered around Cloud Lucy and the stage, dispersing everything into puffs of white that slowly faded away, like the gentle settling of darkness from eyelids heavy with sleep.

  When the last of the clouds had dissolved into endless blue, leaving Lucy alone with naught but the sky and the barren world below, the King resumed his initial position before her.

  “Do you understand now,” he said, “why you possess the potential?”

  Lucy stood silently, eyes narrowed at the King. After remembering all of that, his claim had gone from hard to believe to frankly ridiculous. She shook her head, lips trembling with frustration. “You saw that, didn’t you? I couldn’t do anything to help any of them. And…I’m going to die that way. In what world could I ever be a knight?”

  Her last question had come out shrill and choked. It was beginning to feel as though he wasn’t as benevolent as he made himself out to be, that he was deliberately holding her up to an impossible standard to highlight her greatest weaknesses, and at this point she was emotionally exhausted to the point of wanting this insistent monarch to stop and leave her alone. She had already accepted that she was dying, that she had accomplished nothing in her life, so what had she done to deserve this admonishment in her own dream?

  The King didn’t react to her sudden aggression, his robes flowing ever so calmly in the breeze. A moment later, he said: “Take a moment, now, to recognize what it is that upsets you most. Is it your own passing? Or the unfulfilled actions toward these people you hold dear to your heart?”

  “Of course, I…”

  Lucy stopped short. Everyone feared death, and she had known ever since she was little that her own mortality frightened her gravely. Whenever she had watched dramas, she had always experienced a sinking feeling from seeing characters confined to a hospital bed, their faces inscrutably solemn as they stared down the white ceiling of their final hours, their entire world shrinking and collapsing in on them. Now, when she thought of how she was in the same situation in the waking world, her heart dropped.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  But when she recalled what Cloud Lucy had written, in those big azure letters that filled the sky, her heart sank even further as if shouldering the weight of every word. There was no way she could leave Thomas at the mercy of his own shattered self-worth, abandon her mother in an uphill battle against a cruel uncle completely lacking in sympathy or basic morals, or turn a blind eye as Kathy threw away her own happiness to become an empty vessel for familial expectations. The more she ruminated, the more she cursed herself for not having done anything more. If only she had more time, another chance, just one more day or even a few hours…But that would never happen, and the thought made her want to scream into the void, scream out whatever last vestiges of her pitiful existence remained.

  “Whenever an individual remembers their last memories within their Final Dream,” said the King, “they must make a decision. Those memories can remain in their consciousness, or they can be erased to let the individual experience their Final Dream in peace. One of these options is far, far less commonly chosen, and for good reason. What shall you decide?”

  While the question was grave, Lucy found her words immediately, her hands and lips trembling: “I don’t ever want to forget…”

  Although the King’s face was still nonexistent, the slight raising of his head suggested a warm, knowing smile. “As is true to who you are. And I should inform you that putting the desire to help others over your own circumstances is an exceedingly rare occurrence. As rare as the Knights who venture into Dreams.”

  “But…” Lucy swallowed, allowing her staunch disbelief to power her voice. “I’m only trying to act on this now, after I’m sure to die. Doesn’t that show I’m too inactive, too irresponsible?”

  The King shook his head. “One’s behaviour in the waking world rarely translates to the behaviour they exhibit in a circumstance such as the one you now face. All individuals are beheld to the notions, expectations, and limitations imposed on them by the reality of the waking world. Many are so tied down by these shackles that they persist even into their Final Dream. And yet, there are a rare few who, upon knowing that their life’s flame is fading fast, exalt in their freedom from the waking world and enact the potential they had always yearned for, deep within their soul.”

  The King paused as the significance of his words whirred about Lucy’s mind like a second wind. At last, he said: “It is up to you, and only you, to determine where your present feelings align.”

  With that, he brought his arms behind his back and stepped off to the side to gaze at the world below, looking very much like an old man pondering ocean waters.

  It was clear to Lucy that he wanted her to ponder deeply as well, and to do so in a careful manner without rushing. In contrast to the King’s downward gaze, Lucy trained her sights upwards and ahead, at the place where Cloud Lucy’s words had been written in the clouds. If she were to ignore rationality, expectation, and the notion that how she felt about her situation must “make sense,” then in all honesty, she cared more about those three people she had wanted to reach out to but couldn’t ever again. She understood what the King was saying, that someone like her would feel reborn and rejuvenated now that they were in this dream realm where all the things that had held them back no longer applied, where one could conjure clouds and stairs at their feet. A quick glance down at her own feet, where the cloud platform still supported her firmly, ignited a fire within that had long laid dormant.

