Mon Autre Vie
4
in which recurrence is a pain
When Tohru her hands were in her hair, her head was bent backward toward the ceiling, and her breathe came in shallow gasps.
Peach. Mango. Apricot. Cantaloupe. Strawberry. You can't fight the sea.
Every night it was the same. For two weeks she'd woken up gasping, rubbing salt from her eyes and trying not to focus on the fact that every night he smiled, every night he named her something new, and every night the ocean drowned him before her eyes.
The unfairness of it clenched at her, made her angry though she had no reason to be. Figments of her imagination should not command her happiness, her sadness. But it was all starting to, and that frightened Tohru more than anything she'd felt in months. If she let dreams about a non-existent figure dictate her emotions, then the implications for her reactions to other dreams were terrifying. What if she got so caught up in a dream, it would not let her go?
For anyone else, the fear was illogical, but Tohru knew better. She could call to mind in an instant the vision of lights flashing around her, the sound of voices, the honking horns and sirens that knifed through the dark to burrow in her ears. She could remember seeing a face above her, remember hands picking her up, and then sleeping. Though she never wanted to, she could still remember what it was like to go to sleep and dream and not wake up.
Tohru moved her hands down to her chest, counting to calm herself. She deliberately emptied her mind of anything, including the boy and the sea. For a year sleep and dreaming had held her prisoner, had clutched her body tightly in the dark and kept her there. But Tohru was alive now, and she would not be ruled by dreams again. This would pass, just like everything else. All she had to do was wait it out. If she studied and worked and ate and laughed, sooner or later the dream would stop. After all, she was happy here.
.~^^+^^~.