FEEDING A DREAM
PART THREE
THE AWAKENING
Quick Author Note- (I don't like dramatic irony.)
Azusa's senses reeled in confusion when something pulled her out of somewhere. She was too dazed to tell what either one was, or if she was even alive or dead. Cold hands were compressing her chest, like some crude form of CPR from someone who didn't know what they were doing. Azusa blinked her eyes open, wincing at the water in them. Above her was...No, it wasn't Yui, but it looked almost exactly like her, but Azusa knew it wasn't. Long brown hair, the same childlike facial features, same body measurements, no clothes, but Azusa knew it wasn't Yui. She also was fully aware that her own clothes were gone too, replaced by her old high school uniform.
"You're awake! Oh thank goodness. You shouldn't be out in the dark like that!" Her rescuer seemed relieved. Next to Azusa was that rushing red river, surrounded by a dead gray scale forest with a bright blue sky overhead. No sun.
Azusa tried to speak, but only coughed up some sort of foul tasting liquid. Not blood, thankfully, more like bile. After coughing, she managed to sit up, and choke out, "This...this place... I know this place..."
This Yui lookalike tilted her head, like Azusa had said something stupid, "Well yeah, this is the only place where the Darkness can't ever reach. Why would you go anywhere else? Were you looking for someone?"
"Yui-senpai!" Azusa immediately replied, and got to her feet, "This is where she's at! She has to be here. Please help me look! She looks like you, but with shorter hair and-"
"Mikomi?" She was interrupted.
"Who?" This was getting more and more confusing by the second for Azusa.
"My sister!" This strange girl tried to take Azusa's hand, but she instinctively flinched away, "I can't take you to her, because He's mad at her, because she never follows the rules and goes into the Dark without asking. He'll be mad at you too since you were in the dark without asking. If you want to be safe, go to Ulthar. They can't kill you there."
Azusa turned away, knowing this was pointless and leading nowhere. She marched off without saying anything, terrified that this girl would react negatively, or even violently. Everything so far had just been a lie or trick to make her let her guard down, and she wasn't going to fall for it again. The river next to her was frozen solid, just like her dream, and her body and clothes were completely dry too. It was hard to believe that what happened last night was even real now.
Luckily, that strange Yui-lookalike didn't go after her, but simply said, "If you do find her...tell her that I'm sorry for what I did... and that I don't deserve her forgiveness."
"Will do." Azusa nodded back, not planning to actually do that at all. Her goal was simple now, and it made her almost feel giddy. All she had to do was follow the river this way (she knew it was this was) until she came to that clearing where Yui would be. She was still exhausted and weakened from that encounter with what had been posing as Sawako, but she was in the home stretch. After everything she had gone through, it was finally over; no more signs of danger. Pushing through fatigue and pain, she smiled for the first time since she had stepped into the woods. Maybe by the end of this, she would learn the secrets of these woods, and what controlled them, but part of her really didn't want to know. Demons hunted in the fog, memories echoed in empty space, black mist destroyed the plant life... Azusa was sure she wasn't in her own world anymore.
A light chitter from some sort of animal broke her out of her train of thought, startling her just a bit. Just how far had she walked? There wasn't any mist or fog, but that weird girl was gone now from sight. Azusa looked around for the source of that sound, and found it sitting atop a dead sun bleached log. Despite herself, she blurted out, "Kawaii!"
