You know, there was something I wondered since my first few days after arriving at that campus house. (Or perhaps it was some months from my arrival? Forgive me if I can't get the frame right.)
I believe your song affected my mind in some way. Perhaps your voice is still reaching me, in a manner outside of hearing.
You see, the dreams I had back then—they were of you. Over and over again, I saw visions of you in moments I couldn't remember, yet were too real to have simply imagined.
What sort of dreams were they? That's the thing: I have to recount them to remember them. Simply thinking on them doesn't bring their images back. No, it's only by the telling of these dreams that I can again make them real.
Yet what is more, as I replay them in my mind, I swear I can remember them happening in my own life.
As if I lived it through another dimension, in another time.
Just what did your music do to me?
My first dream of you was dark, damp, and putrid with mildew. At once I realized why: you were returning to your chamber on this night, marching up rocky stairs surrounded by guards whose armor clanked and clanged off the narrow, hastily formed walls of living-stone. Just as you had so many nights before, you stooped below sudden dips in the ceiling, and you dutifully followed the man in front, lest you be jabbed by the man in back.
This scene was such a basic fact inside the dream that, while dreaming it, I let it play out without argument. Though I'd only heard a rumor that you were to be locked away before I left, here in my dream, I accepted your imprisonment as fact.
Worse, I realized upon later reflection, was that I did not feel horror or outrage at your loss of freedom. I never shouted my fury out in this dream, never expressed myself to any degree.
Because you had been long mired in this routine of waking up in a lonely tower, descending the stairs, singing for that crowned fool for years and years on end—only to again climb up to your living-stone tower to sleep and repeat it the next sunrise.
So long a time had you endured this, yes, that being trapped did not bring you despair.
Instead, it brought only fatigue.
One day, on your way back up to your living-stone tower, you requested a stay in the dinner hall along the stairway. Your accompanying armored guards all immediately agreed. It had been so long since you'd last eaten, and of course, given such good behavior, you deserved a reward.
Acting on the king's authority, the guards brought the finest of feasts before you: cured meats, crunchy potatoes, chocolate varieties, and wines all around. The regal spread was luxuriant enough that it brought you a glimmer of joy. You imagined sharing the table and all the goods at it with someone you truly cherished—not brutish, armor-clad thugs—and the fatigue faded as you remembered sadly smiling faces and a time of trust and laughter.
Still, you made sure to never show a dour face at the feast. You made merry with the guards instead, talking lightly with them, singing their requested songs and admiring their armor.
They adored you for it all. In every moment they understood the king's need for you to be locked up, to be held as his alone. They saw your charm, your grace, and your colors in flight like a bird kept behind bars.
So enamored were they all that not one noticed you slip the table's heaviest knife into the skirt of your robe.
When I wasn't chasing you within dreams, I chased what traces of you I could find in waking life—though in this world, life seemed erratic as a lucid dream.
The so-called placement test was still some weeks off. Besides physics, it would cover a wide range of subjects: the history of this country, mathematics, and several other sciences.
It struck me as odd to have such a hefty list of prerequisites simply in order to learn. Time passed so quickly here, and lives were cut short so soon. And yet everyone asks so much time of you in order to get much of anything done.
So in that period before the test, I worked at studying. Meiko, Lily, and Ia took time out from their own classwork to instruct me on what I'd need to know and where I could study it. I spent most of my free time following through on their advice.
The best living arrangement I could think of was to simply stay with Meiko, Lily, and Ia. It meant even less space in that squat little home, but Ia was happy to share her room with me. (Yes—the place was so small that this was the only way to make room for me.) Naturally, I offered to do anything I could to pay the kindness back.
At that, Meiko simply said, "If you take that library job Professor Hiyama suggested, you could help with rent and food."
It seemed sensible enough. I had learned by that point this "rent" was an accepted practice in the finite realm: an indefinite, recurring payment for the space you live in.
As if they had time enough for that on top of everything else.
