V2Ch12-Date Night

James reached out to Anansi and gripped the extended limb by pure instinct.

Something inside him was deeply attracted by those words. “Dreamwalk with me.”

And then the whole environment disappeared from around them. James was plunged into what seemed an almost pure darkness and emptiness. Even the ground beneath his feet seemed to have fallen away. The only thing he felt was Anansi’s touch. He dimly saw that Anansi was there with him, although it was only the shape of the god that he had seen before, not a fully revealed image.

“Where are we?” James managed after a moment.

“Dreamspace,” Anansi replied. “On our way to the dream of the person you most love.”

James found himself speechless.

“What?” Anansi asked. James could hear a grin in the Spider God’s tone. “Did you forget that I’m married too?”

And then James found himself in a different place. A brightly lit courtyard framed by two blocky, ugly buildings and bounded by a chain-link fence. His eye was drawn to the window of one of the Brutalist structures, and he saw a face he recognized. He smiled.

Mina. Her eyes were laser-focused on the front of the classroom, but there could be no doubt.

It was his wife. As a teenager.

So studious. He wanted to walk up and join her. But he looked down at himself. He was still wearing his battle-shredded cult-fighting outfit. And, for that matter, he was sweaty and dirty from a lengthy fight and days without a proper bath.

I can’t let her see me like this.

“You know that you can change what you look like, right?” The voice seemed almost to come from beside his ear. James turned and saw a small spider sitting on his shoulder.

“Wow. Clearly, you’re making use of that feature.” He snorted.

“I can change my appearance anytime I like, James. Do you think my realm looks like that all the time? On thousands of versions of Earth, different cultures have discovered me. Sometimes on the continent you call Africa. Sometimes in Asia. Sometimes in America. I chose a savanna biome for today, because it was a place your mind would associate with my mythology. But you can change your appearance here, as you would not be able to without a Skill elsewhere. You can change many things if you wish. It’s a dream. Just focus. Become a teenager, so you can fit in properly.”

“Fine, fine,” James said. “Are you going to be here the whole time? No offense, I definitely want to get to know you better, but—”

“I get it,” Anansi interrupted, his voice thick with obviously feigned indignance. “Shoulder spider’s cramping your style! I’ll get outta here. See you when date night’s over!”

He disappeared from James’s shoulder.

“Well, I’m glad you get it,” James said, a little skeptical that the Spider God was simply gone.

He looked around a bit but couldn’t see where Anansi might be. Nor did he imagine he’d be able to find the Spider God in the dream if he didn’t want to be found, whether he was there or not. Turning invisible seemed like such a basic divine ability that it would be silly to assume he didn’t have it.

Fine. He looked down at himself again. Focused on an image of himself as a teenager. And watched as his body and clothing changed.

There we go, he thought. Now I’ll try something harder.

He closed his eyes and imagined himself outside of Mina’s classroom. He opened his eyes, and there he was. Right outside the door. He grabbed the handle. Turned it. Walked in. Willed the teacher to recognize him as if he belonged there.

And the teacher did. He looked at James for a moment, then continued speaking.

James realized the teacher was speaking in Bulgarian. Fortunately, Universal Language Comprehension seemed to still be functioning. The lesson was a physics concept. Torque. Of course it is. Mina loves that stuff.

He saw the seat next to her was empty. He slid into it, and she turned to look at him.

“You’re cute,” she said quietly in Bulgarian. She looked a little confused.

“I’m glad you still like me,” he said.

“Had we met? You do look familiar.” She leaned in closer to him, ignoring the lecture now.

I guess I have changed quite a bit since high school, James thought. And she never met me until we were both adults. Although they had speculated on what their relationship might have been like if they’d met in high school, it was something they’d never actually experienced.

“We met last Summer,” James invented. He began spinning a story from something Mina had told him once. “We ran into each other volunteering at the elder home.”

He could see her mind going along with his story as she listened to him.

“Right, I remember you now, um.”

“James.”

“James, yes.” She smiled as she said his name.

He willed class to end, and a bell suddenly rang.

“Oh, it’s over?” Mina looked around surprised. Everyone else was packing their things way in bags.

“How about I walk you home?” he asked.

She raised an eyebrow, but then said: “Sure.”

I can’t believe I’m actually nervous, he thought. He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans.

