Through the Curtain

by The Wolf's Lady Bluebird

The Eden Nightclub will make Eren's dreams come true - for better or for worse.

1. Paradise Found

Back when I could sleep, I should have spent more time doing it.

Naps used to be boring and a waste of time, and bedtime always killed my fun. I can't count the number of all-nighters I dragged myself through during high school. Up until about three weeks ago, sleep was always an afterthought. It wasn't important. I never had a night where I wasn't sure I'd be able to sleep if I tried. I should never have taken sleep for granted. Never.

I should have known better. I barely recall what Mom's laugh sounded like, and the only way I can see what she looked like is through Dad's pictures of her, but there's always been one thing about her that I knew for sure – Mom died because of fatal familial insomnia.

I had Armin look up the disease with me when we were kids. By the time I learned my multiplication tables, I was an expert on FFI. I could list off all the symptoms, the life expectancy, mortality rate, - all those cheerful facts and then some. I definitely knew that FFI was something you could get if your mom or dad had it. It occurred to me that maybe I had inherited Mom's unlucky genetics, but I hadn't seen how the disease worked. I knew what the symptoms were, and what it did to you, but I didn't see Mom lose her mind. Seeing words on paper is never as powerful as real life. FFI never registered as a threat when I was a kid.

That changed about two months ago. One sleepless night a week turned into two missed nights, and then three, and back down to one night, only for me to have a panic attack on kitchen floor. I think Dad already knew what was wrong when he drove me to the doctor, but he still turned as white as a sheet when the results of my test came back.

It's not clear how long I have to live. The average life expectancy after symptoms start to appear is eighteen months, but some people live for a few years. I'm already a rare case because of how young I am. Most people start developing symptoms in their forties. There might be other irregularities with my case. Who knows? Maybe I'll last a couple of years. All that's really for sure is that I'm still in phase one of FFI. The only thing that Stage One really has in store for me is that I'll be spending less and less time asleep. It sucks, but compared to what happens in the other three stages, it's benign.

Stage two is when I'll start to slowly lose my mind. In the meantime, I can look forwards to increasing insomnia, impaired focus, general fatigue, paranoia, panic attacks, emotional instability, temporary sleep deprivation psychosis, and countless worried looks at the dinner table.

Dad got me some medication prescribed for my insomnia, but so far, it hasn't helped at all. My pills just make me woozy and tired for a few hours without actually helping me fall asleep. I got frustrated with them and found a different medication, but that one didn't work either.

Staying home at night is torture. I can't stand lying in bed and being unable to sleep. No matter how many times I change positions or what tricks I try, there are some nights where I just won't fall asleep. I can't even be productive and get some work done because I'm usually too woozy to focus.

Tonight, I couldn't stand staying up with nothing to do. I made a million stupid typos on my bio paper and decided that I wouldn't be able to focus. No matter how many times I changed my position from my side to my back to my stomach, I couldn't sleep. I would go crazy if I spent one more night doing nothing, so I thought that the least I could do was get some fresh air. Sometimes you just need to get away from things, right? I hoped that after I went for a walk for a few hours, I could come back with a clear head and finally grab a few hours of rest.

I left the house with my brain on autopilot and without any clear sense of direction. I just wanted to get away from the quiet house and the sight of Dad asleep at the kitchen table with his face in his papers and pen ink on his fingers. I wanted to get away from everything. That was all that mattered.

Now that I've managed to get away from it all, I don't actually know how to get back.

I'm lost. Completely, utterly lost. After I left the house, I got caught up thinking about what Mikasa and Dad and Armin – or really, just what my friends were doing. I only just pulled myself out of my thoughts, and I have no idea where I am. I've never been in this part of the city before. All the buildings look the same, like big concrete squares without any windows. I don't see any bikes, trash cans, or signs of life at all, which is strange. There also aren't any street signs, which is really strange. I can't imagine how people get around here if all the streets look exactly alike. Personally, I really can't tell whether or not I've just been wandering in circles for the past… I don't know how long. I can't find my watch on my wrist.

I shiver. The walk hasn't cleared my head or woken me up at all. The moon and stars are both such a bright white that it's hard to tell them apart, especially since they're so blurry around the edges. The cold air burns my lungs and settles in my bones, and I feel sore and dull. My head feels mushy, and my thoughts meld together and fall apart at the same time. They run away the moment I try to snatch them, and it's taking all of my concentration to focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

Despite how barren this place is, I'd like to think someone lives here. Maybe someone can give me directions. I need to get home before Dad and Mikasa wake up and start to worry about where I am.