Sitting a few meters away was an animal hardly larger than a cat, but nothing like she had ever seen. It almost looked like a little fluffy monkey with long coarse fur, long narrow, pointed ears at the side of its head; and green catlike eyes with black pupils. The most interesting feature was its nose, which reminded Azusa of the nose of a certain kind of mole with all the little feelers around it. These feelers looked more like narrow benign tentacles that went all the way down past its tiny little mouth. It was weird but utterly adorable. Its little green eyes looked up at Azusa, wide with curiosity. The twin-tailed dreamer was just glad to find something here that wasn't trying to molest her. Something like that was just too small to be dangerous or even predator against something her size. She took a step closer to it and it leaned its head forward, observing her from head to toe. It made a cute little noise like a squirrel and Azusa giggled, covering her mouth with the tips of her fingers out of habit. Like a neighborhood cat, she just wanted to pet it briefly before going on her way. Any sort of thing that would boost her dwindling spirits was needed at this point. Much to her relief, it moved just a little closer to her, eyes still focused. Those eyes were drawn to her hand as she reached out to pet it.
Before Azusa had time to even register what was happening, the thing leaped at her arm, its tiny humanlike hands grabbing around her wrists. Its weight pulled the exhausted girl down towards it, as it yanked her hand towards it, shoving her small fingers into its wide, toothy maw. Azusa screamed out in shock and pain as tiny, razor sharp teeth ground and tore at the middle and ring finger of her left hand. At the same time, she felt stupid for falling for another trap here. Fighting through the searing agony of having her fingers torn apart, she used her other hand to yank its little fingers off her wrists. She succeeded, but not without it leaving a light bleeding cut right before her hand. With a quick yank, she tried to free her hand from the monster. Her hand came free, but the sudden release from its grasp sent her stumbling back a couple meters, resulting with her falling on her back.
This is it. It's going to pounce on me and chew my throat out... I'm sorry I couldn't make it Yui-senpai...
As if only to add to her confusion, a group of creatures she recognized came to apparently fight for her. Lying on her back, she watched as swarms of house cats appeared from the way she had come, charging after the wretched little beast. Lifting her head just a bit, she watched it bound off on all fours into the dead woods as the horde of dozens of house cats went after it. Her life had been saved by the animal Yui most associated her with. Was this some sort of irony? Whatever the case, Azusa now knew not to touch or interact with anything here anymore.
Now let's see how bad it got me. My hand hurts so much that I can't even feel my two fingers...I hope it didn't get me too bad. It was only a little thing so ma-
Her thought process ended when she struggled to lift her arm and look at the damage. In place of those two fingers were lacerated bloody stumps just above the knuckle, with little shards and splinters of bone jutting out. Blood poured out at a rapid pace, spilling down her arm in streams of red. Azusa struggled not to pass out from fright then and there. There was no way to survive an injury like that with how weak she already was. Tears were billowing out of her eyes as she just lay there, cradling her mutilated hand against her chest. Those tears turned into wailing sobs; the cries of a defeated traveler.
I'll never play guitar again like this...assuming I don't die... The woods, the monsters, the river, those all could have killed me, but a little animal is what does it! This isn't fair! I worked so hard, and I love Yui-senpai so much! How can something like this end all of it!
She took ragged, deep breaths, using her good hand to push herself into a sitting position. Azusa couldn't spare another glance at her wounds. It was too sickening. Quickly, she wrapped up her hand with the edge of her t-shirt and held it firmly in place. It wasn't anything close to comfortable, but it sort of stopped her hand from bleeding everywhere. No. This was not the end. She would keep going until something ripped her beating her heart from her chest. It was hard to get to her feet again, but she managed. And she began again, step by step down the side of the frozen river of red. Now her step was a limp, and her pace was pathetic.
From across the river, Azusa saw Jun and Ui standing along the bank, but didn't fall for it. They looked years younger, wearing the same school uniform. Jun called to her, "Azusa-chan, just come back. It's not too late!"
"You don't know where you're going!" Ui pointed out as well.
Azusa gritted her teeth, trying to shut out the illusions, "I know exactly where I'm going!"