  She could become a “Dream Knight”, he’d said. She could venture into others’ dreams, help people in ways she never would have been able to as dinky little Lucy Lockhart in the real world, and know that it would leave some lasting impact on those people’s lives once they woke. The thought was more than just appealing: it had the warm, brilliant glow of finding a message in a bottle from childhood, and writing back a response through time and space telling the little one that yes, your wish, no matter how innocent and unlikely to hold up in the real world, would come true. She would be the hero from those dreams that had created this King and this castle in the sky in the first place, and that made her smile.

  But what was the point of being a knight and rescuing people if she couldn’t rescue them?

  She could have all the power in the world, conjuring things any which way, becoming the picture of a valiant and radiant knight she had cultivated since she was little—but she knew, deep in her heart, that it wouldn’t amount to anything if Thomas, her mother, and Kathy were the ones she couldn’t reach. She was only here now, pondering this decision, because of their continued pains, and this more than anything made everything Lucy had been building up start to shrink off into oblivion and helplessness once again.

  “Can…can I ask something?”

  As the King turned to look at her, she perked up herself, surprised by how those words had come out on their own. Her voice had been unbelievably shaky and feeble, making it more than clear that she had lost all notion of dignity, sounding instead like the sincerely desperate plea of a child. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment at sounding so insolent, but she closed her eyes and swallowed hard, convincing herself that she had to give in to her honest feelings.

  “If I become a Dream Knight, can I help the people mentioned in my memories? I…don’t think I can do it, without knowing I can rescue those three.”

  She paused, then added: “They’re my reason.”

  She wondered if that last part was too short and too vague, and if it made any sense at all. She wasn’t quite sure, herself, what the full meaning of “reason” was meant to be, but amongst her tremulous words, that was the part she’d said the most firmly. She stared at the King, awaiting his response, finding that his lack of a face was both a blessing and a curse.

  After a moment that felt like an eternity, the King brought his arms from behind his back and put them together in front of his torso, the visual of his long sleeves connected in this way being reminiscent of a wise monk bestowing worldly wisdom, or perhaps an advisor concealing their emotion while delivering frank news. “If you were to rescue those dear to your heart within their own Dreams, they would benefit in the same way as any other Dreamer. However…entering the Dreams of those specific persons is not straightforward.”

  He brought one arm down to his side, and raised his other arm with his palm fully splayed and facing up. The clouds gathered in the space above him, condensing and changing both colour and texture into a completely different kind of material, much smoother and shinier with a surface that clearly reflected the sunlight. It appeared to be a large crystalline cube, each face made up of criss-crossing lines of amethyst-purple tracks, forming an interlocking grid. Wherever lines met within the grids, there were smaller crystals of a myriad different colours.

  “This is the Lattice of Dreams,” said the King. “It is the full interconnected network of humanity’s Dreams, formed through the collective unconscious. Each Dream Knight begins their journey at an arbitrary point in the Lattice, and works their way through, one by one. And that is ”arbitrary“ in the truest sense of the word: Dreams are selected at random, outside of any conscious control.”

  Lucy bit her lip. “So then there’s no guarantee I’ll get to the Dreams I want to go to.”

  The King nodded. “It is entirely up to the whims of the collective unconscious. That said, as a Dream Knight explores more Dreams and rescues more Dreamers, their influence throughout the Lattice grows stronger, and so too does their ability to bend the realm of slumber to their will. With a sufficiently high amount of influence, a Dream Knight could even bend their traversal of the Lattice to their will.”

  Lucy took a moment to take this all in, focusing on how the King’s words contained a lofty tone, like a storyteller weaving a myth of a sacred boon long thought to be unattainable. “So if I rescue enough people, I can get strong enough to go to any Dream I want?”

  The King nodded once more. “There are no boundaries within Dreams. There are only the limitations set by others, and yourself.”

  “I see…” Lucy continued to be affected by the King’s gold-tinged words, by the fantastical promises stirring within them. Her heart was both racing and undeniably still, and she was acutely aware now of how she was suspended high in the sky, free to move in infinite directions, with the open air and broad sky waiting, whispering, expectant, beckoning to her for her next move, her next decision.