Somebody laughs.

It's a short, high laugh in the utter silence of the night. It takes me by surprise, and it's gone so suddenly that I wonder if I'm imagining things. I mean, I am going to start hallucinating eventually, and I haven't slept in two days –

The laugh comes again. This time it's longer, and I can make out that it's a woman's voice thick with glee.

There's somebody out there. I don't think that I'm dreaming. I can't be, since I never fell asleep in the first place. The laugh is either real, or it's a hallucination. I want to believe that it's not in my head.

I think the laugh came from the street off to my right. I turn down the road and quicken my pace, keeping an eye out for the source of the voice. The snow starts to pour down, and the soft flurries cake the ground. They muffle my steps as I pound down the streets. My breath clouds the air, just like letting off steam, and I giggle a bit at the thought - Oh, crap. I forgot my jacket at home. Mikasa won't be happy if she finds out.

I haven't heard another laugh since the last one faded out, and I'm scared that I'm going to lose the trail when I catch a faint humming sound.

There's a low, persistent buzz in my ear. At first I think that it's my head messing with me, but the sound steadily becomes louder and louder. It feels like someone switched on the car radio and is turning up the volume. In fact, as the sound gets louder, I can definitely tell that it's music. A low, pulsing beat echoes through my ears and down the street. The music doesn't grow unbearably loud, but it makes my head ache, and I can barely hear myself think.

Between the laughter and the music, it seems like there's some kind of party going on. I don't know what kind of people would throw a party on a Tuesday night – or what kind of party they would throw – but I'm not going to think about it too much. I just want to find someone to ask for directions.

I chase the party through the streets, but I don't see any signs of people headed in the same direction. Nobody walks along the sidewalk, and I don't see any cars. I can hear the music just fine, but the laughter has disappeared, and I don't catch the sounds of voices or people moving around.

The streets curve and twist until I'm dizzy and they open up into a wide square that stops me in my tracks.

The buildings are replaced by a wall made of the same pale concrete. I don't see any windows or doors in the wall, just streetlamps around the edges of the square. The wall rings the square on three sides and stretches up to touch the sky. The square itself is empty except for the wide fountain rising out of the cobblestones. I'm amazed that nobody has turned the water off yet. It's December, and not only has the water not been turned off, but it hasn't frozen over. It spills from the mouth of a white marble stallion and splashes into the basin below.

I follow the music right to the far wall of the square, to the one wall that's grossly different from the others. It's been painted over into a bright mural.

The mural is one of animals – all of those that I can name off the top of my head right now, plus many that I can't. Lions bask in the sun with lambs. A horse drinks from a pool with a crocodile – or an alligator, but I think it's a crocodile? – right by its eyes. I'm pretty sure that scaly thing in the trees is a dragon. They're all surrounded by flowers that are too fantastical to be real plants.

I have to get close enough to the animals to cloud them with my breath to make sure they aren't real. It might be that I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes where I want them to be, or that they're painted so vividly, but I swear that the tiger blinked. The shades used for the leopard's fur are so spot-on (pun not intended) that I'm amazed it's not real fur. No matter how elaborate the bird's feathers are, the blending of hues and shades is perfect.

I almost miss the words painted on the dove's wing, and I can barely make out the cursive lettering.

EDEN.

The name sends a shiver down my spine.

My breath quickens, and I press my hand against the wall. I can feel the vibrations of the music through the concrete. The party is definitely behind the wall. The only problem is that I can't see any way to get to the music. The wall doesn't have any door, and it's built high enough to touch the sliver of waning moon hanging in the sky. I can't climb over it unless I want to break my neck.

"Oi, Brat," A voice snaps behind me. I jump. "Are you going to go in or what? You're blocking the entrance, and its fucking cold out."

The man behind me is all sharp edges. Piercing grey eyes scowl out at me from under a crisp black undercut. He stands with his coat pulled tightly around himself and his hands buried in his pockets to ward off the cold.

I'm glad to see another human being, but his sudden appearance, and the words coming out of his mouth, throw me off a bit. "Entrance?" I echo his words and frown at the wall. "You mean right here?" I don't see any door, let alone a doorknob or a button.