She passed those two, glad that they didn't pursue. It made her wonder if the first encounter with Jun in the woods, where she had been calling her name, had been real. Perhaps Jun and her were at the same point in different worlds, and only Azusa could hear her. Any random theory was as good as the next, and Azusa wasn't even sure why she even bothered trying to apply any sort of reason or logic towards anything that occurred here. Another theory was that she had died the day she went into the woods for the first time, when the thorns scraped her up. Maybe she had been killed somehow and this was just an endless dream, or even coma she couldn't wake up from. But did that mean she was invincible here if she was already dead? Azusa didn't feel invincible at all, she felt like she was going to fall over and just die at any moment now. And for some reason, she was still upset about never being able to play guitar again with her fingers gone. Something like that shouldn't have even mattered. Thinking was good though, it kept her mind away from the pain in her hand.
Beneath her, the amount of dead leaves was steadily becoming greater, making her passage much louder than it had been moments earlier. Echoing above that sound was another oddity in her never ending tale of bizarre; the notes of an acoustic guitar echoing throughout the trees, its direction impossible to discern. Azusa's spirits were renewed when she placed that tune. It was My Love Is A Stapler, finger picked on an acoustic guitar. That had to have been Yui, calling Azusa to her in her own way. She picked up her pace as fast as she could without losing her balance with all her injuries and ailments, desperate to make it to Yui.
There was one last obstacle though. One more person who wanted to stop her. Azusa's pace slowed down to halt when she met this last person standing where the forest began to clear, her destination. This girl stood there with long black pig-tails, a nondescript white shirt over tight red shorts; body covered in small cuts and bandages.
Azusa was looking at herself.
And herself said, "Why are you doing this? Why are you so willing to leave everyone you love behind to be with one friend whom the world has forgotten about? Forget about her too, and just come home where your parents miss you. Stop chasing ghosts."
Azusa took a deep breath, feeling those words set in. She replied in a voice that was barely above a whisper, "She isn't a ghost. She's my best friend and I love her and won't ever forget her."
"You could have had everything, you know that right?" The copy of her was circling her now, "You were smart, musically gifted, lots of loving friends, and you threw that all away to follow down a self-destructive path. Yui was a great friend, but she would have only held you back. This was an opportunity, and it was wasted."
"Yui-senpai didn't hold me back, she drove me forward." Azusa retorted, circling her doppelganger as well.
"Look there..." The copy pointed at a body lying at the bank of the river. Azusa was unsure how she missed that. White shirt, red shorts, black hair sprawled out wildly around them, this was a third Azusa, "...That's you, the real you, us. This is a real place near our home, but it's been altered a little bit as you see. We have to go back, we're both the same person, so it doesn't matter who does it, but we can't leave as long as one of us wants to stay."
"I don't understand." Azusa just blinked, quickly becoming overwhelmed by this all.
Her other half stopped the circling and pacing, "We're the same person, just split by our desires. You want to be with Yui, I don't. Neither of us can leave or see Yui until we both come to a verdict."
She almost felt herself listening to this mockery, but realized this was just another in a long line of lies and tricks to mislead her. It was a clever rouse, but Azusa saw through this one, "Stop, just stop, I know this is another trick to stop me from getting to Yui-senpai. Why can't I just be with her? Why!"
The other Azusa's appearance melted away like water, changing height and taking on the form of another familiar face. This time it was Azusa's mother, "Azusa-chan, you don't understand, you aren't allowed to be here. Just go home, we're all waiting for you."
"That doesn't answer my question!" Azusa shouted in frustration, pulling her hair with her one good hand, "I don't care if I'm not allowed to be wherever this is! I just want to be with Yui! That's all I want now!" She unraveled the bloodied cloth around her hand and raised her grievous injury for her 'mother' to see. The woman didn't react in any way as she continued, "I gave up my other love for this; guitar playing. You can't just tell me to go home!"
"I didn't lie though, Azusa-chan." The thing wearing her mother's face said in an eerie mockery of her real mother's caring tone. She stepped towards the third Azusa (which was now just Azusa #2), and looked down at her, "That is you, that is your waking body."
"So this is just a dream." Azusa muttered, finding some relief in that thought. But if it was a dream, how could it have gone on so long, be so vivid, and hurt so real?
