Dreamcatcher

16

"You packed well, you said."

"....Y-Yeah...?"

"You packed for an hour, carefully making a list on what to bring here, right?"

"...I th-think so, yeah...?

"You checked the weather app, no?"

"M-Mhm, of c-course...."

"And you still didn't think it important to bring a jacket to the countryside?" Chase asked exasperatedly, watching Aerial shiver in the enveloping darkness. "I get that the countryside villages don't get snow in the winter, but still....Aerial..." He sounded so disappointed that Aerial averted her eyes from him, staring at the rocky mountain ground.

A gush of frigid air interrupted the sound of Aerial's shivering. For a moment the two stood there awkwardly, looking away from each other's gaze. "You can have mine then," Chase said after a while, noticing the shameful look on Aerial's pale face. She looked up at him in a soft surprise. "But I still can't believe you didn't even wear a jacket when you left the house. It was snowing, you know."

"S-Sorry..." Aerial whispered. She anticipated the moment when Chase put his woolen jacket over her shoulders, and the cozy relief she predicted didn't even compare to the actual comfort she experienced. Aerial didn't even say anything, just had a dreamy smile on her face.

"Try not to get pneumonia, 'kay?" Chase looked freezing with his bare arms exposed, but he seemed to mask his uncomfort from Aerial. "Let's keep going up the mountain. We should be getting to the tourist spot in about an hour."

"Think the stars'll be there?"

"The stars are always there. It's whether we can see them or not, and we'll see them fine since I'm leading you." Chase looked over shoulder and smiled at the girl, and even though Aerial could only see the outline of his dark figure, he seemed so, so comforting. "Come on."

The Forgotten villagers nicknamed sunsets "Light". The sun was said to explode into tiny little pieces and rebuild itself for a new day - just like people when they slept. The stars, they said, were the brightest source of light they had in the evening and night, and when they looked outside their windows they would always see scattered white flames.

"No, darling, the sun never leaves us. Hope never leaves us. It is merely an illusion. The sun will always be watching and protecting us even at night, giving us dreams just like when we're awake. That's why dreamcatchers work both in the day and night, darling.

"That's why we have dreams in both the day and the night, darling."

When Aerial looked up at the sky, she saw dreams. Dreams, not nightmares. There weren't clouds masking up the tiny crystals above, no fog or smoke choking the sky into a dense gray ash. There were only the lightbulbs above, chandeliers and ores and gems and million pieces of glitter, swirled together in a witch-like concoction of water and purple-blue paint. That was the true night sky, Aerial thought to herself, a sky away from bustling city-dwellers and honking cars and bright city lights at half-past midnight, a sky away from rows of houses and parks and people trapped into schedules of work and sleep and work and sleep.

She could forget a little, then. She could breathe a little, then. But the night sky took it away, for it was truly breathtaking.

"Sometimes I think cities are a shame," Chase whispered. His head rested against his arm underneath, and he stared up at the infinite blanket of stars with wide blue eyes matching the colors above. "Nature has things like these, and cities take it away."

"But cities have more, too." Aerial felt enchanted. For a moment, she thought she understood true bliss.

"No moment in the city or suburbs could ever make me feel like this, Aerial," Chase let out a smile, and his eyes shined brightly like the stars. "I...I feel free."

No responsibilities, no urge for dreamcatchers, no random thoughts haunting her brain – Aerial understood perfectly. She wondered that if she slept, her dreams would feel as good at this, a wave of euphoria. When she slept she never dreamt, and the feeling of such had long been something she had forgotten.

"Y'know what, Aerial? I don't need to worry. My dream is getting closer each day, with each second I'm with you. I'm...happy." Chase was off into another land, and his head spun with dreams he was never able to think of, never able to experience at his usual nighttime. In a way this was his unconsciousness, a place to wander off in when life in the neighborhoods was gone.

But Aerial felt the corners of her lips dip slightly. She clenched her hands into a fist, and she could feel her fingers numbing. "Is this what you meant, Chase?"

"...Mhm?"

"You said dreams should have an end. Whether you could see it or not, it's enough for a dream to have a somewhat reasonable end," Aerial whispered. Her vision blurred slightly, and the stars whirled into a white hurricane-like vortex. "Will I ever achieve that high? Do you think I'll regret this?"
Chase let go of the view above and stared at the girl beside him. "...Do you regret your dream already?"

Aerial felt her mouth open, but no words came out. She was a statue of silence as she looked into Chase's unblinking eyes that seemed to swallow her whole. "....Do I regret my dream?" she repeated in a volume below a whisper. "Chase, I don't have a choice...I'm already deep into it. If I back out now, it would've all been for nothing."

If I stopped taking dreamcatchers, those deaths, that suffering, that look in her eyes...wait – who's eyes?

E-Em.....Emm....Emmi...Emmi's eyes.

But who's Emmi?

Chase's worry was expressed in his delicate look in his eyes and eyebrows. His lips became a thin line. "You have a choice, Aerial," he said. "You have your own will like I have mine. Control yourself."

"I don't have a choice for my dream, Chase...you don't understand..." Why do I dream what I dream? Do we even have free will if we're born with our desires? We couldn't cause our pleasures, our dislikes, the root causes of our hatred and love...I'm only supposed to accept things as they are.

"Even if I don't understand your dream, I can at least tell you that you're in there. A different Aerial, one that I've only seen glimpses of from time-to-time. An Aerial who wants to do something different, break free from her hatred-centered dream, and to forget her goal about dreamcatchers instead of her own memories."

"Th-That's not possible – you know that, Chase. Breaking your own dream....that's something I can't do..."

Chase stared at the Aerial and saw that she began to shiver. Soon her world was shifted from the stars back to the rock-hard ground, and the wind turned her heart cold and unforgiving like the callous night.

"Aerial, are you worried because you think you'll never complete your dream? You'll never live long enough to see all the Dream Catchers in the world gone?" Chase looked away from her for a long second. He didn't want to forget about the view above – that was what they climbed up for. "Y'know, Aerial, I lied to you."

The stars seemed to shift. The world began to spin.

"My dream isn't gonna be finished soon. No – not even close." Chase let out an exposed, vulnerable look to the sky above and let the air sink in, a weightless blanket that instead took pressure away from him instead of adding it on. "I realized something tonight, after we arrived here on the mountainside."

"...What's that?"

"...I think I love you, Aerial."