The man peers up at me incredulously. "You don't know how to get in? Don't tell me that you've never visited Eden before."

I shake my head. The man's response makes me uneasy. It seems like he expects me to know what I'm doing, and I feel like I've been left out of the loop or forgotten something important.

He sighs and curses lowly. "Perfect. Is there any chance that you're going to leave if I tell you to fuck off?" He asks.

The irritation in his voice sets me off. "What was that for?" I demand, crossing my arms over my chest. "I'm pretty cold and tired myself, but I'm not telling anyone to go fuck off. Do you have a problem with me or something?"

"I have a problem with brats who waste my time," He snaps. "Just answer the question."

I'm sorely tempted to say something along the lines of, "Not until you answer my question,", but he has a point. Arguing won't get either of us over the wall any faster, and it certainly won't change the fact that he's an asshole. Instead of a quip, I tell him, "I'm not going anywhere." I wanted to know what's over the wall before he appeared, but now that he's acting like I should know what I'm doing, he's hardened my resolve.

"Then I have to give you the orientation speech. Pay attention," He says, "because I'm only going to explain this once."

I nod, but he doesn't wait for me to confirm anything before he continues.

"Through that wall – " He gestures towards the mural – "Is Eden. That's easy enough. I'm from the other side of Eden."

Okay. I'm not sure where he's going with this. I got the impression that he was going to explain Eden, not give me his address. "I really don't need to know where you live." I assure him.

"You do," He says. There's no teasing glint in his eye. He's completely serious. "Eden is a nightclub, and you can get in if you want to. You can do whatever the fuck you want. If you do go in, though, you're going to see a lot of people who come from the same place I do. We're from the Other Side."

The capitals are obvious from the way he says the words. He speaks with a certain reverence, even though I don't think he's consciously doing it. It's still not clear why he's telling me any of this, though. "What's so special about living by the nightclub?" The noise must be awful at night, sure, but there's no reason why I would have to know that.

"I'm getting to that," He says impatiently. "Here, Brat – Eden isn't a normal nightclub. Very few of the people in it are normal, and none of the people living around it are anything close to normal. I don't mean that they aren't right in the head. Some of them are pretty fucked up, but it's more than that. They're not human."

I study the man more closely. If he's also from the Other side, then that means he's including himself in that statement. For someone who isn't human, he sure looks exactly like one. His pale cheeks are flushed with the cold, and there's a deep furrow in his brow. Granted, I don't know what he means by 'not human', but he doesn't have glowing red eyes or anything like that.

He believes what he's saying, but that doesn't make it real. I hope he isn't a crazy person or something my brain cooked up. I'll humor him. I don't want to spend too much time thinking about what's real and what's false. "So Eden is filled with…? What? Superhuman beings? Monsters?"

"Dreams," He says curtly. "The Other Side isn't just a place on the other side of Eden, Brat. It's an entirely different world. There's Your Side, where humans live, and there's the Other Side, where dreams live. Eden is the no-man's land in the middle." He pauses for a minute before continuing. "It's a bridge. Humans and dreams can both come to Eden. They can meet each other. Talk, dance, whatever they want."

I have to seize every word coming out of his mouth before it gets lost in my jumbled head. "You're saying that in Eden, dreams are real?"

"Dreams are always real," He corrects me. "They're tangible in Eden."

"All dreams?" He's only mentioned people, but not everybody dreams about human beings. I know that I don't.

"All dreams are tangible in Eden," He agrees. "But not every dream goes to the club."

"What about dreams of objects?" I ask. All of my dreams are about objects. All I want is that one vial, that one syringe, that one bottle of pills – hell, I'd even settle for a recipe on a post-it note. All I want is the object that can cure me.

"I said all dreams, didn't I?" He says. He checks his watch. "That's all I have to say. Brat, if you want to go in, you have to go soon. Eden isn't open forever."

"One last question," I promise. "Can you take dreams from Eden and bring them into the real world?" If I do find my cure, I don't want to keep it in the club. It's mine. I'm going to bring it home, and I'll learn to replicate it so I can share the medication.

He frowns. "That depends,"

"On what?"

"Some dreams don't become real just because you've found them. Some dreams come true the moment you grab them," He glances pointedly over my shoulder to the painted wall. "I have to go. Come with me or stay, whatever you decide after hearing all that. Just choose quickly."

