Dreams

Chapter twenty-six

A dragon.

A freaking real-life dragon. In the flesh.

"Holy..."

It was huge -typically- with green scales as skin and black matching horns on its head. It wasn't breathing fire...yet. Its tail swished in the air, wings flapping gently. I found myself taking a few backward steps, dimly aware of the hot liquid from my mug that seeped through the material of my pants, causing a sting.

"Which one of you did this?" Asked Aaron, eyeing us all.

"It wasn't me." I blurted.

"It was none of us," said Mikah, Val stood by his side like a shadow neither smiling or pouting for a change.

"How could it be none of you? Who else...?" The question lingered in the air.

"Is it friendly?" Asked Aaron, staring at the dragon which looked like it was about to land.

I glared at him, "Does it matter if it's friendly or not?"

"Yes. Have you seen any fantasy movies? Dragons are awesome."

I groaned, "It could kill us."

"Not really," said Aaron.

"Did you forget that dragons can breathe fire? It's going to burn us into ashes," said Felix.

"No. But you keep forgetting this is all just a dream. We'll be fine when we wake up," Aaron shot back.

I tried to breathe normally again, tried to relax and stop freaking out. Aaron was right, I was forgetting that all of this wasn't real.

"Why would someone send this thing over? To scare us? What's the point?" I asked.

"What's the point of any of this? We're just random people stuck in these dreams that aren't normal", said Felix.

"Stuck...", echoed Val.

"Does she do that a lot?" Whisper-asked Aaron.

I ignored him. "So what now? We can't keep coming back here forever."

"You won't," said Mikah, "no one knows why or how but in the end it'll stop. You'll disappear permanently from whatever this is. It happens to all of them."

"All of them?" Aaron asked, eyebrows raised sceptically.

"You think you two are the only ones who've ever experienced this." Mikah laughed.

"Three. We were three." I muttered.

"As you people say; whatever. It doens't make a difference. Two, three, four," he brushed his words away with his hand. "There are others like you, and others like me and Val."

"Okay...so?"

"This means these dreams are like fields programmed for you to do what you want to do. It connects with you brains and does as you want. That's roughly how things work. But once in a while things go out of hand. Think of it as..." He paused, searching for a word.

"A glitch," said Aaron, "like a computer glitch. It's not perfect, nothing's perfect, and in these dreams..."

"The glitches make you see things you don't want to. Things hidden in your minds, like worst fears, horrible memories and things like that," Mikah continued.