But of course I followed up on the suggestion, and was hired at the university library shortly after. Fortunately, the work was simple: all I was to do was return borrowed books to the shelves on which they belonged. And so I spent hours every day wandering beneath the gaze of towering shelves. Pushing along a cart full of books, I earned my right to exist in this unfitting realm a while longer by putting things in their rightful place.
There wasn't much thought to it. So I'd rarely think about the work itself.
Instead, I went about my work thinking of those precious few moments back in the woods when I'd heard your song.
It brought me comfort to remember hearing it. If nothing else, thinking of it reassured me that this work was all for something: it helped me believe it was all in the service of coming back to you.
Because my hearing that song had to have been your plan—right, dearest? Somehow, some way, you'd figured out a way to guide me where I need to go. Surely, my ending up here, grinding time away, is part of the journey.
It gave me so much hope to think that, truly.
Almost as much hope as the second time your singing reached me.
My mind had just begun to drift when I heard it. I was in the campus library, scanning the spines to spot where to return an advanced astrophysics textbook, my consciousness elsewhere.
Yes, I heard your voice. But as you would know, that was nothing new. Such was simply the way I had of going on, now. In that sleepwalking state in which I worked, it seemed so obvious the melody was only inside my head.
Yet it became clear this was no illusion, as I continued to listen, as I walked along the shelves and the song grew louder.
And as I listened closely, I heard your voice so clearly, so precisely, that I thought you may have been in the library yourself. I came to one shelf, one particular book—and the music resonated so loudly, so rich in color, it was as if you would have smiled at me from between the pages.
What stared back at me, though, was an ordinary textbook.
Alternate Dimensions and Their Mechanics was the title.
I read it cover to cover in the library then and there.
From what I saw in my next dream, appropriating the knife was the hard part of your plan. It took a fairly delicate hand to stash it away in your thin white candle of a robe, out of the guards' sight.
But it didn't exactly make bringing the knife up the stairs, back to your tower room, the "easy part."
You moved slowly up to the tower, taking those uneven steps and low ceilings quite clumsily—even once bumping into the guard behind you. As he brushed against you, there rang out the smallest of clinking sounds. His eyes burned down in that moment, and I wanted to scream to wake myself up.
Yet there wasn't any need. The guard didn't notice. He just grumbled about how slow this night's work was, how he needed to get back home.
It wasn't until late night that you took out the knife and began working away with it. Into the living-stone it dug, plowing deep into the flesh of the building. The knife's edge screeched and squealed against the rock in an awful whine, thought at least at this late hour, none but us would hear it.
But the scraping wasn't nearly as bad as the scream that followed: the shriek of pain from the living-stone, the castle itself.
"Why do you wound me this way?" the castle screamed. "What have I done to you?"
"You imprison me. Even now, you keep an innocent maiden captive. And you have aided in casting another innocent out from us."
"Oh, but I did not wish to," the living-stone answered, sobbing. "Harm me no more, for I was deceived by promises of renovation, of gilded doors and mosaics in every ceiling. I see now that these were deceptions! Please, spare me the pain!"
It seemed the castle was truthful. Yet deception or not, the thought of doing further torture upon it disgusted you, and horrified me. There would be no need for it, either.
Because you said, "Make a pact with me: you shall open a crevice for me, which during its growth I shall hide, and in exchange I will harm you no more."
"This is good," the living-stone said.
It seemed possible—remote, but possible all the same—that the living-stone would not hold fully true to this promise. For this pact was one of trust, not only law. At any moment, the castle might still cry for help from its master.
Yet the pact was already made: a fair deal, without room for amendment. There would have to be a new one to secure yourself against all odds.
"One more pact," you said.
The living-stone laughed. "Do you think I lie?"
You answered simply that it might, and though it laughed again, you went on:
"Make this pact and prove you do not. If you speak no word of my escape to anyone, I will sing a song for only you each night I return. Should you make this pact and be truthful, by accepting it you will risk nothing, yet still gain."
"Then accept I shall," the castle said, and the second pact was sealed.
Because, as you so wisely realized, one couldn't trust even the living-stone these days, when any seemed to be open to corruption.
