𝐈𝐧 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 (English)

Chapter 18

The library stretched up for what looked like forever. It was a roughly circular room, like a long tube, with the walls on every side covered with metallic bookshelves. Every tome within was bright orange in colour, and there were staircases at the north and south points on each floor. There was no floor itself in the centre, as he'd entered the dream on one of the circular floors around the outer edge. Jaune stepped to the metal balustrade and looked over and down. A vast, seemingly bottomless cavern looked back up at him.

And given this was someone's dream, it might very well be bottomless.

Stepping back, he looked about his floor but there wasn't much to see. There were books and bookshelves of course, but that was it. The books didn't even have titles on them. They were marked with codes. Jaune ran his fingers over one that read BA612FS19. The one next to it was BA612FS20. The numbers went up, each book placed perfectly in order in an almost satisfying manner. This was an obsessive compulsive's dream, and even if he wasn't that, he could appreciate the neatness of it all.

Jaune wondered if that means he was in the dream of someone who was very organised and disciplined. It was an interesting thought experiment; most nightmares demanded his attention immediately, and he didn't get much time to look around. Come to think of it, most dreams were blurry and indistinct around the edges, the dream fading into nothingness once it was out of sight of the dreamer. He couldn't see anyone here, but every detail was crystal clear. Though, to be fair, they could have been one floor above or below him for all he knew.

"This is creepy," he said out loud. The library was so quiet – absolutely toneless – that he needed to hear his voice. He didn't think he'd ever heard this level of silence before. Normally, there was always an undercurrent of noise wherever you were. Insects, animals, the wind, or just the hustle and bustle of people.

There was nothing here.

It was true silence if such a thing even existed. It was getting so bad that, when he stood still, he could almost hear the sound of his own blood rushing through his veins, or the roar of his breath being inhaled into his lungs. When he moved, his footsteps were deafening. The metal floor didn't help, but nor did it take away from the fact that there was zero sound to be had. None at all.

Where was the dreamer? Where was the nightmare?

Was this what it was like to be in someone's head when they weren't dreaming?

It was a possibility. He hadn't done it before, but maybe if no one in Beacon was dreaming, this was what happened.

That doesn't make sense, he thought. The psychology textbooks said that everyone dreams all the time – we just don't remember it. A person can have thousands of dreams in a single night. It's literally impossible for every single person in Beacon to not dream at the same time.

The textbooks could be wrong, of course, but it was much more likely he was wrong, and that he was just not understanding this nightmare. Isolation was a form of torture, right? Sensory deprivation, too. Maybe that was the nightmare. Someone might be trapped in this, utterly alone and frightened out their mind, with neither sight nor sound of other life. Jaune tried hard not to think that was him in this case.

"I'm not the dreamer." His voice echoed. "Stop freaking out. This is someone else's nightmare." Jaune shivered, even though there was no temperature that could be felt. "I guess I'll just head upwards. It'll give me something to do at least."

His footsteps rung out loudly on the metal flooring as he made his way to the first staircase. It, too, was metal, and not the industrial kind that might have been in a warehouse, either. It was sleek and smooth, clean, with sharp edges and shiny chrome finish. Jaune doubted anyone had ever walked on it before. Did the clean floor represent a clean mind? Or maybe it represented a desire for control over a normally cluttered life. It was all theory at the end of the day, but thinking about it helped take his mind off the isolation.