And then he walked with Mina, out of school, through the town that she’d invented in her mind. Or some impossibly immaculate memory of her hometown.

My dreams are never this detailed, he had time to think at one point.

But mostly, he was focused on Mina.

Walking with her. Joking and laughing with her. Listening to her point out significant places. Holding hands. James had never met high-school-Mina, and never been to Bulgaria, so it was all new to him. All magical.

I miss you so much, he thought. I can’t believe how much longer we have to be apart. Unless the two of them both completely destroyed their Orientations’ challenges, he wouldn’t see her again for some time. Not until after the baby was born. Not until after she’d had to face dangers unknown without him.

I’ve been selfish, just trying to spend time with you. I should be thinking if there’s anything I can do to help you survive.

The two of them walked into Mina’s house. She didn’t seem to notice the slight cloud hanging over James.

“Mom!” Mina called as soon as they’d crossed over the threshold.

“I’m right here, Mina,” a middle-aged woman said, poking her head around a corner. “I see you’ve brought a friend home.” She looked a little suspicious of James. That had not been his experience of meeting her in real life, perhaps because Mina had told her things about him before they met.

James decided to let the meeting with Mina’s mother play out before he considered changing anything else in the dream. One final fun, imaginary experience before he got down to business.

He introduced himself, and Mrs. Danailova’s face curled into a friendly smile.

Mina and James sat down, and her mother brought them some sort of herbal tea. He established his dream cover story, that he was a foreign exchange student, which was why he didn’t look like a member of any Bulgarian ethnic group. And the three of them talked about school, the elder home where he and Mina had supposedly met, and the quality of the tea. James pronounced it delightful, which brought a smile to Mrs. Danailova’s face.

He’d always been good with older people.

She left him and Mina alone for a few minutes at one point, and the atmosphere of a high school students’ date reasserted itself. She returned to find them holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes, although they quickly separated once she was back.

Mrs. Danailova just smiled again, this time a bit mischievously. And she said the only words James remembered her saying to him from when they’d met in real life.

“Be sure to take good care of my daughter, young man.”

“Mom! Please!” Mina blushed furiously.

“We should go do some homework,” James said.

Mina nodded and practically ran from the room. James rose from the table, and Mrs. Danailova spoke again.

“Really, though. Thank you for taking such good care of her.”

When James turned back to Mina’s mother, he saw her face had aged to match when he’d last seen her. Not terribly long before she’d passed.

He swallowed. That’s freaky. Might have been my subconscious influencing the dream?

“It’s really my privilege, ma’am.” He took her hand for a moment and gently squeezed. “I’m very lucky.”

Then he followed where Mina had gone. She was in her bedroom with two younger girls. James stood back and watched without interacting.

Neither child was Yulia, who would have been very small around this time.

“Guys, I need you out of here, now! I-I have to study!” Mina was agitatedly ordering them.

“Fine, fine.” The two ran out of the room giggling.

James heard the distant chorus of: “Mina has a boyfriend!”

Then Mina closed the door. Her face was blazing red.

“Indecent children!” she muttered, refusing to make eye contact with James for a few seconds.

He snorted, and she finally looked up at him.

“Are you laughing at me?!” she asked sharply.

“No, never,” he said. “Just the children.”

“Well, that’s alright then.” She nodded to herself.

Such a serious teenager. I really would have fallen for her if we’d met back then, too.

He approached her and took her hands in his. Mina’s hands were shaking, and he caught her looking toward the door as if she thought it might open at any moment.

Just to make her less anxious, he walked away and locked the door.

“Um, we can’t, I’m not supposed to—” She gestured to the locked door a bit nervously.

Oh my gosh, her Mom was such a stickler. Now I know where you get it from!

“Don’t worry,” he said smoothly, taking her hands again. “I’ll unlock it again in a minute.”

“Al-alright.” She looked nervous.

He smiled. “Close your eyes.”

Her breathing slowed. Slowly, she closed her eyes. She turned her face up toward his, lips puckered.

I’m going to steal your first kiss, he thought playfully.

He leaned down and kissed her. As he made contact with her lips, he imagined the Mina he remembered. He imagined them both as adults. He pictured them as they’d been only a year ago, before she became pregnant. And he closed his eyes, holding that picture carefully in mind.

They separated, and both opened their eyes and looked at each other again. Husband and wife.

