Park Chung-Ho blinked slowly, the effects of the anesthesia continuing to keep him in a near-unconscious state. But he just saw Aislinn Nottdottir falling unconscious in his dream, after she had visibly cast the nightmare away. He had to wake up, but it was so difficult. Suddenly, sound exploded in his head. Bips from machines around him, and people yelling. What were they saying?
"Aislinn!"
That was Diane Nottdottir's voice. An anxious voice. Something was bad.
"He's waking up! How is this possible?"
He felt the adrenaline surge in his blood, and all of a sudden, his eyes were wide open, and he was able to sit on the operating table, searching for his friend. His shoulder was in so much pain, but he didn't care; the voice of Aislinn's mother was ripping his heart. He found them both. His friend was lying on the ground, and she wasn't moving.
"I'm... I'm sorry..." he managed to articulate.
He heard people talking close to him, but couldn't understand any words. He felt someone bringing him back to the table. He wasn't able to resist it. His vision blurred again, and all went black.
****************
How much time did he sleep in the end? He couldn't tell. But he finally opened his eyes. Everything was calm. He looked around him and saw a tall man he had never seen before. This man had long black hair, and seemed really strong. He looked like he came from a native tribe from Canada.
"Hello?" he asked. "Who... are you?"
The man didn't answer and went out of the room.
Diane Nòttdottir entered the room. She was smiling at him timidly.
"Hello, Chung-Ho, how do you feel?"
"I'm ok... How is Aislinn? saw her fall... sorry." He was talking slowly, and it was difficult to even form a full sentence. "I... so sorry... My fault."
The woman raised her hands.
"No, you're not at fault, don't worry. She's alive, I'll explain everything once you're out..."
"I'm ready to go... let's get out of here... please."
"We must wait for the doctor first. This has been a complicated surgery, and we must be sure that everything is under control."
The young man tried to sit on the bed, but the faculty headmistress only placed one hand on his chest and pushed him back on the bed.
"See? You haven't recovered yet. Take some rest, the surgery wasn't that long ago."
"Can you tell me... what happened at least?"
"The surgery was going well until the last bits of the beads were to be removed. Then you began to tremble."
She was picturing the night before. She was outside the room when the operation was going on. Her daughter was at the side of the young man, holding his hand while he was in a sleeping state. She saw that moment everything went out of control. The lights were turning low while the young man was trembling. Her daughter stood up at that moment and went straight to her.
"It's him, Mom. It's Albormare. I need to help Chung-Ho. He's pulling him in the depths."
Diane Nottdottir didn't want to describe this part that way.
The young woman came back into the operating room and talked to the doctor. She took one of the shards that had been taken out of the young man's body in her right hand, and took his hand in her left one. The lights turned back to normal, Park Chung-Ho stopped trembling, and the lights came back to normal.
"My daughter took one of the shards in her hand to help her join you in your dream. Then she fell on the ground. Maybe you can recall what happened?"
"The man with the knife... He was there... And he tried to kill me." He paused to breathe. "Aislinn... talked to him... And she ... She made him disappear."
The headmistress nodded.
"Keep your breath. The doctor should be here soon. You need to rest."
He knew that he had spent his first time sleeping without going back into this room full of smoke and fire, but now that he was awake, all he was able to think about was this vision of Aislinn on the ground, her mother above her, crying. He was alone in this room now, alone with his thoughts and guilt.
"Waiting?" he thought, "What for? I need to dream and try to find Aislinn. If I can't go out of this hospital, I need to use my time wisely."
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he was just hearing the sounds of the hospital. The beeps of monitors, the rolling of the trolleys, and the walk of the nurses and doctors. And all this sound wasn't really helping him to sleep.
He grabbed his cellphone from the table at his side.
"What time is it? 4:15 pm? Wait, I've got a text?"
There was a little "1" in red in his messagebox. He clicked on it.
"8.07 pm: That's it. They took you to the surgery bloc. I'll be at your side to help stabilize the nightmare during the extraction. See you once you're up!"
He looked again at the message and shed a tear.
"I'm so sorry," he muttered.