This – me, standing here in the square – is real. Either he's crazy, all of this is in my head, or he's telling the truth. I'm not sure which of those options is correct. Since I was diagnosed, my life has gone a little crazy. It's hard for me to accept that my condition is real. My symptoms just started appearing out of the blue, and someone telling you you're going to stop sleeping and die doesn't sound any more real than this conversation. If the man isn't crazy, then the idea of dreams living in another dimension and turning into people isn't the most surreal thing I've ever heard. On the other hand, I won't be surprised if this whole night is a dream. All of my dreams are fantastical.

I'm not going to walk away from this. I'm not going to call this conversation a figment of my imagination, and I'm not going to label it as the product of this man's scrambled mind. I'm being given an opportunity to find a cure and escape this hellish disease before it gets any worse. I'm not going to turn my back on that.

"I'll come in," I decide.

The man steps around me and feels along the wall. His hand dips into a groove that I didn't notice when I inspected the mural. I thought it was a thick, dark streak to define the dove's wing, but it's clear that I was wrong when he pushes down and the wall starts to rumble.

Nothing in the wall slides away. It's not like the secret passages in movies. One second the wall is intact, and the next, part of it falls away to reveal the entrance. The entrance to Eden is a huge, ragged tunnel cut into the wall. Looking down into the maw of the tunnel, I can't see anything on the other end. Just solid black.

The man steps into the tunnel. Without turning around, he says, "Let's go, Brat. We've already killed too much time."

I hurry after him into the dark.

The moment I step into the mouth of the tunnel, the pounding in my head fades and I become acutely aware of the cold, smooth stone under my feet. It's hard to describe, but being in the tunnel feels like standing in the mouth of a creature holding its breath. Everything goes still the second I step in, and the roar of the music I heard outside abruptly cuts off. The air in the tunnel is colder than the outside air, and it burns my lungs more, but my breath doesn't create misty clouds when I exhale. Every time I try to suck in a breath, something in my chest protests with a sharp pain until all I can do is gasp for air. The man walking in front of me seems unaffected.

The pain continues to build in my chest, and gritting my teeth isn't helping. A pained gasp escapes my throat.

The man stops and turns back to watch me. "Take it easy, Brat. Don't kill yourself." His low voice echoes through the tunnel. He's an inky silhouette in the darkness, but his grey eye glow like pale stars.

"How –" I gasp out. A sharp stab of pain laces through my chest – "How are you not affected?"

"Dreams are just different from humans. You have physical bodies. We don't. When you enter Eden, your bodies have to change in order to interact with ours." His shoulders rise and fall in a dismissive shrug. "That's all I know. I'm not a fucking doctor, so don't ask me to be more specific."

I know that he said he was a dream, and after seeing the entrance to the club appear, I think I believe him, but it's hard to wrap my head around. I don't know what I expected a dream to look like, let alone what one would act like, but he's not what I imagined. He's pretty… actually, I don't know how to describe him. Normal? No, he's not normal. Lifelike? That makes him sound like he's made out of plastic.

Real. He's just… talking to him feels real.

"My name is Eren," I supply. He didn't ask, but we haven't introduced ourselves and it would feel strange not to.

"Levi," He replies. He turns his head to address me. "We're here."

The tunnel has a feeling of limbo that makes it seem to last forever until it suddenly doesn't. I don't even see any light at the end before I'm hit by a blast of noise and heat. I follow Levi into the club and wince at the bring lights flashing around me. The pain in my chest immediately eases up, and I gratefully suck in huge gasps of air. Between the lights and the pounding bodies, I'm starting to warm up. I'm glad that I didn't wear a jacket. If I had, I would already be too hot in Eden.

The club is spherical, with steps leading down from the entrance of the tunnel onto a dance floor at the very bottom of the club. Animal heads carved into the – not black granite, it's more like black glass – spew fountains of water down into a pool looping around the dance floor like a moat. Around the sides of the sphere, a glass walkway spirals up to the top of a crystal dome where the DJ holds court. Glass platforms ringing the walls, connected by more arching glass walkways, are furnished by tables and several bars. Eden smells like snow; crisp, and airy with a touch of stone.