Someone in my present world had to hear about what you showed me, my darling. It was only right to start with my friends.
There was no easy way to broach the topic, it being so alien. So I brought it up while eating. Here, sharing meals is viewed as a sort of ritual. Since it's what must be done to stay alive, one is compelled to stay until the act is completed.
But that's not to say it becomes a chore. Despite how often it occurs, sharing meals is always sheer joy. We gather around a table every day, even as quickly as they pass, and share goings-on and laughs. Often, we operate a device they call a radio; it receives electromagnetic waves from far off, and then translates them to music, delightful music of all kinds. Just from that little device, we enjoy songs in the background as we eat and chat.
It had been my turn to cook that night. All I'd made, though, was some boiled strands of wheat they call "spaghetti," served with a jarred red sauce. (It wasn't as if my cooking skills had improved much here, you see.) At the table, the conversation had reached a lull; a cheerful melody from the radio murmured in the background.
"I found something interesting at the library," I ventured.
"You found time?" Lily asked.
"She's not, like, fully in classes," Meiko said.
"Written by a quantum physicist."
"It's good you're reading that," Ia offered.
"I read this one in just one sitting, actually."
That raised eyebrows around the table. The metal prongs clattered against plates, spaghetti briefly going uneaten.
"A whole textbook?" Meiko asked.
"It was just so interesting."
"So, what was it?" Ia said. How I appreciated her for asking.
I gulped. Still I felt unready.
"It was this book about alternate dimensions," I finally said, "and how we can hear them in this universe."
The quiet returned. Not even clattering to break it up. Still, at least there was that pleasant, chipper melody from the radio, strumming and singing away.
Ia let out a short cough, then a concerned hum. The others didn't bother to fill the void. Instead they just frowned so deeply their lips might have slid off their faces.
"Uh, you know," Ia said, "that kind of thing doesn't have much…"
"Evidence," Meiko finished for her. "It's the sorta thing crackpots sell."
"You don't believe in it?" I asked.
Perhaps the despair in my voice showed through too deeply. They shared more glances, wordless exchanges. Even in Ia's eyes, all I could read was unease.
"It's just an unexplored field," Ia said after more of that silent tension.
"But it's the truth," I said. "It's where I come from, is it not?"
They were all silent for a spell longer, though. There was scraping of metal on plates, the squishes of spaghetti and sauce, and the melody on the radio humming to a closing chord.
"This could be it," I said. "This could be my way home. If we just bring this knowledge to the experts in your field, in this radio astronomy area, why, then… surely…"
I had hoped this would sate their need for explanations, for rationalizations. They needed things told in a certain way here—a very different way from the simple arts of the universe we tinker in back home.
I should have known it could not be that simple.
"The thing is," Meiko said, "it's not certain this is the explanation. We're not saying we don't believe you, Luka."
"Yes, that's not it at all," Ia added.
"It's just…" Meiko sighed, locked eyes on her plate of noodles as she toyed with them with her fork. "The problem here is we have to be able to prove it. Just our word and some unproven theories won't cut it with top physicists. I mean, this field is science, not some kind of magic."
Lily gave a solemn nod. "Def not enough to fund some attempt at sending you home. I mean, what would that take? Opening a portal to another world?"
"Is that really so far-fetched?" I pleaded—in vain. I only now realize how silly a question it was.
"Maybe that's the standard you know," Meiko said, "but here, it's crazy talk. Literally no scientists are going to hear us out on that."
"She's right," Lily said. "If we try telling them we want to open a portal in space-time, we'd be laughed out. Hell, I don't think we'd even get an audience by saying we think other dimensions exist."
"It's just not supported enough," Ia said sadly.
Feigning smiles, I spiraled my wheat strands along the metal and fell back to listening, nodding, humming in agreement to all the stories of professors and campus life.
I hope you know, my dear, it was just one transient setback.
Because after some time amid the talking, after another silence fell, Lily raised her head with a smile.
"Unless we're the ones who get that funding," she said.
