Asleep

58 Parents

Charlie~~

I arrive on Nora's porch with her shirt from last night folded in my hands. Tucked on top is the rose I gave her.

She opens the door, my own shirt in hand. I pass Nora her shirt and flower, and she tries to give me my shirt, but I tell her to hold onto it for now since I don't want to show up to a restaurant with two shirts.

We take the subway to one station over to get to the café—keeping us still in the outskirts of Somnia. I come here often. The café is one place I can go when I want to avoid any and all family.

It's painted blue with a teal tiled roof. Tables are set outside, every chair filled. Thankfully, there are still tables available inside.

Once we're seated, I bring up her friend she went to see last night, asking if she's all right.

Nora shifts in her seat and reaches for her menu. "Yeah, I think so."

"Is she friends with Tye as well?"

"Are you in the market for friends?"

"You only ever mentioned Tye." He shrugs. "It's weird to imagine you with other dreamers—normal dreamers.

"I do have a life outside of you and Tye, just as you do."

The waitress makes her way toward us from across the room.

"You could have fooled me."

Her eyes narrow before she realizes I'm teasing her, and she bites her lip, trying to hide her smile as she shakes her head.

*****

"So this is your third menagerie." Nora dips her bare hands into the snow. "It's breathtaking." She holds the powder up to her eyes, examining the snowflakes. "And definitely cold." Dropping the snow, she shakes off her hands.

"Have you ever seen real snow?"

"Yeah. Yours feels real."

"It's the same that falls in Somnia during the winter."

She stares up at the slope, wrapping her arms around herself. She must be freezing in her short sleeves, her arms bared to the cold. "I suppose I'll have lots of opportunities to witness it. Even though it looks and feels like snow, I know it's not the real thing. Would it be better to accept this world, give up my memories if I could so I can stop missing everyone and thing I've left behind? Was I wrong to convince Tye this world isn't real?"

"You told Tye?"

"I thought he needed to know he's a prisoner—to give him some sort of control, to know that Radia didn't abandon him. Maybe I should have been letting Tye convince me I was losing it for thinking this isn't reality."

"I could give Tye his memories back, though hearing you now, it's probably a horrible idea."

She turns to face me. "You'd do that?"

"I wouldn't just do it. He'd have to tell me it's what he wants. He deserves some sort of control over who he is."

"But your dad . . ."

"He'd hardly care." To him Tye is simply another average dreamer.

The woman with red hair walks between us, headed inside the lodge. My eyes follow her as Nora comes toward me, boots—not made for snow—crunching in the powder.

"Who is she?" Nora inclines her head to the woman as she opens the lodge's door.

"My mother." A lump forms in my throat. I swallow it down. "I didn't mean for her to be in any of my menageries, but my subconscious must not be able to let her go because it chose her face three times when I created the people for my menageries. She's the only duplicate."