Dreaming the Impossible
Recently I've been enjoying EmptySurface's "Hear The Silence" fiction set during the 3rd Great Shinobi War. That work has inspired me to try something similar, this is that 'try' at it with a sharp kunai.
Naruto and the Narutoverse are the property of Kishimoto, may the Shinigami forgive him for his sacrilege.
He had always thought...
Dreams aren't real...
How do you know dreams aren't real? Because you wake from them. But what if you do not wake up from one?
He wondered what was going on... why wasn't he waking up... he'd always woken up and shortly forgotten his other dreams, so why was this one so different?
Even more distressing was all his senses were real. He could see, feel warmth, hear sounds, but none of it made any sense, as though he was underwater. Everything was out of focus and the sounds were foreign to him. He went through periods of hyper alertness and then he would fall asleep quickly. At times he dreamed he was being fed, but he would soon be drowsy and fall into forgetfulness.
The dream went on like this for what seemed a long time. Waking to the eerie world that slowly became more in focus each time it happened. How many times he couldn't say. A hundred? Hundreds perhaps? The experience so consumed his senses his mind had no time to make coherent sense of anything. Until...
He wasn't sure when the dream snapped into focus exactly. It was during one of the waking times. He finally understood the sounds were voices speaking some language unfamiliar to him. And his vision was clearing, so that things close became in focus. The first, the face of a woman, one he did not know, but somehow he felt a kinship to her. Her voice was soft and soothing, often putting him at ease and even lulling him into his sleeping periods. After that first time, his mind began formulating some sense out of the dream.
He was dreaming he was a baby. Odd. His dreams had sometimes been of being young, running around with friends or family in disjointed jaunts of imagination. Or he was ageless, neither young nor old, just being whatever he was. But this dream he was a baby, helpless... what would the psychologists think of that? Or Freud or Jung? Perhaps a hidden complex of rejecting his life? Though he didn't know why he'd reject his life. Sure he had regrets like anyone, things not done, or paths taken. But life was that wasn't it? Was there some deep seated regret he hadn't dealt with about his life? He doubted it.
Over many of these dream cycles he continued to wonder when he would wake up. He tried to force himself awake to no use... he'd just startle himself and start crying in the dream and the woman... his dream mother he assumed... would come to him and sooth him with a melodic lullaby he became familiar with. But nothing seemed to wake him from the dream so he decided to just ride it out. He'd done that in dreams before to. Taking them to that point between sleep and wakefulness where you could control them somewhat.
If he was a baby, then he'd focus his energy on growing up out of that babiness he guessed into his adult self-image. He tried during several of the awake cycles. He moved his body around as much as he could, grabbed with his chubby arms, kicked his feet. Several cycles in he managed to roll himself over and start backing up. Several more and he could do a baby pushup. How many cycles had it been? This dream was more work that real life...
No... scratch that... this dream was very much like real life, except this time he was aware of what he was doing every step of the way. But thankfully the periods of dream sleep seemed to be filled with more dreams along the lines he expected. Except that those dreams were of his old life, not this dream life. Odd... He dreamed of his real mother and father, and sisters and brothers. Of life as an adult working his job. His obsession with so many different hobbies and likes and such. His penchant for Anime and fanfiction. Oh boy, wouldn't this be hilarious he thought in one dream. To live out a story from one of those? That dream caused him to awaken in his dream baby body with a cry. Why? Why was he crying if this was merely a dream? A dream he couldn't wake from...
At some point he finally succumbed to the reality... this waking time was no dream... it was reality. Whatever he though was real was the dream. But how could a lowly child like him have such ideas and thoughts. No child carried experience into life... life was the granter of experience. The hardwork of living day to day... of achieving something new... learning about not only one's environment, but one's self. A lifetime built moment by moment, counted in seconds, minutes, hours, days and finally years. Because no one really counts weeks and months... unless you are a youngster where years and unfathomable.
It was around this same time he finally figured out that woman was calling his name...
Hoshi...