"What?" Meiko asked.
"No, think about it," Lily said. "If we're the only ones who believe Luka, well, why don't we just handle this project? Yeah, it'd take more thorough proof of alternate dimensions—maybe from radio astronomy, maybe from something else. But if we get that, if we can show there's grounds for study, well, why the hell couldn't we get a grant? They fund way more boring shit than that."
"Okay, but, how?" Meiko asked. "How are we supposed to be the breakthrough here? We're talking a whole new field of study here, and all we've got to go on is abstract theories."
Lily shook her head. "We've also got her," she said, pointing her fork at me.
I glanced around at my housemates staring at me. There was doubt, expectations in their lingering gaze, neither of which I could escape simply by listening more closely to the new song playing now behind us.
"Seriously," Lily went on. "Luka's from another dimension. And she's got an inherent knack for astrophysics. If literally anyone is capable of proving this theory, it's her."
"You think I can?" I asked, astonished.
"Yeah," Lily said, "with a bit of guidance."
"Guidance and credibility," Meiko added. "You have to show you're accredited. Not just some crackpot off the street."
"And you can earn both with your placement test," Ia said.
I smiled. It all seemed so simple, so straightforward: win the right titles and you could have actual power behind your words.
As I washed dishes that night, I could only hope it would come quickly. Desperation and time, I had seen, were seldom a healthy mix.
In further dreams, I saw that the living-stone kept its promise, just as every night you kept yours. You took sluggish steps up the stairs and into your chamber, and the weight upon your shoulders and dryness within your throat ached. And still every night the stone received its assured serenade.
How softly you sang to it, how tenderly. But even hearing such a song, the living-stone took time to hold to its end of the pact. It grew slowly, cracking, creaking, and gaping bit by bit as a crevice widened at the back of your cell.
By day, the growth lay hidden behind a tapestry that you'd been given for an especially good performance. None suspected anything sat behind it, could sit behind it. The king thought of nothing but your song, and the guards thought only of locking you into your cell.
When at last the cracks grew large enough to fit your body through, the way down from the tower looked farther than ever. There was no slope, either—simply a straight fall, right into a sea of thorny bushes.
From where you sat in the tower, within that tunnel, the bushes appeared to stretch out as if to the ends of the world. Neither you nor I had ever seen such an expanse of piercing plants. Kaito—had he grown these as a sort of moat to keep you here? For their spines stabbed far into the air, tall and firm, looking gigantic even from the height of the crevice in the living-stone.
And it was such a terribly long way down.
Forcing aside your fears, you crawled through the gap and tumbled over the drop. But you did not fall far—for stopping you was your hair, tied together as a rope after you had lopped it off with that same knife you kept smuggled in the cell. But the closer you came to the brambles, the more fearsome they appeared, looming large and jagged as the teeth of a razor-griffin.
So you called out to them:
"Part, if you would, and make a path for me; and I will sing as reward."
Yet the brambles and thorns stayed in place, heading none of the pledge.
Now, to cut and tear through the bushes—this was unthinkable. Already the living-stone had taken a knife, and to rupture nature any further was a sin that need not be transgressed in this escape.
Instead, you brandished the dagger with a firm grip, ready to cut the hair holding you up.
"Clear a way for me, and to you tough and sharp things, I will offer the soft comfort of my hair."
At this, the thorns began to stir. They rolled a way out toward the green grass, curling their way back into the ground. It was enough to leave a path wide enough to walk through, provided you kept sideways.
Before descending down to tread it, you still cut off your hair—your promise kept, just as I knew you would leave it.
By the time you reached the grasses, the moon had taken the sun's place. Yes, the moat of thorns surrounding the king's palace was that extensive—and to think that he had grown all that in the time I was gone.
On the other side, the forest awaited. The landscape looked denser and far darker now. Surely that was the fault of this night, cast so gloomy and dark. The sky itself seemed bitter and unwell with its stark darkness and moonless gaze.