The light in the club – the strobe lights illuminate the dance floor, but those pinks and blues don't reach the upper levels of the dome. Those areas are lit by the huge moon that shines through the dome. It almost blocks out the rest of the sky. That's not possible. This moon isn't a sliver, like I'm sure the one tonight is. This moon is a titan. I know that the Other Side is a different world, but is Eden already a twisted reality?

I forget that Levi is next to me until his voice reverberates in my ear. "Brat, pick your jaw up off the floor before something nasty lands in it. And stop blocking the entrance." Somehow, I'm able to hear Levi's voice over the pounding bass. The music was loud on the outside of the club, and inside Eden, it's almost unbearable. It's loud enough to work its way into my bones and force me to breathe in time to the frantic rhythm.

I step away from the entrance and scan the club. It's huge, and it's going to be a challenge to find my dream in the press of people. "What would you do if you're looking for a specific dream?" I ask Levi.

Levi frowns. "The same things you would do if you wanted a specific person. You try to spot them. You ask around."

"Is there anywhere here where I can find medicine?" I ask hopefully.

Levi shakes his head. "All the drugs here are either illegal or drugs someone dreamed up that would probably still be illegal if the cops knew about them. There's nothing here for a sore throat or a runny nose." Levi still hasn't taken his jacket off, and I can't believe he isn't roasting alive in it. There's no way he's still cold.

"What if I dreamed up the medicine?" I persist. "Then it would be here."

"Brat, I said earlier that not all dreams come to Eden," He's not looking at me while he speaks. Instead, his eyes scan the crowd below us from his place against the wall. "Most of the dreams here are the ones that can move by themselves. The objects tend to stay on the Other Side."

A nervous shiver laces down my spine. "Can humans get to the Other Side?" It would be a cruel joke if the one dream I wanted was out of reach.

Levi's eyes fly to me. "Yes but no."

I blink "What do you mean?"

"Yes, humans can go through, and no, I'm not going to take you to the Other Side."

I'm not going to deny it. "Am I that obvious?" I try instead with a small smile.

He snorts. "Brat, you're an open book." More seriously, he adds, "I don't care why you want to go through. It's a bad idea. Not all dreams are fantasies, and the Other Side isn't a world where unicorns dance on rainbows and shit out cotton candy. Half of the dreams in this club would eat you alive the first chance they got, and most of the other half wouldn't try to stop them. There are nightmares out there, brat, and they're pretty fucking nasty. The monster under your bed that made you piss yourself when you were a kid? That thing's not just in your head anymore. It's out here, in the real world."

I'm not impressed. I live with a nightmare every day, and it's scarier than the monster under my bed ever was. That monster never kept my dad up all night searching for a cure or made my sister sick with worry. The monster under my bed kept me up at night, but not for days at a time. It never threatened to turn me into a vegetable. "I need to find my dream to live." I say.

The furrows in Levi's brow deepen. "You're sick." It's not a question. "That's why you're asking about medicine."

"I got diagnosed with fatal familial insomnia in October," I explain. "It's turned life into hell for my family and me. If I have any chance to fix that, I'll take it. Honestly," I add, "Without the cure, I'm going to die. "Getting eaten alive by a nightmare doesn't scare me. If I fail to find a cure, then I'll die. If I don't try, I'll still die. The only way I can go is forwards. And right now, that means going to the Other Side.

Levi still doesn't say anything. He's just staring at me and frowning, but it's not a disapproving frown or anything like that. He just looks like he's contemplating. "If you won't help me," I try, "then I'll find someone else who will. I'll go through myself if I have to."

His face immediately breaks into a snarl. "Don't be stupid, Brat."

"So you will take me?" I ask.

Levi sighs. "Fucking shit, Brat, you're really never going to stop are you?"

"Is that a yes?" Instead of answering, Levi turns and strides through the crowd. I hurry after him. He has no problem elbowing people and pushing them when they don't move out of his way. I murmur "Sorry, sorry." to them as we pass by.

Levi walks fast for such a short man. I almost have to jog to keep up with his long strides. If we weren't moving through the crowd so quickly, I would probably stop and stare at the people in Eden.

Some of them look perfectly normal, and I wonder if they're dreams or humans. Most of the partygoers are obviously not human. I catch sight of a few men with horns, and there's a woman with nine tails. One woman looks perfectly normal until I see the other side of her face, where the skin peels away and reveals the ragged muscle and bone underneath. She watches me from her table with cold, hungry black eyes until the crowd swallows me up.