"If it is a dream, you're not the one dreaming." Her mother had somehow heard her low whisper, "I have no power to stop you, only the Pharaoh can do that, and your presence means nothing to him. Dreams are a mysterious thing Azusa-chan, and you would do well to think on that before making a decision. You and the one you seek have a strong attachment to this dream. One that is abnormal for people like you; almost unheard of. The only thing that keeps you from her is your living body, anchoring you to your home."
She didn't even understand half of that, but got the part about her physical body stopping her progress. All of this was so sudden, too hard for her to take in and fully grasp, "Why are you telling me all of this if you don't want me near Yui-senpai?"
"No, no, no, it's not Yui that's the problem. It's that you shouldn't be here at all." The mysterious information bearer placed a hand on Azusa's shoulder, "You change these woods wherever you go, warping them with your emotions until they're as dead as you feel. It affects more than you think, and for that, you can't be here any longer. Go back to the life where you came from."
NO!
The sudden burst of anger that one felt upon waking suddenly surged through Azusa as she bolted up right from lying on her back. She was in the woods again, but they were the way they should have been, all colored in now. It was still winter, bathing the forest in shades of dull browns and grays, but at least it looked natural again. The fog was gone, and the sounds of insects, birds, and distant cars rang in her ears. Azusa raised her left hand, and laughed aloud with relief when she saw that all five fingers were there; although blood was still stained all up her arm from the horrible wound. It was over though. That twisted foray into an unspeakable nightmare was now over. To Azusa, it felt horribly anti-climatic. Everything that had happened, it just ended abruptly after a brief explanation of things that Azusa didn't understand in the slightest. The Pharaoh? Another person's dream? None of that made any sense.
Behind her, a shallow stream of water trickled through the winter woods, and nearby was the stump of a long forgotten tree. Azusa recognized this place, this was where she had stopped to rest and found that little girl. Back at the beginning it looked like, with no progress made. So what did it all mean then? She had obviously done something right to even get there in the first place, since it wouldn't have made sense that anyone going hiking through the woods would just end up in some scary fog dimension. Or was it all just really a dream within a dream? That shape changer described it like she was dreaming in another dreamer's dream. Why were dreams so god damned confusing!
But that hadn't been a dream. That had been a nightmare. Azusa wanted to dream, and be at Yui's side in that strange realm of fog, just without the horrible monsters trying to eat or rape her. She wanted to feed that dream, nurture it, and never have to live in the waking world ever again now. It was a world with nothing for her, a world where she couldn't be happy again. All her old friends were memories now, and she couldn't just find replacements. Azusa had loved them all, and without them everything just felt hollow.
Down the trail, she heard Jun's frantic voice, "Azusa-chan, there you are!"
Azusa looked up from the ground, and saw her friend rushing towards her. She yawned and asked, "What time is it?"
"Three o'clock, I've been looking for you for hours!" Jun replied. She was panting from running through the forest to find Azusa, "I-Is that blood all over you!"
"I had a nosebleed. A really bad one." She lied, assuming there was still blood around her mouth from the tongue eating.
"What are you doing out here anyway? I thought you ditched me and went home, but your parents didn't know where you were at! So what were you doing?"
Azusa just looked up at the sky and replied, "Feeding a dream."
"What!"
"Nothing," She shook her head, getting to her feet, "Just fell asleep I guess. I still hurt from yesterday. Can you take me home?"
Jun rolled her eyes, "Jeeze, Azusa-chan, you're so weird. Fine, I'll take you home, but you completely ruined today."