Although we had tread those forests together, enjoying them again and again, they now looked so much more daunting, deep, and crowded. Yet they were your only viable way forward. There were roads into town on the other side of the castle, but they were crawling with guards, carrying torches and armed to the teeth.
Perhaps, to the south side of the castle, where the terrain grew mountainous. From there, it might be easy to reach a peak, and from that high loft to catch a gust and fly elsewhere.
Though that would mean circling around the castle—and the thorn-moat—which would take quite a long time, and put you at greater risk of being recaptured.
You decided to risk it, but as you began the journey, a voice boomed with all the force of thunder.
"O, my King! Your highness, please hear me now!"
The living-stone, shouting with all its rocks at once! It stopped you cold, and I shivered along with you.
"Your prisoner, Miku, has escaped! She has wounded me severely with knives and the witchcraft of her song. Catch her now, while you still may, and bring justice to my pain!"
At once, roaring stirred from within the stones: clamors of guards, their clanking armor, and the rattling of steel. Fire lit within the halls as shapes began to pour out from exits.
Your breath felt short. Shoes pounded into topsoil, slipping on slick grass. Arms circle at your sides, rebalancing, shifting from one direction to the back.
There was no time for the mountains now. By the time you could circle the castle, the guards would be upon you. Even in the cover of night they would cast lanterns and pin you with burning stares and spears and loosed arrows.
The forest—yes, the dark, daunting forest—was the only direction left.
Trees came nearer, nearer. The darkness between them yawned like a serpent's gaping mouth. Behind, shouts echoed indistinctly. Their anger sounded as if it were warping their words into an unintelligible language.
But then, their roars crescendoed into screams of panic. You turned around to look.
The castle was collapsing: walls falling in on themselves, bricks tumbling down. Dust kicked up into the air as centuries-long structures toppled, flattening all ground below.
The shrieks of the guards were horrific. Oh, how awful to think about how long those wounds would take to heal.
Yet, dear, I hope you understand as I did in the dream, that this was not your fault.
The living-stone should have known far better than to break a sealed promise, lest the promise break the deceiver in return.
Playing academia their way meant rebuilding knowledge, or at least following the procedures of such. They would instruct on how motions of all kinds are formed: the waves, the vibrations, the light they create.
There was a certain arrogance about it all, really. This way was the way to conduct research, from how to write it to how to conceive of it. It had been set this way to create order, of course, to allow for easy communication. Yet it allowed for so little communication from me, who knew nothing of their strange world and customs.
Even so, I studied hard, their way. Books lay cracked open as I absorbed them night by night, tome by tome. Notes sat strewn along the floor of my shared room, in handwriting my housemates joked would take a cryptographer to make out.
Yet it was still a simple affair, learning at a pace to take this first test of theirs. I knew the facts already, in a way. But translating what I knew into something that they accepted, that they had standardized—that pestered me for some time. Not simple language did they take, but they required it all in such numbers, such figures. I suppose you know by this point how they do it all with so many numbers and figures.
Still, learning to use them, to work with them at all times, was a difficult matter.
It was so difficult that the first placement test I took came back as a failure.
Yes—I did fail it, that first time. I can't even remember the score handed down. All that mattered was the enormous words of "NO PASS" delivered by the numbers.
From a little screen, this one glowing with electricity, they showed me another number marking the unsatisfactory decision.
My housemates all took it poorly. Meiko kept sighing the whole day, and Lily was always clapping my back, speaking softly near my ear. Ia never said anything, though she had a certain quiet, watery sadness in her eyes.
Their plan hadn't worked out, was what it meant. I couldn't make it into the college itself yet.
More than that, it meant nothing I said to anyone else about "alternate dimensions and their mechanics" would make sense.
"I'm fine," I told them—and mostly, I was.
After all, it would only be one of the years here before I'd have a chance to try again.
For much of that coming year, I kept occupied with that same library job. On top of that, I took on more work at a store with ice cream. It's this stuff that came in large containers, out of which I scooped servings by request for hours a day. Lily had suggested the place as an additional source of the cash I'd be needing.
Meiko didn't seem to approve of it—neither the situation nor the job.
