The Bridge To Nihon (BOOK ONE)

Chapter 25 - At the Big Tree

Ever since crossing into Nihon, Sofia's dreams had become so vivid that they almost outshone the reality of her experiences.

In her dreams, there were no periods of relief, no calm, no gazing into the distance and quietly absorbing what she beheld. They were wild and fast, jumping from one point to the next with no transition to smoothen the shift, making use of dreams' unique freedom to override the common senses as if they were only an artifice to make life bearable.

Sofia felt breathless inside her dreams, disorientated, yet never questioning their reality until the moment she woke up. She would be soaked in sweat, her body rigid from the contortions her mind had twisted itself into, then suddenly freed from a realm in which she was held prisoner.

There were as many nightmares as there were pleasant dreams, and there was all that went in-between, colorful chaos and bouncy rides. But the exhaustion upon waking was much the same.

The people she encountered during the day, their peculiar get-ups, their movements that sometimes defied the laws of nature, and the contradictions of their characters, formed a parade with no beginning and no end in her dreams. They came out of doors that they had not been supposed to be lurking behind. Sofia would dream that she was sitting in Aunt Sybil's room, studying for her exam, her feet bound to the floor with hard-woven ropes. Then the person she thought was Aunt Sybil turned around, and it was a stranger with a pink, gleaming face and short white spikes for hair, screaming laughter at her confusion.

Confusion was the common sentiment. In her dreams, Sofia kept forgetting and remembering, only to forget again. She changed direction, suddenly realizing that she had to get home as quickly as possible, but then she got lost again, forgetting where she had been supposed to go. She trusted people implicitly and then realized that they were the ones she had been running from. Her legs were leaden when she tried to escape, and she moved as if submerged in water. She forgot to breathe, and then she gasped.

She even fell asleep inside her dream, exhausted by the dream itself, but she always awoke back in reality. In Nihon, with Mica and Kaido. And the dreams were quickly forgotten with the day's new impressions.

Sofia sometimes tried to remember how her dreams had been before she had crossed into Nihon. If there had been anything hinting at things to come as if there had been secret communications that she hadn't paid attention to. She thought about the conversation she had overheard between Aunt Sybil and Mr Borrealis. Aunt Sybil had said that Sofia had been about four years old when she had arrived at the Border Village, but Sofia couldn't believe this. Surely Aunt Sybil must have been mistaken. Or lying. Because ever since Sofia had heard this, she had searched her dreams for glimpses of memory. But there was nothing.

*

They arrived at the Big Tree in the early afternoon. They were staying there for two nights in a row, for Part Eight and Part Nine of the Talareduh.

"Finally, we can have some rest," Mica said. "The constant traveling is wearing me out. I am not a young woman anymore, after all."

She winked as she said this, but they weren't yet in the mood to make jokes about the recent revelations, not even Kaido and Mica. Something had changed for them as well. They had been keeping their secret not just from others, but from themselves as well. Now, it had become more difficult.

Sofia had accepted Mica and Kaido's explanations, and to a degree, she could understand the reasons for their betrayal. But she couldn't shake the feeling that it had been a betrayal after all. It was one thing to change one's appearance to make it more flamboyant, more playful. But what they had done was an outright lie, and every time she looked at them, she wondered what else they were keeping from her.