Radicle (Terminal trilogy #2, can stand alone)

8: Space for the night

 (AN: Hoi. I made a random character generator for this story? 

http://orteil.dashnet.org/randomgen/?gen=tQkYDC4S

Maybe it'll prove fun. Makes angels/demons that fit with this universe.)

It was a long time before I found a street I could recognize, and an even longer time before I found Tecie's house. I had the key in my pocket, but I found the door unlocked, and when I went in I found the place to be empty. There wasn't any sign of a struggle, so I figured she must have been wandering as well. I went to bed after grooming my wings, and then I went to sleep.

It was about time I had another dream, and honestly, it was so expected I almost felt relieved. It was night in this dream too. I guess I never really had any dreams about daylight, come to think of it.

Tegan was back too. Tonight, or really, in this dream, we were sitting under a full moon. I was wide awake, but she was starting to doze off. Every so often I would shake her awake, and point at the moon. But eventually the night became cloudy, and we were forced to go inside. Tegan yawned terribly, and I felt awful as I put her to bed.

And then I was suddenly fully in control of my body again, though still in the dream. It had never happened before, and I was unsure of what to do. I ended up going to the bathroom in order to see what I looked like, and found I was myself. I was a different sort of myself though, and I couldn't quite place what was different. I simply looked wrong.

I tried to investigate the house, but found many things to be non-existent. The insides of cupboards were either empty or else filled with unknown white space. Many doors held this emptiness too. And when I went outside, there was a strict parameter on how far I could travel.

Was I supposed to do something to wake up? I returned again to the bedroom that I guessed was my own. I seemed to enjoy organized sports and astronomy. I rummaged through everything I could, but many objects refused to move. I looked at the clock. It was three in the morning. The second hand was not moving, so to be more precise it was twenty seven seconds three-sixteen in the morning.

I went outside, again losing control of my body. I looked to the sky. The clouds were gone, and the moon was being eclipsed. I knew it to be a death omen, but my dream self did not seem scared.

I ran upstairs and woke Tegan up. She was still very tired, and I carried her on my shoulders. The moon was fully eclipsed now, and I started talking to her, explaining how it worked in words I did not know.

Then the moon turned red and I woke up.

It was just twenty minutes after I had gone to bed, but I felt like I had slept the whole night through. I decided to head out again, but I paused on the stairs. Was the roof accessible? I thought it might be grand to take a look at the city from above.

It was, it turned out, and a couple benches were spread on the otherwise flat roof. I noticed someone leaning against the side of the stairwell complex, and when I looked closer, I realized it was Tecie.

"Hi." I said. "Nichael."

"I know that."

"What are you doing up?"

"Watching the stars. What about you?"

"Finished sleeping early."

"Hm."

I tried watching the stars, remembering how my dream self had enjoyed this kind of thing. But I couldn't do it, nor could I identify any of the constellations I knew from Heaven. Some looked familiar, but the sky was so jumbled up it was hard to tell.