I remember her saying, "You're really fine with that 'til next year? Me, I'd go insane in a place like that."
She said that, even though it was only a few hours of a day. Yes, really—a few hours out of a day provoked that kind of reaction out of her.
Surely, you must think that as odd as I do?
Well, if you do, as I have, just remember how much shorter it all is for them. The blinks here that have passed for me, well, they calculate whole cycles come and gone—pages out of the calendars, ripped out one after the other. It's a horrifying thing indeed, to divide time down to that level.
And yet, I wonder how I don't feel it the same way they do, as if the days were passing at a crawl. For it may as well be eternity, being apart from you, dearest.
Though Lily, Meiko, and Ia still did so much to fill the days with joy. I think now of the games they showed to me, ones with cards and boards and pieces, and even of devices hooked up to their glowing screens. And there were the dining halls they showed me to, also, where amid loud and peppy music we ate things fried or flaky or seasoned with a vibrant medley of spices.
How dearly I thank them for that. Though they measured lifetimes in such small, fleeting units, their friendship did much to make the time pass merrily.
Still, pass the time did. The pages of their calendars flipped by, I'd emptied hundreds of tubs of ice cream onto little cones and paper bowls—and as the sun rose, the chance for that test came again.
I put in nights upon sleepless nights, until the equations didn't escape me any longer. Numbers, ones I'd seen in my daily work and also in nightly studies, became familiar ways to calculate the sounds. It all became so much more normal.
All in the blink of an eye, from our perspective. Though here, they called it "a few months."
The testing came and went. Again I sat in front of that screen, surrounded by the three other women.
It wasn't a surprise to see them all jump excitedly around, hear them squeal in amazement.
"Luka, you're in!" Ia cried out. "You made it in, oh my god!"
And I smiled too, and stood up to jump around with them, crying out in that same key of joy.
It wasn't the school that mattered to me, of course.
It was putting me where you meant for me to go: one step closer to you.
Forgive me if I misremember this next part of the dream—there was so much panic and fear, you see, that it's hard now to think on it all. The way you ran through the forest in such total terror, simply thinking about it sends my heart crashing like a violent sea.
But you were running, fast and without care, without even really looking ahead, within this dream. For behind, the shouts of the castle guards had already begun:
"Find the singer! Find Miku! All of you lot, find her!"
You didn't have to look back to know half the castle must have been on your tail. Those who had escaped the collapse, who weren't licking their wounds and picking rubble out of their hair, were all on the hunt. Yes, no doubt King Kaito was beside himself with fury. Not a knight on duty would have dared to return to him empty-handed, to bear his screams before he would return to whisper to the ruined castle's stones.
So your legs beat hard and fast upon the western forest's floor. Your feet flew and the dark shapes of mossy trunks rushed past, the cool shadowed air of the night running through the shortened lengths of your sweaty and matted hair. It had been so long since you last moved at all, being stuck in that tower—so long since your legs carried you anywhere other than from the concert hall to your meager cell. Yet now the rush of pure terror carried you on like a hurricane's winds. It led you over rocks, under branches, between the trees and crags which under light of day we had enjoyed so simply.
But still there was no letting up of the shouting, the beating of metal-clad feet from behind. How could these fiends keep up so easily? With every bit of breath you had left you leaped and stumbled through the rough darkness of the forest, so grim, so alien to what we together had once seen. And still they came on. Their thumping like gargantuan machines, their voices like wild animals, on they came into the depths of the woods.
Until at last you planted head-first into a stray little sapling. A crash, a rush of pain through the face—and you collapsed from the wind being sucked out of your lungs.
On the forest floor you held still, paralyzed from the blow. It was with hissing and the sting of tears that again the sounds registered: closer and closer came the rattling thumps, the frenzied swarm of voices.
There's no running from them, you thought, with your throat closing up. They'll find me. Oh, any moment, they'll find me!
