Elfborn

A Dangerous Plan

"Alone, again," Naneen whispered hoarsely, staring at the spot where Kira disappeared. Her mind whirled with a thousand thoughts. What was she going to do now? Unlike Kira, nobody could rouse her from the stupor which held her body in the real world with a vice-like grip. She was stuck here.

She sighed softly and sat down on the deck. 'I could always wait the ten or twelve hours before Kira or somebody else comes back into the dream world. But, considering what could be happening out in the real world, that doesn't seem like a very good idea.' That thought, in turn, triggered another. Naneen's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. 'Wait a minute! Kira said something about Romis and the Vestican library containing information about the elves. If I could get there first, I might just be able to learn something too.'

Naneen stood and dusted herself off, though she had collected no dirt while sitting. Habitual behaviors extended even into the dream world.

"Better than standing around and waiting to wake up," she said to herself with a practical nod of her head, half smiling with satisfaction that she actually came up with an idea on her own, without help from Gillian, or Max or anybody else.

The question, of course, was how she was going to do it. The first dream walks that any of the Elfborn had done dealt much with how the walkers could interact with the various objects within their newfound environment. Things like rocks, and dead branches were examined and tested to see if the walkers could move them.

Some things seemed to resist being moved, as if they were trying to push through syrup, while others flatly refused to move at all, becoming a solid part of the environment even though they were obviously something that could be moved, like a bucket of water. The rest they found easy to move, the objects behaving much the same as they did in the real world.

Lash, probably the most intelligent of them all despite what Gillian thought of him and men in general, had guessed that it was because the dream world was, in effect, a reflection of the real world, a mirror image of a sort. That meant that the objects that they were looking at, could just as easily be interacted with by people on the other side. Considering that the real world was just that, more real, if a person or some other thing was acting on an object there, that same object would resist a dream walker acting on it, preserving the greater force acting on it.

That, of course, hadn't meant much to Naneen at the time. She only knew that she could move some things, and not others. 'I just hope that books are something that I can move!' she thought, gazing at the town on the far bank.

There was one way to test that, of course. Find a book and try to move it. 'And that town there looks to be the closest place to test my idea,' Naneen thought. Hopefully without running into something unpleasant, like a Mist man!

She took one quick look around the deck.

"Farewell, Cignet," she said softly. "Take care of my friends until they embark on their journey to Romis." She smiled gently. "And Kira, Gillian, Jase and Brice, I'll be seeing you in Romis!"

Decision made, she gathered herself and concentrated. Properly focused, it was nothing to spring up and away from the Cignet, the barge quickly dwindling into the distance as she streaked towards the east bank of the Sana and the small town that nestled there. It wasn't long after that, that Naneen found herself landing lightly in a small square on the outskirts of town, marking what looked to be a local farmers' market.

That made sense, she thought as she carefully stepped around the clustered booths. After all, she had seen a large number of farms on her way in and, being a farm girl herself, she had seen plenty of farmers' markets in her time. In her experience, they all had similar setups and construction, starting with the booths themselves.