Page 31 of Ex Somnis

He chuckles, then turns serious again. “You know, sometimes, when it feels like things are falling apart, they’re actually aligning.”

I look at my brother’s blue eyes with his tarot cards, rings, and absolute bone-deep certainty about my love life.

“I’m going to need…” I say slowly, “… a lot more information.”

“I know.” He picks up the book. “Should I keep reading?”

“Yeah.” I lean back in the swing. “Please do.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Ridge

It’s easier to find Derek than I expected.

I don’t know if dream sharing is getting easier because I’ve been doing it so often lately, or because Derek is my cousin and something in my DNA could track the genetic pieces we have in common all the way to him. Either way, one second I’m reaching, and the next I’m standing at the edges of his dreamscape.

Derek is having a good dream. A beach at sunrise. Warm pastel light, salt in the air, and waves rolling in soft enough to sound fake. Dream-Melanie is holding his hand, barefoot in the dinosaur pajamas she was wearing a few hours ago.

He’s smiling in a way I haven’t seen in a long time.

It’s sweet enough to make my chest hurt.

But then there’s Tessa Vaughn, holding Melanie’s other hand. I can’t hear what she’s saying to Derek, but I can see the easy back-and-forth of it, her turning to Derek to say something and him laughing, his shoulder hitching. She looks almost like she does in Lennon’s dreams, but not quite.

I study her more closely.

Derek’s subconscious did a hell of a job with her, considering he hasn’t seen her awake in twelve years.

But it’s still not her.

Dream projections always have something missing once you know what to look for. Their awareness bends around the dreamer. Everything this Tessa says, every movement she makes, exists because Derek needs it to.

This version of her is built from longing.

Yesterday, we spent hours of me trying to compress years of accumulated lucid-dreaming knowledge into one afternoon at my apartment, which is the same as trying to teach someone to ride a bike by explaining the physics of gyroscopic motion.

Melanie sat cross-legged on my floor with coloring pencils and produced what she insisted was a horse, but looked more like an ottoman, while I walked Derek through the basics.

Reality checks, intention setting, and holding onto awareness while falling asleep without gripping so hard the dream collapses under you. Derek absorbed all of it with that focus he has that says he already decided he’s going to succeed before he even started trying.

An infuriating quality.

A useful one too.

Dream-Tessa laughs at something Dream-Melanie says, and it’s close enough to real that I feel it like a splinter.

But it’s not real enough.

Derek deserves to have her back.

He needs to meet the actual one.

I walk toward them, and the dreamscape registers me immediately. A ripple goes through the architecture. Dream-Tessa turns her head a fraction, not quite looking at me. Derek doesn’t look at all, still caught in the current of it, laughing at something his daughter did.

I step up to him. “Derek.”

He turns and smiles at me, slightly uncertain. “Hey, Ridge. You can walk?”