But on looking before you, the forest's shapes adjusted themselves. That thing you had just crashed into, that trunk of solid wood—why, this was no tree at all! No, you realized as you stood, this was an ax, carelessly left behind by some woodcutter, no doubt. And there it sat, dug deep into the roots of the tree before you.
What utter cruelty was this, to have dealt such a deep wound, then to leave buried that tool of suffering in the poor tree?
"At the very least," you said, "I might relieve you of this."
And so you grabbed the ax by its handle, held fast the wood with both hands, and pulled.
One, two, three, four hard yanks backward did it take to loosen the weapon. And with that last pull, off into the woods behind you it flew. From somewhere far off, it clattered to the ground, and you breathed a sigh of relief that it had not dug back into another being.
But, if you had heard that crash—oh, you realized, surely the guards had as well.
Yes, still their drumbeat of pursuit pounded and pounded. Already the flames from their torches flickered just at the edge of the woods, and fiercer and fuller they burned with every passing measure.
Suddenly, there came a voice.
"Bless you, fair maiden!"
It came from behind. You swirled about, and there, the tree had shown its worn and aged face, even with the lips so rarely used to speak.
"Oh, again, bless you!" said the tree—an old oak, jolly and kind. "Why, I thought I would have that ax buried in me for all time. One of those soldiers dropped it blade-down upon my root, you know. And not only does the fellow leave it be, but no one arrives to pull it out! Well, until you, that is. Are the west woods so seldom traveled these days? It's as if the king lets no one out from the castle anymore."
"Seldom does he, now," you said. "But, sir, you are too kind. It was but a simple kindness."
"And such makes all the difference, in the least simple of disasters," the old oak replied. He hummed in thought, in approval perhaps, and with the bass as low as the bowels of earth branches shook and leaves fell to the ground. "Ah, but how rudely I behave! I see you are in much of a disaster yourself."
"You see the guards?"
"Now that I've left my slumber, oh, most certainly. How could I not? They stumble over these woods almost as carelessly as you have. But it would seem you wish not to be found by them."
"Very much not," you answered.
"Then hide with me," the jolly old oak said, and his roots creaked and cracked as they moved aside to reveal a massive hole hidden beneath the earth.
Quickly you clambered inside, and overhead, the roots again moved. Soon they blanketed out the foliage overhead, and all that remained visible was the canopy of roots just above you, buried within the earth.
And the voices of the guards still crept closer, closer. In the darkness beyond they were approaching with torches no longer seen and shouts now muted and muddled by the wood closing you off above. Even so, their shouts and the clatter of their armor pierced your ears.
It was hard to breathe as they drew near the old oak. Sounds grew quiet in that darkness; there was no telling if they had stopped, if they had slowed to a sneaking crawl, or if they had vanished.
But just as quickly, the voices and marching started again—their direction shifted away.
You let out a long held breath, and I felt my own lungs finally break free from the same iron grip of terror that held them tight.
You know what the funny thing was about the courses I took?
Compared to struggling through the placement test just to earn the privilege to take them, completing them required surprisingly little effort.
Though I must first say, this way of learning they had was dull, incredibly so. There was lots of sitting in chairs, watching a podium, listening to a person behind it talk and explain pictures projected from light. But beyond that listening, the work one gets in is something fascinating. Once I completely had that system of figures and equations in my head, the rest fell into place so easily, and opened up to the bigger equations and figures.
It was just a certain way of thinking, I suppose, that had to click for it to make sense. Because the wavelengths I studied and their properties were all still music, in their own way. I came to look at the resonance of sound, the crackle of radiation, and especially the rumble of radio frequencies as their own kind of song, as the universe here singing out the various parts of its existence.
Though of course this wasn't all I did. I had so much time spent enjoying the world, too.
I kept largely to play and relaxation with Meiko, Lily, and Ia. You can understand why: they were keeping me so much good company, treating me with so much kindness. The more weeks I spent with them, the more I understood why you led me here of all places, dearest. They brought me to see friends of theirs, on top of the games and eating and studying. Together we set out to festivities at other houses, where Lily danced with and kissed girls, and Meiko drank and drank as she laughed away with other guests. Throughout most of these gatherings Ia stayed close to me, making sure I never became trapped in conversations with boors or would-be suitors, and keeping me always at ease with her constant, comforting smile.
