The Chronicles of Sorataki: Lucid Wish

Chapter 31: Bitter-sweet recollection

Allisa

She squinted her eyes against the intense light that bled into her lids. Just when she felt like they had somewhat adjusted its intensity like a fast-fading sunset. Allisa was in a white-tiled corridor like that of a hospital.

As recollections of what she was doing before now sank in, Allisa shot up to her feet, eyes scanning the halls with caution and confusion.

"Clare?" she called. Her voice echoed over many leagues but nothing came back to her.

Uncertain of what to do, Allisa began to move forward. As she called Clare's name again her eyes got drawn to a door at the far end of the hall. It was white with a bright light emanating from below the door crack but unlike the ones she ran through when stuck within her own mind this one did not emulate any sense of talking to her.

It was not alive like that one and yet...

Placing a hand over the doorknob, Allisa turned its handle and pushed. The door swung open with ease revealing an endless opened space of pure white. Baffled at first Allisa looked upon the white void with her mouth agape until something struck her. Some truth that she'd learned throughout her adventure here in this dream world. One of the first lessons that Orba taught them about the makings of these worlds.

All odd doors and alleyways lead to where you will them to...

Closing the door once more Allisa closed her eyes and much like when she pleaded for Clare to open the great shrine doors she will herself to find her, to be where Clare was. Something shifted in the air. Whether it be her perception, her belief it did not matter much. All she knew for certain was that now that she wished to find Clare, that faith that she would find her way there. As she opened the door for the second time the location that was on the other side came alive with sound, color, and...

~#~

She was walking among countless people under the warm glowing laps of a night city. The dark sky was overshadowed by the twinkling of house lights streaming out from windows of lofty towers and apartment blocks. Her breath caught the biting cold air leaving a puff of smoke in its wake. Strikes of snowfall from the hardly visible sky made Allisa reach out a mittened hand to catch alone flake. There under the din of men and women matching onwards in steady but brisk pace on all sides she had a moment with the captured flake, she watched its unique pattern in awe as it melted into her sky blue mittens.

So entranced by it all that she'd hardly taken note that she stood in the middle of a busy junction until beeps were heard from vehicles from both sides. Jumping to attention Allisa looked town at the two-way traffic she was now blocking. Their too bright headlamps bleared into her eyes like pointed accusations.

Stepping out of the road and onto the sidewalk and almost slipping on the slushy snow on the ground Allisa took a deep breath as she leaned against the wall. It was partly from the scare of being in the middle of a busy junction. But mostly it was something else that staggered her so.

That's right, I don't belong here. Almost forgot that...

Just like her first waking within the layers of her own dream, there was something about the initial moments of entering an established dream world that always made her feel like she'd always been there but only became self-conscious about it right then and there. The other times it was the deja vu that did it, the act of being thrust into a moment in her life she intimately knew. This time was different, however.

Instead of waking up in what was her own body and memories but with no recollection of her current self before that time, this one felt like stepping into the mind of a total stranger taking over their own thoughts and memories. The ordeal left her kind of made her feel like an imposter in her own flesh. When she came to she felt that divide from her own awareness and whoever was 'steering the ship' before her mixing.