“So it was you,” she said wonderingly.

“Yes. We met early this time.”

He imagined them outside again, and the environment melted and changed around them.

Mina never stopped looking at him.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” she said. “I feel like something happened that I was worried about.”

“Orientation,” he said. “The System.”

Her eyes widened. “That’s right!”

“How’s that going for you so far?”

“Oh, it’s just been a day.”

It was his turn to look surprised now. “Only a day?! Are you sure?”

“Yes, it’s just the start. The System proctor introduced herself. I spent about an hour and a half with a Homunculus who kindly explained everything I needed to know about being a Mage. Yulia’s a Healer…” She spent a minute explaining what her Orientation looked and sounded like, although the thing that struck James most was how long the System Homunculus spent with her, helping Mina figure out how to be a Mage.

I guess I really pissed off the Homunculus in my Tutorial, he thought. Probably ought to apologize better the next time I see him.

“So, a snowy Orientation setting, and the competition will be around challenges of some sort,” he summed up.

She nodded.

They were walking as they spoke now, on the streets of Orlando. James conjured up an ice cream stand and bought Mina a chocolate cone. She ate it while he discussed his own experience a bit.

The problem is that her Orientation sounds completely different from mine. Depending on what types of challenges she faces, I might give completely bad advice. Maybe that’s why Anansi brought me to the past? If she was past day one of Orientation, I might have a better idea of what I was working with here.

He had no way of training her body in her sleep. And with the late stage of her pregnancy, physical training right now seemed like both a lost cause and a bad idea.

Conversely, if a challenge relied on brain power, he had complete confidence she would win with or without any help from him. Mina was the only person he knew who he believed was actually smarter than him.

He tried using Skill Transfer, but it didn’t work. Or rather, it seemed to work, but then he reviewed his Stat sheet, and the Skill he tried to give Mina was still there. Probably because they weren’t really in the same physical location. Or even the same dimension.

There was only one thing he could think of that might make a difference in her Orientation and help her survive.

“Why don’t we try this?”

He had her use her Basic Elemental Magic: Water for him. She knew she had the Skill from her Tutorial. And she was able to use it in her dream when he asked her to. He had no idea whether the result was really correlated with what she could do in real life, but she was chanting just like other Mages.

Hopefully this doesn’t translate into her wetting the bed or something in real life.

And he was also acting out of an optimism that practicing something in her dreams could make her more skillful in real life. This was something he’d never done before, but he’d read somewhere once that it was possible for a person to learn something or make some form of discovery in their sleep. And he knew he’d received inspiration and ideas from dreams before.

Even if I just get her more used to the idea of using magic, I’ll have done something that increases her chances of survival, he thought. I hope.

There was an indeterminate period where he was just putting her through her paces, getting her to show him everything she could come up with to do with water magic. But before he knew it, he sensed that the dream was drawing near its end. Maybe he recognized the feeling from thousands and thousands of dreams in the past.

“I love you,” he said. He pulled her close and held her tight.

“I love you, too,” she said, nose buried in his chest.

“Give Yulia my love too,” he added.

He held her for a long time.

Then the setting faded. Mina faded away. He was back in the void. And Anansi appeared next to him again.

“I hope you enjoyed your time together,” the Spider God said somberly.

“Yeah,” James replied. “Yeah, I really did.”

A bittersweet smile played across his lips.

I hope I get to see her again in real life, he thought.

Then there was a sensation of reality reasserting itself, and James’s hand was touching Anansi’s spider-limb. Back in the place where they’d met. Back to Anansi’s realm.

“Annnnd we’re back,” Anansi said.

“How do you have those powers?” James asked. “You’re not a god of dreams. Are you?”

Anansi shook his head in an indecisive way. “It’s complicated. Dreams are stories. Chaotic, confusing, impossible stories, but stories nevertheless. So I have an arrangement with Hypnos, the God of Sleep. Dreams fall under both our jurisdiction, and we share authority in that overlap.”

“Right,” James said. “And we traveled back in time?”

Anansi shrugged. “Dreams are mysterious things. They don’t have to follow the usual rules of chronology, cause and effect. That’s why déjà vu exists. And there are some questions I can’t answer for you.”

“I see,” James said. “And now I need to decide if I want to become your Chosen One.”

If I do, I can see Mina whenever I like. The thought was almost irresistibly tempting.