Page 121 of Ex Somnis

But I refuse to make it a boring one.

A pile of gummy bears appears on the counter.

Red, green, yellow, white, and orange.

Ew.

Apparently, dream magic has no quality control.

I pick up one and stretch it between my fingers. It stretches out way more than it should and is sticky without actually being sticky.

Not real.

But close enough.

I make another handful, then another, and another. Soon, the countertop disappears beneath them, followed by the floor, the walls, and everything else until the kitchen melts away entirely. Green gummy grass spreads beneath my feet in rolling hills. A blue gummy sky stretches overhead, and a giant yellow gummy bear hangs where the sun should be, smiling down at me with deeply unsettling enthusiasm.

“Oh. You’re horrifying.”

The gummy sun takes that as a compliment, looking even happier. A laugh bursts from me, too loud for the joke that caused it, and some small, still-sane part of me clocks that. Notices that I built an entire sky in the time it took to have one bad thought, and that I would very much like to keep building until there’s no room left in my head for anything else.

Ridge would be so proud.

Thousands of people-sized gummy bears cover the landscape in every color imaginable, standing shoulder to shoulder like a tiny army of fruit-flavored weirdos. A path winds between them, and every few feet, a gummy tree sprouts from the ground, its branches drooping with gummy worms like fruits.

I step tentatively onto the path, and the ground bounces. I take another, and by the fourth bounce, I’m skipping. By the tenth, I’m cackling, and it doesn’t feel entirely like a choice anymore, more like something I’ve fallen into and can’t quite climb back out of, not yet. Not while it feels this good to be nowhere and no one. The entire world jiggles around me every time I land. “This…” I announce to absolutely nobody, “… is art.”

I spin in a circle and admire my work. It genuinely looks like a very enthusiastic eight-year-old had unlimited creative control of this dream, and for one long, unbothered stretch, I let her have it. I don’t think about Nevan and the window, Paul’s nightmares, or Ridge’s dark thoughts. I don’t think about Tessa’s body giving out somewhere I can’t reach, or mine, whatever it’s doing without me.

I flop onto the spongy ground with a delighted oof. The orange gummy bear is still in my hand. The unwanted one, the last one left in the bag. I stretch it between my fingers again and watch the sunlight shine through it, turning the center almost yellow.

For a moment, I let myself sit, surrounded by a world made entirely of nonsense, watching it glow, and it occurs to me, distantly, that I’ve built myself an entire kingdom rather than feel one single thing. That is either very smart or very bad, and I genuinely do not care which right now. But when I go to find a yellow gummy bear for scientific comparison, a pull in my chest makes me freeze.

“This is what you’re doing when we leave you alone for five minutes?”

My heart does a full somersault as I jump to my feet, spinning around so fast I nearly fall back to the gummy ground.

“Ridge.”

He’s standing in the middle of the gummy bear apocalypse as if he belongs there in his black hoodie and black jeans, his dark hair half fallen out of its usual tie.

The giant gummy sun beams down on him, practically begging for attention, and a gummy worm falls out of a nearby tree.

Ridge is unimpressed by both.

“Hey, sweetheart.”

Relief hits so hard, it almost hurts. “Nevan?”

I am pretty sure he’s fine, but I also spent an unknown amount of time talking to a plushie and building a gummy civilization, so my confidence in my perception is not exactly at an all-time high.

Ridge’s expression softens. “Nobody jumped out a window.” He glances toward the gummy horizon. “Your baby boy is fine. Successful day, all things considered.”

“Paul?”

“Also alive and awake. They’ve gone to see Seraphine. Figure out some things. Work on getting you home.”

Home. Yeah, I want home.