I don't know what I expected from the gate to the Other Side, but it wasn't the huge set of gold-embossed double doors rising up before me. Levi stops in front of them so suddenly that I barely avoid running into him.

The doors swing open easily, without a sound, and I'm struck by the feeling that this whole night is surreal. My talk with Levi about dreams outside Eden didn't exactly feel unreal, but I don't understand the concept. I've just accepted it. I'm standing in the club right now, so it's all real. He's not crazy. Not delusional. Maybe I made him up. Maybe this is a dream. In dreams, you don't know that your world isn't real. Maybe this is reality because when you're in a dream, you don't think about what is and isn't real. Maybe this is a lucid dream, and I am dreaming, but I'm also aware of what's going on.

I can't decide. Reality and dream are too closely intertwined in Eden for me to be able to guess what's in my head and what's outside of it. I take a deep breath and try to clear my thoughts. There's no point trying to puzzle over the nature of the club. Levi is waiting for me at the edge of the tunnel, and I can't leave him there.

Peering over Levi's shoulder and into the tunnel to the Other Side, I don't see a single glimmer of light at the end. It reminds me of the tunnel to Eden, except that the first tunnel didn't have any shadows.

I step inside, and Levi lets the doors swing closed behind us. They close without a sound, and an invisible light switches on the moment they shut. It's like someone turned on an overhead light, except there's no clear source of the brightness. It just illuminates a narrow path through the tunnel.

"Stay behind me," Levi's voice is low and doesn't echo in the tunnel. "Stay on the path, otherwise they'll catch you."

"They?" I ask.

Levi nods to the sides of the path.

The shadows along the paths are moving, weaving together and scraping at the edge of the light's reach.

"What are they?" I whisper. There's something slimy and oily about the way the shadows drip over the ground. My stomach twists and I take a step closer to Levi.

"They're just shadows of old dreams."

"Can they hurt you?"

"I don't want to find out. Nothing hat disgusting is going to touch my skin." Levi glances back at me. "You wanted to get to the Other Side, Brat. We need to get a move on if we want to make it in time."

"What do you mean, in time?" I ask.

He keeps his eyes firmly ahead as he answers. "When it's night on the Other Side, time stands still on Your Side. When our sun rises, time starts moving forwards again in your world." He shrugs his wide shoulders. "I don't know exactly how it works, but it means that humans can't be on our side during the day. The differences between the world they're tethered to and the world they're in kills them."

"Oh," I say.

We're quiet for a while after that, but I don't want to spend the trip in silence with the oozing shadows. "Hey, Levi." I ask. "What kind of dream are you?"

He doesn't answer for a moment, and his shadow curls over the walls of the tunnel.

"I don't know," He finally says. "I'm a dream, Brat. That's all that matters."

"What kind of dreams are there?" I ask.

"Fantasies and nightmares. There are dreams that are in between those two, and we call them imperfect. If they're more fantasy than nightmare, they're imperfect fantasies. If it's the other way around, then they're imperfect nightmares. But dreams are subjective, Brat. One dreamer's nightmare could be his enemy's fantasy."

I turn that over in my head. "Do you know who your dreamer is?"

"No. Dreams don't have some sort of instant connection when we meet our dreamers. Most of us don't meet our dreamers in the first place,"

That seems like a lonely existence. I can't imagine never knowing anything about who made me or who I am. It's a sobering thought, and it shuts me up for the rest of the trip.

The path is perfectly straight, but I don't see the door until we're right in front of it.

"Do everything I say," Levi instructs me. "Don't eat anything or drink anything that I don't say is safe. Even if you see me eat it, don't copy me. Don't touch anything that I don't say isn't okay to touch." He keeps eye contact with me, staring me down until I'm squirming and nodding under his gaze.

The doors swing open with a deep groan that shakes the corridor and makes the shadows quiver like nasty Jell-O.

We stand in the middle of a field. Tall, thick grass eddies around my waste. Above us, the sky glows with the same titanous moon we saw in the club, and now it's accompanied by a sea of stars.

The colors are incredibly vivid, as if somebody colored in the world with dark blue and green markers. A flash of silent lightning arcs down onto a spot in the distance.