"Sorry about that, I guess." The twin-tailed dreamer shrugged, and followed her back. Her mood was better than it had been since her dream the night before. It was a sense of enlightenment, like she knew exactly what she was supposed to do. This body, her body was merely hindrance towards her goal. She went home with Jun, who left after realizing that Azusa wasn't in a sociable mood. Perhaps saying one final farewell to Jun would have been the proper thing to do anymore, but Azusa found herself just not caring anymore. Nihilism was flowing through her veins likes a narcotic that clouded her mind. Nothing in this physical world had any value anymore, and it had taken her seven months and a trip through a nightmare to understand. The world she lived in was so miniscule, an insignificant speck amidst an infinitely huge universe that her mind couldn't even begin to concept. She had been given a gift, though. A chance to explore what existed beyond all time and space; to see worlds unseen.
And above all, she could do it with her best friend at her side.
The chance to exist in a realm dreamed by a being that would never awaken. She just had to take it slow and careful to avoid the infinite amounts of dangers that existed there. Even if it almost killed her, Azusa wanted to go back to that world and find Yui once and for all.
That night she wrote a note, saying a final goodbye, explaining that she couldn't stay here any longer. No reason was given; that wasn't important. Azusa felt guilty for leaving all of them, and couldn't bear to look her parents in the eye one last time or say any sort of goodbye in person. She left her note on the dining room table, silently sneaked into her parent's room and grabbed a small lockbox from under their bed as they slept. Just as silently, she left the house with it under her arms, knowing exactly where to go.
She returned to those miserly woods a third and final time, determined to reach the end of her quest once and for all. The previously hostile wilderness provided her safe passage as she marched confidently to that clearing. It was a merging point between worlds, so she thought; the place where the living fog would roll in and distort space around her. Normally it looked just like a little stump against a narrow stream, but a wide clearing in that other world. This was where she last found Yui, seven months ago, in some strange merging of the two. The stream hadn't been there before, which had thrown off her original attempts to find the place.
The sky was filled with twinkling stars aligned with a bright, pale moon. The woods were dark, but not dark enough to obscure her trek, and there was no sign of the ghastly mist. It didn't take long to find that little spot against the stream, and she promptly sat down and took one last look at those living stars. Azusa could feel the energy of the place around her, raising the tiny hairs on her arm. The sound of a finger picked guitar was far off somewhere: quiet, hardly noticeable, but was the sign she needed to continue. Azusa opened the lockbox, which was always left unlocked, which made the whole purpose of having one completely void.
Her father's Glock 17, the gun metal gray key to another level of existence. Already she was beginning to have second thoughts. What if she was wrong? What if that whole thing about her physical body inhibiting her was a lie? What if death was just a null oblivion? What if all this did was trap her in that nightmare forever?
Compared to the potential benefits, it was a chance worth taking, "Been nice knowing me..."
A single loud BANG resounded throughout the woods. A few people who lived nearby faintly heard it, but just assumed it had been kids lighting off fireworks or something. Azusa's lifeless body slumped over, falling just at the edge of that little stream of water. Blood flowed freely from her mouth and the hole in her head, already attracting all sorts of detestable insects. By the time her body was found, she would have been a breeding ground for all sorts of maggots and beetles.
The sound of a guitar playing rang in Azusa's ears as she fell through darkness, no longer feeling any part of her body. Her ear was attuned enough to realize that someone was picking chords, basic chords that didn't go past the third fret...
Just like how Yui plays! Where are you!
Now the feeling of hardwood was on her back, and florescent lights burned her eyes from above. Another dream? The last dream? Azusa blinked the light away and tried to figure out where she was. A decent sized room with a wooden couch sporting blue cushions, a table made of school desks with chairs resembling the couch, and a blank white board...It was her old club room. Beyond the windows, colors swirled against a black space of nothingness. She blinked once more, and saw that the person she had worked so hard to find was sitting on that couch, playing guitar.
"Yui-senpai!" Azusa nearly screamed, jumping to her feet and throwing herself at her friend. Yui jumped in surprise, and caught Azusa in a tight hug. Neither of them had clothes, but Azusa could care less. Already, tears of happiness were spilling out as she held her best friend, relishing how whole Yui felt again, "It's over, I finally found you!"