He pressed the nurse's call button, but it was the doctor who entered the room. She was the one who operated him; he could recognize her.
"Hello, Mr. Park," she said. "How are you feeling now that you are awake?"
"Hello, Doctor," the young man answered. "Dizzy... My shoulder is not really painful but… dizzy." He was more awake than before and recovering his speech slowly.
"You will have to go easy on this articulation for a time, and you'll need a lot of reeducation. We managed to make the operation with the least impact on your body, so that you can recover at a good pace. We will monitor you for the next few days before you can leave this unit. Your room is protected and prevents you from going in the dream realm for a better rest. Do you have any questions?"
He did have questions indeed. How was the room protected, for example? How many days would he have to stay in the hospital? But two other matters mattered more to him.
"Yes... Could you tell me if… Aislinn is well? I have a memory… of the surgery and seeing her… on the ground."
"I cannot give you this information, sadly, but maybe her mother can. You seemed to know each other. Anything else?"
"Yes… The shards you extracted… is it possible that I get it?"
"This… I will check if those are still in our hands."
****************
The hospital was quiet and boring. The doctor had given him a vial containing the shards removed from his body, and he was spending a lot of time shaking it and watching the reflection of the sun on it. Diane Nòttdottir visited him in the two other days he stood at the hospital, after her work at the faculty. She came on the third day, when he was able to go back to his place.
"You can stay at our place." She had proposed when she came to get him with the tall man hé had already seen before. "We have a special house where there are rooms with protective runes. Maybe you should explore the dream realm slowly at first. What do you think?"
"I... Madame Headmistress..."
"We're not at the faculty. You can call me Miss Nòttdottir here."
"Miss Nòttdottir, you already did so much for me, and it's because of me that your daughter fell unconscious. And since I haven't got any news of her yet... I imagine that she has a problem, maybe a serious one. I wouldn't want to..."
"Listen to me. There is nothing that you did that caused all this. This is all my fault." She took a pause, and he watched her, startled. "I was the one to come up with this idea for the surgery. I was the one to ask my daughter if she could assist you. And... Come to the house. I'm sure you have a lot of questions, and I may have some answers for you. Remember? I told you I would explain everything once you're out."
They arrived at a house he had never seen, located on the campus of his faculty. The entrance was outside of the campus, but the remaining part of the house was definitely in the little woods where students often went to clear their minds, and also for a date.
"What is this house?" He asked. "I know where it is located, but I have never seen it before. From the faculty, it looks like a wall; the trees are hiding the roof."
"Welcome to the Dreamers' Society of Norway. This is a place where dreamers can meet and learn. We have a huge library here, and special rooms for dreamers, with runes to protect from some kind of nightmares."
"You said you would explain everything, but this place just brings even more questions."
They entered the house. It was warm. A fire was crackling in the living room, and the heat felt reassuring as they stepped in. There was an open kitchen on their right, with a huge table that looked like it could seat twenty people. In front of the fireplace, there were six seats, two couches, and tables.
"You haven't fully recovered yet, and you need to let your shoulder rest for some more days." She pointed at the sting his arm was in. "We can take care of you here and help you recover faster. We've prepared a room for you here."
"Ok, then. I'll stay for a few days. You're right, my shoulder is really not back in shape yet. I don't even know how I'll manage to follow the courses and do my homework."
"Don't worry about this. If you remember, I know this faculty pretty well." She said this with a smile. "We can make sure you won't miss a thing."
Park Chung-Ho's stomach manifested with a sound that showed he was starving.
"Maybe eating could be nice." He said.
"Sounds like it indeed. Follow me, I'll show you the room. Sasha will make us dinner."
The tall man nodded and started to cook while Diane Nòttdottir showed a door close to the kitchen. It led to a corridor with several rooms on the sides. They went to the last room on the right.
"This will be your room." The woman said. "
She opened the door, and they stepped in. The young man noticed that it was around the same size as his room in the dormitory. There was a window with a DreamCatcher in front of it. Chung-Ho also noticed that there was a cat flap on the door, but he hadn't seen a cat yet, though. The bed was made of wood, and some inscriptions were visible on it.
