What her heart desires

Chapter 4

~day after dance/the present~

Hope jolts from her sleep. She sits up in her bed. Her heart is pounding in her chest as if she's scared or nervous or maybe even excited. It's a direct result of her dream, which often takes a few minutes to fully come back to her. And when it does, she realizes she's not quite free of this pattern.

Recently, she's had the strangest, yet most vivid dreams. The kind that sometimes have you wondering if they are real, if they'd actually happened. The kind that has a lasting effect on you, and has you thinking about them often. 

And for the past few weeks, each of these dreams has involved Josie. It started with one of them running in a field and Hope saving Josie from falling. Hope believes it may have been a direct reflection of how she'd saved Josie in real life. Now, every night she closes her eyes and she sees her and Josie side by side. Hope sees them laughing, holding hands, running, and doing all sorts of things that makes them both happy. They do it together. 

She's had dreams with Josie in them before, but nothing like this. Nothing as strong as this. It's as if some string is pulling them together, pulling her towards Josie. As if in her dream she needs to be close to her. Hope suspects that perhaps they are a side effect of being trapped in Josie's subconscious for so long. As if their subconsciouses are still tied together in some way. A link between them that hasn't yet faded. It's odd, but it's also kind of comforting. 

"A nightmare?" Landon asks. She hadn't realized he'd woken up.

"Not really." She answers. Hope's not sure she wants to speak about it. After all, she hasn't yet, and telling Landon may only worry him that something's wrong. The dreams, they're just that - dreams, and if Hope's right about why they're happening, they'll surely go away soon. It's not like he could help anyway, the only person who perhaps could is Josie. Although, if she mentions it to her and she has no idea what Hope is talking about, then she may look insane. And if it doesn't send Josie running for the hills, it'll only worry her too.

"Last night was fun. I liked dancing with you." Hope nods, not fully listening but not ignoring him either. 

"Me too." 

She knows he's talking to her, going on some rant about something, but his words start to blur into the background as her mind wanders elsewhere. The dreams, although quite strange, are peaceful. Aside from the first one (which originally she thought may have just been a regular nightmare, except she soon realized it was anything but normal), they have been so so nice. Hope feels relaxed in them, far more relaxed than she does in real life. It's like in these dreams, she can just be. She can exist without the constant fear of losing people, or the overwhelming desire to protect everyone. And she spends them with one of the most important in her life. In the dreams, the real world fades away. It's just her and Josie, laughing, existing in the perfect fairytale world where the only monsters she'll see don't come with a whole bag of problems and battles.

These dreams are her escape. They save her from the difficulties of real life, and the thought that they may disappear sometime soon fills Hope with a sadness that's hard to describe. 

"Hope? Hope did you hear what I said?" 

"Yeah. Totally." Hope says, getting up from the bed. She changes into her clothes quickly. "Look, I gotta head to the library, but I'll catch up with you later okay?" 

She doesn't know why she said that. She didn't have a plan to go there today. Sure, she has a history essay to do, but she planned on giving herself the day off. Yet for some reason, the voice in her head told her she needs to go there. So, she is. She will. 

"Sure." Hope goes back over to her boyfriend after tying the laces on her right foot, kisses him softly on the cheek, then walks out. She doesn't take a notebook, not even her laptop. Nothing to write the essay that she now seems to be going to do. Perhaps she'll look for books, and research the topic she needs to research. 

When she finally reaches the library, instead of going straight to the history section, she finds herself walking to another aisle of books. It's as if her feet and mind aren't communicating correctly. One is saying to do one thing, while the other says something entirely different.

She finds herself between two rows of hundreds and hundreds of books, aimlessly searching each shelf as if they'll tell her why she's over here. She's looking for something, but she has no idea what that something is. Hope comes to the end and turns the corner, which is when she sees Josie staring at the pages of a book. Her brows are drawn together, her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth in the adorable way that it does when she's concentrating and her eyes are scanning the words on the paper. 

"Hey." Josie jumps. Her hands cover her face to protect herself. The stack of books that were clutched under her arm fall. A loud noise shortly follows. Josie looks at her. "Sorry, I shouldn't have snuck up on you like that." 

They both lean down to pick the books up. Hope's eyes wander to the cover of one as she grabs it. She mutters the title under her breath. Several questions flood her mind.

"Curses and myths. You're not trying to turn someone into a frog or something, right?" Josie laughs at her joke. Hope laughs too, not because of her joke, but because of Josie's laugh. It's hard to not when the laugh is so contagious.

"Fairytale reference, classy," Josie says. 

"I couldn't help myself." Hope hands it back over to her, then reaches for the next book.

"For the record, that's not why I have it. It's research for a little side project of mine." Hope wonders what kind of side project it could be, considering Josie's answer is rather vague. She's not one hundred percent sure she believes her.

"What kind of side project?" Hope questions. Maybe she'll be able to help her, give her some pointers on what to look for or other books to check out.

"You're asking a lot of questions today, huh? It's just something I have an interest in and want to expand my knowledge on." 

"Right." Hope replies, certain that Josie is lying about something, she's not sure what but she knows it. She could see it in Josie's eyes and the way she spoke. For whatever reason, Josie's not telling the whole truth, but Hope's not going to push if Josie doesn't want her to.

"I should...probably get back to what I was doing." Hope walks a few steps, to the end of that aisle, then begins talking over her shoulder. "I hope you find what you're looking for."

Hope goes to breakfast, her history work completely forgotten.

Authors note:
I have this whole story planned out now. I'm not sure how regular updates will be as I still need to write them and life is still a bit of a mess, but hopefully it will be somewhat regular. Thanks for reading!