Yui held her tight as she cried, putting the guitar down on the ground, "I didn't want you to come here like this, Azu-nyan. Why did you hurt yourself to see me? And if you had gotten too hurt in the woods, you wouldn't have ever been able to dream again!"
Azusa realized how guilty Yui sounded, and tried to explain her motives, "That doesn't matter, I'm here now. At first I just wanted you back in my life, and I thought going through the woods would do that...but I understand now, Yui-senpai, I understand what it was all for."
"Don't cry, Azu-nyan." Yui was trying not to herself.
Azusa sniffled once, and did her best to continue without losing herself to tears, "I did all of that to learn that nothing mattered, and that I didn't know anything. But I do know something, and I something does matter. You matter, Yui-senpai. You matter to me more than anything. I would do it all again to be with you forever!"
"We're together Azu-nyan..." Yui whispered in her ear, "...Forever and always."
After her journey through her nightmare, and destroying her body with a bullet to the brain, Azusa finally got what she wanted. It didn't matter where they were now, and Azusa would never quite understand. Between them and that guitar, Azusa didn't care if they were now in Hell itself. Her crying stopped and she lay with Yui on the couch, wondering just what to say, or if words even mattered anymore between them. Then she remembered something, "On my way here, I met someone who said they knew you..."
"Who was that?" Her long lost senpai asked. Azusa was struggling to get past how articulate she was, and how much more mellow she sounded. Still, seven months in a place like that would do things to a person.
"I don't know, but they wanted to say that they were sorry, and understand if you don't forgive them." Azusa replied.
"That was nice of them." Yui didn't appear to pay much mind.
Another thing popped into Azusa's head, and she sat up and grabbed for the guitar on the ground. Even though she had only lost her two fingers for a few hours, it felt amazing to have them back, "Oh! I wrote you a song while you were gone, and I've been waiting to play it for you!"
"Azu-nyan wrote me a song! I'm so excited to hear it!" That was the Yui she knew. Azusa smiled and struck the first chord for the song of her heart (C major), and using her fingers. The notes rang out across the cosmos, heard by all those who cared to listen. Together again, free to dive into the vortex of chaos that was the universe, hand in hand. Azusa didn't know what her new life here would be like that, but she was with the person she loved once again, and ready to face anything. They couldn't just stay in one place, but luckily Azusa already knew the name of a safe haven. The world Ulthar rang out in her head, a vague destination in the bizarre dreamscape they now resided in.
Yui sang along by just humming along to the tune, and Azusa soon joined in. Just the two of them humming to some arranged chords, but it was the greatest moment of Azusa's existence up to that point. That would become their song, and they would play it wherever they went from now on. Hand in hand they would face the unknown and unseen of what resided beyond time and space, facing all its eldritch horrors and wonders without fear. But mostly they would sit together playing guitar and drinking tea, wondering if any of the others would ever come there too, or if it was possible. Any thing was possible at that point. They held each other close and tight, spinning through space and time into swirling chaos. Azusa found this to be better than anything she could have imagined, living a dream forever. If she was brave enough to face the eldritch mysteries that lurked in the unknown, she felt she was brave enough to just voice her feelings.
"Yui-senpai, I-" She began.
"You don't have to call me senpai anymore." Yui giggled.
For some reason, Azusa found herself blushing, "O-Okay, Yui...chan. But, I wanted to say I love you, and I never stopped loving you while you were gone. You probably already knew that, but I wanted you to hear it from my own lips. Don't feel bad for what happened to me, and what I did, because I couldn't be happy without you."
"Azu-nyan, I-"
Azusa placed the tip of her finger over Yui's lips, silencing her, "Ssh, just hold me for a little bit, that's all I want right now. It's just the two of us now, nothing else matters."
It was just two of them in a world where whatever they imagine could happen, it was just like the old days...but better.
THE END