"There is a cat in this house?" he asked, showing the catflap.
"There is more than one. You'll meet them soon."
She opened the door opposite the room. Aislinn was there, on a bed, with a lot of monitors around her. The young man stepped slowly in her direction. The rest of the room was invisible, as his focus was only on her face. She seemed so quiet.
"Is she sleeping?" he asked.
"She's in a kind of coma. We monitor and hydrate her like in a hospital, but this room is full of protection to try to avoid her being in a difficult nightmare."
"I would only like to help her awake. Tell me if I can do something, please."
"For now, you need to eat and rest. It's almost eleven, and tomorrow, I will show you the library."
"You know I will have a lot of questions, right?"
"We'll take the time for those questions tomorrow, too. Don't worry."
****************
The man called Sasha was really a good cook. Or maybe the food at the hospital wasn't that great. It was probably a bit of both. When Park Chung-Ho got into his room, he had a full stomach, and his digestion accelerated his exhaustion. He lay on the bed, fully dressed. Exhaustion was taking the best of him. Sleep was coming, but before he collapsed, he heard a cat entering the room, and he felt it jumping on his chest and purring. This started Park Chung-Ho's sleep.
Everything was dark, except for a small twinkling light that seemed to come to him. The light touched him, and everything became bright around him. Suddenly, he realised that he was in a bed, but he couldn't determine where. Aislinn was sitting on a chair close to the bed where he sat.
"Aislinn? Are you back? I'm so glad !"
"No," She smiled, but it wasn't from joy, "I'm not back yet. This is only your dream."
"How can you be here then?"
"Right now, you're sleeping, and you entered the Dream Realm. This place is special. I created it for us. It's a Safe Place. No one else can enter it. By the way, I'm happy that the surgery went well and that you're out of the hospital. I was a bit worried."
"A Safe Place? What do you mean?"
"First of all, I'm sorry that I kissed you, but that was the only way for me to give you a part of my essence..."
"You're what?"
"My essence. Oh well... I think you went through a lot the night of your operation and discovered a lot of things, so..." She looked at him, and she seemed concerned. "I fear that I will have to give you even more information, so... long story short, I'm a dream, now trapped in the depths of the Nightmare's Realm, and I kissed you to share a part of my dream essence so that I can create a domain and manifest to explain this to you." She saw his facial expression, only confusion. "And I lost you on this one."
She let a few seconds for Park Chung-Ho to process.
"Wait..." He looked at her in an interrogative way. "What do you mean when you say that you're a dream?"
"Half Human and half Dream. My mom is human, and my dad is a dream."
"This is... possible? How?"
"Well... I'm not sure I want to know how they... You know."
There was an awkward silence, then the young woman talked again.
"I created this place for your safety. You should not tell anyone about it."
"Why?"
"My mother wouldn't understand why I did this. I will explain everything you want, day by day. This is a promise."
"Ok. You insisted on the safety of this place, I get it. But if this place is for me, what about you? Are you safe?"
"You shouldn't worry about me. I'm in my element. As I said, I'm a dream."
"You talked about your real self and about your essence. Am I talking to you or to a projection or something?"
"That's an interesting question !" She seemed delighted that he asked this. "OK, let's imagine you're dreaming about someone, ok?"
"Ok."
"If you dream about someone, you create a projection of what you know about that person and what you imagine. This is only you who is creating a small place in the dream realm, where you can project your feelings, your thinking, etc, but the person you dream of isn't here. It's only what you think that is shown to you. The place we are now is built on my essence. That means that this isn't you dreaming of it; it's me who brought you in with my essence. That's the reason why I gave it to you."
"But this means you escaped, and we can bring you back from here, right?"
"Sadly, this isn't me, but a small part of my Dream essence, or Dream-Me if you want. Bringing me back isn't what you should worry about, yet. For now, what we should focus on is getting you used to the Dream Realm. As for today, I think you should get some sleep. We'll speak again tomorrow. I'm really happy to see you again, Chung-Ho."
Park Chung-Ho saw nothing more. Everything became pure darkness, and no more dreams happened that night. Aislinn didn't lie to him; he was in a safe place.