dot.

21: Dreams of Sunlight

  Dot liked to fall asleep while Felix talked to him. It didn't really matter what he was saying, he just found his voice calming.

  He had been having strange dreams for the past few weeks, since Nimue had disappeared. They weren't bad dreams, so he didn't mind them too much, and hadn't told Felix. He had assumed they would stop once Nimue had returned, but the soft golden glow that consumed his mind as he fell asleep proved otherwise.

  "Am I back?" He asked. It was a pointless question, really. The yellow painted cottage and the dense forest that surrounded it was answer enough.

  He could hear the sounds of a woman humming from inside the kitchen, tinkering about with pots and pans as the smell of apples and cinnamon drifted past him. It was peaceful.

  The garden, tangled and overgrown as it was, still had its own jewel of personal beauty; a wild, untamed space where he could lie for hours on end.

  He liked it here.

  Dot was aware he was dreaming, yes, but he had no desire to wake up. Why would he? In this place, he had everything: love, homemade food, freedom, sunlight- all the things he couldn't find in the real world. Here, he could fall asleep without Felix's voice in the background, instead using birdsong as the backing track to his rest.

  If he had to guess where he was, he'd say this place was the cumulative recollection of the time he had escaped: the memories of the wind, dappled sunlight streaking through waving branches, regal deer and feline companions stalking through the night.

  He sighed and stretched out where he lay in the garden, wiggling his toes in the grass and grabbing fistfuls of it in contentment.

  I  n his dreams, he never had his wings.

  The lady called him into the cottage, causing him to roll over in the grass and get up to run towards her with grasstains on his skirt. It was so nimble, having proper feet.

  He burst through the doors of the cottage, eager to eat whatever she had been making.

  This was when the dream would get weird. It happened every time he slept, and so he could predict what the lady would do and say down to the very last letter.

  "Are you ready to eat?"

  "Uh-huh." He sat down at the table and tucked his legs underneath him so he was tall enough to eat from it.

  "Good boy." She ruffled his hair and gently placed a large apple pie down in the centre of the table, telling him not to eat yet until everyone was here.

  "I'll go get Nimue then. Don't you have any of that!" She warned, wagging her finger at him in a jovial, false anger as she smiled and walked out of the door.

  That was another weird thing about this dream. Why was Nimue here? And why, why on earth did he like her?

  "Okay honey, we can eat now." Both women walked in and the younger sat down at the table, Nimue serving Dot a slice while her sister fussed over them and made sure everything was okay.

  "Thia, sit down, we're fine." Nimue grinned, taking hold of Dot's hands and fixing his grip on the fork before going back to her own slice.

  "Yes- it's just-" Thia wriggled her hands around in frustration, anxious to make sure everything was perfect. "It tastes okay, right? You don't hate it?"

  "It's really good." Dot slurped down practically half of it in one go, earning a scolding from Nimue for eating too fast.

  "So, when are Eirene and Dot's dad arriving?" Thia asked, finally dismissing her worries and slumping into a chair next to Nimue.

  "They should be here soon."

  "Good, I haven't seen them in a while. Has Dot seen them since the last time we were all together?"

  Nimue finished the last of her slice and placed her fork to the side quietly. "He hasn't. They've been very secretive of late. I saw Eirene a few months ago though, we met up at that new café for some cake and a catch up."

  "And?"

  "She's doing alright for herself. Still concerned about my job, but there's not much I can do about that."

  "Ah," Thia set down her fork, glaring at her sister darkly. "I take it you haven't told her the truth about Dot, then?"

  "I- what do you mean?"

  Dot, at this point, was long finished with his food. The two sisters beginning to argue always meant that the end of the dream was approaching. He simply sat back as Nimue grew steadily more nervous, squeezing her hands to comfort herself.

  "She doesn't know that he's «»"

  Her mouth phased out and the words she said were a blur, blocking him from understanding them.

  Nimue stared at her with eyes wider than the plate she longed to throw. "That is none of her business."

  "She deserves to know."

  "The knowledge will only hurt her." Nimue took hold of and dug her nails into Dot's sweating hand, leaving behind little red crescents.

  "How long will you hide the fact that he's her «» for?"

  She squeezed Dot's hand harder, looking like she was on the verge of tears. "Forever."

  And with that, the dream swirled away and Dot awoke with a start, clenching his wings around himself. The dream always ended like that- Thia getting angry about something Nimue was hiding from a lady called Eirene, (whoever that was) and Nimue getting upset about it.

  He had tried to stop them arguing in the past, but it had never worked. And the pair that were supposedly arriving soon had never actually come, at least not by the time he always woke up.

  Dot sighed and looked up at Felix. The man was laying spreadeagled on the grass, snoring incessantly. He tucked his chin inbetween his knees and smiled at him, happy that he had at least one person he could trust.

  It wasn't a scary dream, nor an inherently bad one. It was just strange, and made him nostalgic for a time he had never truly known, and people that didn't exist.

  He could almost still taste the apple pie on his tongue.