How in heaven's name did you find a trio as warm as this? As jovial and eager to laugh as this? You must tell me one day, when I've finally broken through this cosmic barrier between us.
It was that scalding passion that I used to fly through all those courses with top marks. You see, they have numbers here that mean as much: the higher they were, the greater the success. It was an odd thing, but of course I accepted it. High numbers came my way in class after class, year after year, and in time this first college's work was done completely.
In another blink of an eye, I'd moved to an entirely different town with Meiko, Lily, and Ia. They had guided me to another school, another program. It was about building a reputation, I had discovered. A "postgraduate" program, on top of the initial one–yes, still that much more time they required, by their own standards.
Years went by in this new location. How am I to list them all? Brief as they were, they still felt as an eternity, so long as I spent them without you.
Truth be told, I feared things were beginning to change in my head. Being so long away from home, I entertained the notion I was losing my attunement with that life. Had I been in this realm so long, I wondered, that my sense of time skewed more toward theirs? As I worked through experiments, saw the sun set and rise from within libraries, sat through the tedium of discussions and lectures and panels—through it all, I wondered if, perhaps, all this way of living would replace the old one as I remained separate from that dimension.
More than all that, my darling, I fretted: what if I were to forget you, too?
Frightening though that momentary doubt was—well, it was but momentary.
Because you saw for years and years how I toiled, studied, and spent hours formulating theories in support of alternate dimensions and whatever properties they hold. I had begun to formulate a theory of how they spoke to us through wavelengths–ones I had learned the peculiar ways of, yet would need more instruments to study. I had been doing as much on my own, mainly, amid the hard work my friends strained under and the realization I still had credibility to build.
I did all that, until the right moment at last struck.
It was a cloudy day; all the lights were on in our shared office despite just getting back from the noonday refill. Lily was going on about a woman she'd seen in a cafe: bright-eyed, proud, athletically built, and according to her, utterly beautiful.
"I'm just thinking of how to ask her out," she said. "Something flashy should do it, right? Show her how I'm in tune with how she thinks."
"Like what?" Ia asked.
Meiko just rolled her eyes. "Please, don't encourage her."
Still, Lily was glowing. "Something like, I challenge her to arm-wrestling."
"Arm-wrestling?" Meiko repeated, bemused.
"Sure. I bet I can goad her into that. One way or another."
"Fine. So you're arm-wrestling. Well, then what?"
"I lay stakes," Lily said as she jumped to sit up on her desk. "I'll say, 'if I win, you and me get dinner.'"
"Suppose you lose," Meiko said.
"Even better. Then I just say she's won dinner."
It earned a laugh out of both Ia and Meiko, though I sensed more derision from the latter. For my part, I smiled up from over my book.
"You'll either get laughed out or your ass kicked," Meiko said between chortles.
"Aw, come on," Lily said with a dismissive groan, "you really can't accept it's possible I'm right?"
"Well, except it isn't possible," Meiko said. "Not in this universe, or in any other."
It was then that I looked up from my book—then that I was pulled out of it by those simple words.
"Any other?" I repeated.
"Y'know, theoretically," Meiko said. "If another universe is out there."
I smiled wide as I stood, authoritatively tapping my book.
"That reminds me," I said. "There's a study I wanted you three to help out with."
"We'd be happy to," Ia chirped.
Lily shrugged, then nodded as Meiko threw me a puzzled frown.
"I mean, sure," Meiko said. "What kind of study, though?"
"It's actually something I mentioned some time ago," I said. "But I think you'll be a lot more interested now."
Before them, now intrigued when once they sat dismissively, I presented my notebook, wide and proudly open.
"Holy shit," Lily muttered, "she really did it."
"She really did," Meiko said in awe, as Ia swept me into a triumphant hug.
A/N: Thank you again to Can't Catch Rabbit for betaing and supporting this story.