Page 103 of In Somnis

I crack an eye open, only to find that we’re in the sky. Not metaphorically, but literally, with stars smeared across the dark like someone scattered glitter. Earth stretches beneath us, blue, white, and breathtaking.

“Oh my God,” I breathe out.

“Right?” Ridge leans forward into the wind as if he were Superman after all, and because I’m still holding his hand, pulls me with him. My body follows his lead, suddenly not falling anymore.

I’m flying. We’re flying.

Laughter rips out of me, bubbling up from somewhere deep in my chest.

“This is…” I gasp. “This is amazing!”

He glances back at me, eyes bright. “Told you.”

We cut through the stars until a small planet that’s suspended in the dark comes into view. As we draw closer, I can see that its surface is covered in yellow flowers, endless fields of them rippling in a soft golden wave. There’s water, too, lakes and rivers that mirror the sky above, reflecting the Milky Way back at itself, while a faint rainbow arcs over the horizon.

I don’t even realize we’ve slowed until my feet touch ground. Ridge plops down in the middle of the flowers and tugs on my hand until I sit beside him. The blooms brush my legs, feeling almost ticklish.

“This is so beautiful.” I let my free hand glide over the top of them.

“I almost forgot how good my brain is at building stuff.” His hand twitches in mine, and for a moment, we sit and breathe while I take all of it in.

“I could get used to this,” I say without thinking.

“Careful. Dreams are tempting.” He glances at me sidelong. “At first, I wanted to stay here all the time. Ignore the real world and my reality entirely.”

A lump forms in my throat as Tessa’s words from the journal surface in my mind, echoing too closely to what he just said.

“If I could just stay here with him, I would.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Nope.” He leans back into the flowers, propping himself up, and gestures with our joined hands. “Found a balance that works for me. I dream up the stories I want to write… then I go back and put them on paper.”

I study his side profile. “You’re a writer?”

“I’m a dreamer.”

“You think being this ominous is funny?”

“A little.” A smile tugs at his lips, almost shy, and if this information wasn’t that damn important, I might notice how much it softens his face.

“So what do you write?” I press, because now that I have a crack in the wall, I’m not wasting it.

He tilts his chin toward the sky above us, toward the stars and the planet we’re sitting on, built entirely from the inside of his head. “I used to write about places like this.”

I glance around and let out a short breath. “Sci-Fi?”

“It was only a hobby. Something I did to make sense of what was up here.” He taps his temple once. “Wasn’t going anywhere with it. And then… I figured out lucid dreaming.” He plucks a flower, rolling the stem between his thumb and finger. “I could come here and actually walk around in it. Feel the wind…” He pauses. “Change things.”

“I can see why.” I look down at the blooms brushing my knees, soft as anything. “So what do you mean you used to write places like this?”

“I changed genres.”

“To what?”

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Horror, actually.”

I blink at him. “Horror.”