Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or locations in this story. They belong to Cyan and UbiSoft, not me, and I seek no credit for them.
Just a Bad Dream
The rapid patter of a child's footsteps over the gently whispering desert wind made Katran's eyes flutter open just in time to see a tiny, blurry figure open the door to the bedroom and bolt up on to the bed—right on to Katran's stomach.
"Oof!" she exclaimed, picking her daughter up and setting the trembling child beside her. "Yeesha, darling, what's the matter?"
Yeesha sat huddled in a little ball against her mother's side, eyes wide. She mumbled something that Katran couldn't catch.
"I can't hear you, dear," she said. "You'll have to speak more clearly." Katran held Yeesha with one hand and gently shook Atrus with the other. "Atrus, wake up," she said. "I think something has frightened Yeesha."
Atrus stopped snoring with an abrupt, surprised snort, blinked a few times before he understood what his wife was saying, then felt around on the nightstand for his glasses. He put them on as he sat up. "Oh, no," he said, seeing the quivering little creature sitting between him and Katran. He stroked her cornrows comfortingly. "Little desert bird, did you have a nightmare?" Yeesha nodded and buried her head deeper in her folded arms. "You know dreams can't hurt you, sweetheart. Tell us what happened in your dream."
Katran nodded and hugged Yeesha. "Yes, tell us about it. If you do, it probably won't seem as scary."
"B-b-b-b-but it was horrible!" Yeesha squeaked. "It was the worst dream I ever had! It was like a peyote vision gone all wrong!"
Katran narrowed her eyes. "Yeesha," she said sternly, "where did you learn that word? Have you been sneaking away to spend time with the locals again?"
Yeesha sat up very straight and blushed. "No! No I haven't! I learned it from… from Father's friend, the last time he came to visit." She looked furtively from mother to father, judging their level of gullibility. "I don't know what it means."
"You really have to talk to that friend of yours, Atrus," Katran sighed. "I don't think he understands what's suitable for a child Yeesha's age to hear."
He held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "I've tried, truly Catherine, but you know how he is. It's so difficult to talk to him. I never have any idea if he actually hears what I'm saying—he never says anything in return, he just keeps pushing buttons and pulling levers."
Katran rolled her eyes. "All right, Yeesha," she said, returning her attention to her little girl. "Why was your dream so horrible?"
"Well…" Her voice quivered. "It started out in our house, but it wasn't our house…"
Atrus nodded. "That's the way it always seems to be in dreams."
"It was a strange place with complicated elevators and moving staircases and the power was always going out," Yeesha continued. "I didn't understand why we didn't just have regular stairs… and there were cameras everywhere! And I couldn't talk normally, I kept stopping in mid-sentence, as if I couldn't put the words together the right way. And Mother, your voice was completely different! I could barely recognize you! And Father, your friend was there, but you had to go away somewhere… but we could still see you through a strange sort of imager that worked between Ages, and it was powered by some kind of colored crystals… or something…" She wrinkled her little brow in confusion. "At least, I think it was…"
"What an imagination you have," chuckled Katran.
"But it's not over!" Yeesha grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest like a teddy bear. There was a flash of green light and then my brothers were there!"
"Sirrus and Achenar?" Atrus asked. "But Yeesha, you've never met them. They… they left a long time before you were born, we told you that."
"I know, but they were there! And they were very different from what you and mother had told me about them. Achenar was manly and strong and had a soft spot for monkeys, and never once did he cackle maniacally or try to torture anything. Sirrus was more cackly… a lot more cackly… and I think he might have been a…" Yeesha whispered something into the pillow.
"What was that, dear?" Katran asked.
"A homosexual," Yeesha whispered more loudly. "He seemed rather… flamboyant. And very well-dressed to have spent the last twenty-something years of his life on a rock in the middle of nowhere."
"Er, not that there's anything wrong with that," Atrus stammered in the ensuing awkward silence. "What was that about living on a rock?"
"Oh yes," Yeesha said, "Sirrus lived on a big floating rock full of crystals that exploded, and Achenar lived on a jungle island full of creatures so ugly they'd turn a Wahrk's stomach. Well, except the monkeys. They were charming in their own way, I suppose."
"And how did they get to Tomahna-not-Tomahna?" Katran smiled at Atrus over Yeesha's head. Oh, the things that daughter of theirs thought of sometimes.
"Well… I'm not really sure, but I think Sirrus used some of the crystals that exploded, or at least that's what the necklace said."
"Necklace said?"
"Yes, there was a talking necklace. Or, not a talking necklace, but one that recorded images from the past and showed them to whoever was touching the necklace. It was all very surreal. But Sirrus kidnapped me and took me to a horrible place full of bubbles and flowers and New Age music and aging hippie women with terrible fashion sense! He tied me to this chair and made me look at a rock with holes in it that were like eyes, and then they were glowing, and then I was flying through the air with three very strange people and I was listening to this horribly overdone pop ballad, and then I was a little ball of light being attacked by a strawberry with tentacles—and the strawberry was Sirrus!" Yeesha hugged the pillow tighter. "It was horrible, absolutely horrible!"
Atrus leaned over and took his girl in his arms. "It certainly sounds horrible. But that's what dreams are sometimes, darling. They take our worst fears and twist them into shapes we don't recognize, but which scare us all the same. This dream of yours sounds very twisted indeed—thank goodness that real life isn't nearly as convoluted as that." He kissed her on the forehead. "But now that you've told it all and seen just how silly it is, is the dream scary any more?" Yeesha shook her head. "Good, little desert bird." He hugged her. "Now, go back to bed, and we'll hope that you don't have any more awful dreams."
"Yes, Father," she said softly. She looked over at her mother, whose eyes were closed and who was breathing softly. "Father, do you think Mother is asleep?" Yeesha whispered.
Atrus smiled. "She probably is. She had a very long day." He yawned and settled back on his pillow. "As did I—be careful not to wake your mother as you go out, darling. I'll see you in the morning." With that, Atrus rolled over and began snoring again just as promptly as he had stopped before.
Yeesha slipped off the bed and tiptoed to the door. As she touched the handle, she had a thought, and quietly walked back to her mother's side of the bed.
"Mother?" she whispered. "May I get a tattoo?"
"Mmmmrrmmrof course…. mmmrrrdear……mrrmrmrrrrmmm…" Katran mumbled, her face half buried in her pillow.
Yeesha grinned and went back to her room.