Gravity Rises (S3)

LC: Part Three

That night, Fidds lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling and seeing only the river beneath the cliff.

To his chest he held a book. It wasn't much to look at — just a simple poly-bound notebook with a plain blue cover. But this book was far from simple. According to Lilith, this book would unlock Fidds' mental powers.

"Every morning," she'd instructed, "write in this book whatever you remember about your dreams. The more you write them down, the easier they'll be to remember, and the more you can wake up your mind without waking your body. Now, you just write down what happens in your dreams, what you feel, things like that. Then come back next week and tell me how it goes."

She'd referred to it as a dream journal. He liked that. It made him feel bigger, better, more important.

Now, as he lay in the dying sunlight, he clutched the dream journal to him like a lifeline.

Everything he'd learned today was amazing. Almost too amazing to believe. But if Lilith could teach herself to fly — the possibilities were endless. For the rest of the day, after he'd left her shack, he'd found himself daydreaming about, well, dreams. He imagined what he could do, imagined what he could see, imagined what it would be like to come alive in his sleep and live in a world all his own. He daydreamed his way through dinner (which he was late for), through getting spanked for his tardiness, through parental lectures, through more spanking, and through getting sent to bed early.

Well, bed was the best place to dream, anyway.

It was still light outside when he got sent to his room, so he simply held his new dream journal and continued to daydream. Or, evening-dream? He imagined using the powers of the mind to grow huge and squash those mean bullies like bugs. He imagined swimming in the depths of the ocean and discovering the magical life there. He imagined building the world's sleekest machine that could do a million things at once.

Sunset bled into starlight. Fidds gradually slipped into sleep — and with it, dreams.

But he was so busy dreaming while awake that he hardly noticed the transition.

~~~~~

The first week passed without much incident. Fidds still got beat up — "We was worried you got eaten by the witch. Thanks for comin' back so we could pound ya!" — still got humiliated in front of the entire class — "Fiddleford, if you don't sit up and pay attention, I'll send you to the principal's office." — and still had household chores. But everything seemed better now. Even though nothing around him had changed, Fidds had changed.

He started waking up earlier so he could write in his dream journal. At first, he had almost nothing to write, but by the time a week had passed, he was remembering full narratives from his dreams. Some of those dreams were nightmares, and he shuddered to write them down — but Lilith had said told him to write whatever he could remember. Maybe if he wrote the nightmares down, they'd go away.

When it had been exactly a week, he went back to Lilith's shack. He checked his tail often as he went, afraid of getting ambushed, but he made it to her without incident. Lilith acted happy to see him — happier than anyone else did. She praised him for his efforts in dream journaling; she thanked him for the visit; she told him he was special. A strange feeling flooded through Fidds' limbs as he basked in the warmth of her smile.

That day, Lilith taught him about reality checks. "Every hour or so, you stop and make sure you're not dreaming. Once you get in the habit, it'll transfer to your dreams, and you'll become aware. You'll become lucid."

Lucid. Fidds turned the word over in his head as he left for home. The next week, he tried the reality checks that Lilith had taught him. The checks themselves weren't hard — counting fingers, pulling on loose bits of skin, holding his breath — but remembering to do them was difficult. He would get so caught up in the minutia of life that he'd completely forget. Then he'd remember that night, when it was too late, and get irritated with himself.