Dreamland

Chapter Five

"Are you sure?" I asked, not quite able to believe it. "You're not just pretending because you don't want me knowing where we are?" How in the world didn't he know?

"Of course I'm not pretending," Luca said in annoyance. "There's no point in keeping this place, or any pace for that matter, secret. Or at least, I never thought so." He took another good look around, taking in how refreshingly clear and detailed everything was. Or at least that was what I was noticing. I wondered what he saw.

"I don't think we should stay," he said after a while, his gaze turning back to me.

"I can't go out the way I came in, so I think we'd better get exploring," I said, but didn't move. The stillness of this place making me reluctant to find out what thrived on the silence here.

Luca nodded. "I agree," he said and started to walk away from me. He stopped when he realized that I wasn't following. "Alicia? Aren't you coming?"

"Yes," I said. "This place just freaks me out a little." I forced myself to walk up to him.

"I know. But the only way to get out is to keep moving," he said in way of encouragement.

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I don't want to find out what calls a place like that—" I nodded in the direction of the forest "—home."

He didn't say anything and we walked into the forest together.

I kept glancing around me as we walked, searching for any other signs of intelligent life. We couldn't have been the only ones here. Could we?

"Luca?" I asked, glancing at him from the corner of my eye.

"What?"

"What kind of dream is this place?"

"I don't know. It's too empty to be a dream, but too focused to be a daydream. I suppose we could be in a nightmare," he said, looking around to try and puzzle it out.

I thought about it. "If this is a nightmare, then shouldn't some sort of monster be attacking us? Or the world distorted? Or shouldn't a massive amount of somethings be watching us?" that was how my nightmares usually worked. Not like this at all.

"Yes. But you've gotta admit, this place has the potential to be a truly frightening nightmare," he said with a wry smile.

I glanced around me again. "Very true," I agreed. "The stage has been set, but the actors haven't shown up yet."

Luca glanced at me. "Have you started to hear the script yet?" he asked, surprising me so much I stumbled on a fallen tree branch and fell.

"What?"

"What do you think figments do?" he asked in amusement. Stopping, he reached extended a hand to me to help me up.

"Interact with the dreamer, like you said," I said, taking his hand and getting back to my feet.

"Yes, but how do you think we do that?"

"I'm lost. Care to enlighten me?" Sometimes that boy just made no sense. Actually no. Really he made less sense before I touched him. Thank goodness that hasn't worn off yet.

"The dreamer has full control over his or her dream, not us. So we're given a script to follow," he said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. But it really wasn't if you thought about it.

"What, like someone comes up to you and hands you a script a few days before the dream starts?" I didn't think that was likely. So far, from what I'd seen, there was not somewhere where one could memorize a script. Unless there was and I just hadn't seen it yet.