This world is alive. It's not the lightning that makes my pulse race and eyes devour everything around me. The wind whips at my hair, pulling me forwards even as the grass tangled around my feet and tries to keep me in place. The world has the same smell as the air does before a thunderstorm, like rain and something beginning to burn. When I inhale, the scent makes me feel like the world is holding its breath.

I forget that Levi is here with me until another bolt of lightning, this one closer than the last, illuminates him. He just stands in the grass and watches me with a perfectly still face.

As far as I can see, this world is just a rolling plain of grass. Worry twists in my stomach. This can't be it. A world made of dreams can't just be a field. There has to be cities with impossible architecture. This world needs to be filled with all the dragons and monsters that little kids dream up. There's no way I can find a cure when it's buried in an endless sea of grass.

Levi's voice shakes me out of my thoughts. "You look like someone killed your puppy, Brat." He observes.

I turn to him. "Is this all there is?" I ask nervously. "Is the Other Side just this plain?"

To my relief, he shakes his head. "I'm not going to throw a new dreamer into the most interesting parts of the Other Side. You wouldn't last thirty seconds if I brought you to them tonight. This is a good part of the world for beginners. It's quiet. There's no chance of you making a mess."

I'm glad that a cure is still a possibility, but I want to find it sooner than later. I also want to see these most interesting part of the Other Side. "Can I come back here a second time?" I ask.

Levi doesn't answer for a minute.

"I can't stop you from trying to come through by yourself. Brats like you don't know what they're getting themselves into when they try to do that. It kills them. I'm not going to be responsible for anybody dying because I showed them too much of something they weren't ready for. I'll take you back through sometime."

I'm weirdly touched by his statement, but there's still one question I don't have the answer to. If I want to come back through the gate a second time, I have to find Eden a second time. "How will I find my way back to the club? I don't remember how I got here in the first place."

"Dreamers can find their way back," Levi said. "I don't know how it works, but they always find their way back to Eden."

Suddenly, his jaw clenches, and his gaze locks on something over my shoulder.

I turn to follow his gaze, and my stomach drops when I see the unmistakable glow of the rising sun.

Levi snatches my arm in a vicelike grip. "You have to go,"

I stumble behind him as he steers me towards the gate. "Already?" I ask breathlessly. "We only just got here!" I barely got a chance to look at this world, let alone explore it.

"The tunnel accelerates time,"

We race through the grass towards the gate. Levi's expression is grim as he pulls me across the plain. Normally, I would protest against someone steering me, but I could use the help right now. I have no idea which was is the correct one back to the gate, and if we don't make it, the sun will kill me.

This is the first time I've touched him. His hands are burning hot. He still hasn't taken his jacket off, though.

The gate rises out of the plain, and I plow through the grass towards it. The doors seem a little strange just standing there in the grass without a wall to be set in, but I'm sort of happy that something out here looks as unreal as I expected it to be.

The doors squeal in protest when Levi throws them over, and we dart down the tunnel. Neither of us pay attention to the shadows along the walls. I just try to follow his feet.

I'm panting and still flooded with adrenaline when we burst back into Eden. At the same time, a gong sounds, and the doors, which were in the process of closing behind us, swing wide open once more. The music cuts off, but the silence doesn't last long. Calls of disappointment and goodbye bounce of the side of the spherical club, and Levi has to pull me into a corner to avoid the press of dreams that begin filtering back through the gate.

I glance up at Levi. "Do you have to go?" I ask.

He nods once.

"You'll take me through again, though," I ask, just to make sure.

"I already said I would," He says.

"Promise," I insist. "Promise that you'll take me back through."

Levi rolls his eyes. "What are you, three? I promise. Now come on, Brat. Both of us have to go home."

With that Levi turns to step into the crowd filtering through the gate.

"Wait!" I snatch his arm. "How will I get home?"

He blinks. "Just get outside the club."

Before I can demand a better answer, he shakes off my hand and slips into the throng of dreams. I'm knocked a side by the tide of bodies and lose sight of him instantly.

For a moment, I just stand there and watch the crowd leave through the gate.

That's it. He never said goodbye. Even the words he left behind aren't very helpful. "Just get outside the club." That doesn't explain anything.

Then again, he promised that he'd take me to the Other Side again. Maybe he doesn't want to say goodbye because none of this is final. I hope that's it.

It takes a lot of effort to turn away from the gate and head home.