Made of Things

Heartbeat - 101

The sharp creak of the hatch falling started Jay out of her sleep, and she gasped awake, sitting up so quickly that it made her head spin. The nightmare was right in front of her, in the real world, and Yeong fell. He kicked and choked as the noose strangled the life out of him, and the crowd watched in silence. The king was to her left, Prince Korain was to her right, and Jay could barely see through the tears blinding her. Her love was dying before her eyes, and there was nothing she could do.

Distraught, Jay scrubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms, horrified at the images fading behind her eyelids. The first time she had seen Yeong's face in her dreams was to see him die. It was cruel.

Jay scooted to the edge of her bed and grabbed her phone. It was nearing 4 in the morning, and she regretted not asking Haeun to come over the night before. They were both tired from work, and she fell asleep so soon after she laid down that she didn't have time to miss his warmth.

*Jay: Can't sleep now, call me when you wake up

She set her phone back on her nightstand and looked at the dream prism sitting on her dresser. She needed another trip back to that shop.

Over a week later, Jay ordered a cab into Shy. It was a different cashier, an older woman who seemed to be descended from the Southern Territories.

She greeted Jay with a smile, "Please feel free to ask for help if you need."

"Well," Jay looked around. "Do you have anything that can help with bad dreams?"

The woman stepped from behind the counter, "As in stopping them?"

"If you have something that can, then yes." Jay had seen the same nightmare play before her eyes every day since it started the week before. It was exhausting.

"I have a couple things," she waved for Jay to follow, then led her towards the furthest wall of the shop. "We have this."

She took a larger dream prism off a shelf. It was slightly different in that the glass was a transparent black, and the marble in the center was marbled black and white.

Jay, fascinated, carefully took the new prism and held it close to her face to peer at the marble in the center. She asked, "I have the clear one, but what's the difference with this one?"

"This is specifically made to filter out the bad dreams, or nightmares." She picked another one off the shelf and pointed to the marble. "This one traps the bad, and only let's the light through. The same reason it's this charcoal glass, to filter out the negative."

"Oh, that makes sense," Jay held it further away from her to see the way the light filtered through it. The beam from the prism was softer, almost fuzzy.

"It's helpful, I think. It usually is. The other actually boosts dreams to make them more vivid or help you remember them when you wake up," the woman explained then turned away to start towards another part of the shop.

"Hm."

For the second item, she picked up a white colored crystal. "This is Selenite. Together with the dark dream prism, this will absorb anything that causes your bad dreams."

Jay started to take the crystal from the woman, but she shook her head no.

"Pick one for yourself, the one you feel connected to."

It took a few minutes, but Jay found the perfect one for her. It felt right when she picked it up, and she studied it before deciding.

"Perfect," the woman smiled, then made her way to the counter. As she rung up Jay's items, she seemed thoughtful.