XIII

"From that first melody, the first stars began to shine. Bolstered by the light, the dragon continued to sing. With every pulse of its heart, a new piece of the universe was born."

-the Heartbeat Cycles. Author unknown.

Try again. Lua couldn't have really meant it, right? Maybe, if he tried again, Lua would be waiting there. He had to try again. It was scary, but—but the Dream World was his, too, right? Lua had said so! So even if Lua wasn't there, Yuma could still go, because it was his too! Lua didn't get to say when Yuma got to go to his own little world. And those stupid nightmares, they weren't supposed to be there. Yuma would beat them up this time! Yeah! He'd chase them out, and then Lua would have to come back, and they'd be so proud of him!

Yuma couldn't remember when his thoughts stopped, or when they were broken up by the sunlight drifting through the window into his eyes. He groaned, throwing both arms over his eyes.

"Yuma!" Akari shouted from downstairs. "Yuma, you're gonna be late for school!"

Right...it was morning...

And then Yuma's eyes flew open and he shot straight up in his hammock, the whole thing swaying from side the side with the movement and almost dumping him onto the floor. Morning? Already? But—but he hadn't had time to get the Dream World yet! He hadn't—

He couldn't remember how.

Yuma felt his entire body go rigid as his eyes fixed distantly on some random spot on the wall. His hands curled into the hammock, curling the webbing into his fists. His throat was dry, tongue like sandpaper. He couldn't remember how to get to the Dream World. He couldn't—remember.

He had tried, hadn't he? He had...how had he gotten there before? It had just been something he could do, like, like breathing. It was easy, simple, like slipping to sleep.

All of a sudden, he felt like his brain was gripped with a wide-eyed insomnia. It was like forgetting how to fall asleep. He had forgotten how to get to the Dream World.

"People forget how to get here," Lua had said once.

Yuma had become one of those people.

He had become one of the ones to forget.

He wanted to scream, wanted to cry, but his eyes were too dry and his throat was too tight. He couldn't even get off of his hammock. He couldn't move. No, no, no, it couldn't be true. If he didn't remember how to go, he couldn't come back when Lua finally came back. Oh! Maybe Lua had blocked him off somehow? So that he wouldn't get there again. Maybe it was just a fluke. He hadn't gone for a few nights after that scare with the nightmares so maybe he was rusty. Maybe...maybe...

His eyes slowly, slowly dropped down to the floor, to the drawings he had made of the Dream World. His crayon sketches of that purple world, vast and beautiful, with the stars overhead. His drawings looked...so inadequate. They were just scribbles. The haphazard lines of purple couldn't possibly capture all of the hues, the deep purple woods with their luminescent leaves, the vast shimmering ocean full of stars—couldn't capture any of it. They were—they weren't enough. They weren't enough for him to remember what it all looked like—

Bile suddenly rose up in his throat.

What if it had all just been a dream?

His hands tightened so much into the hammock that it pinched the whole thing and he dumped himself out onto the floor, landing heavily on his drawings with a thwump.

"Yuma?" Akari called up the stairs. "You okay? What was that?"

Yuma just lay there across his scattered drawings. He felt his hands shaking, crinkling some of the edges of a few of them. He still couldn't make a sound. He didn't know how anymore.

How could he know that any of it had been real? He hadn't brought anything with him from that world. He didn't have land creating powers here to prove that he had actually made a world then. Recurring dreams were rare and his was pretty detailed, but how on earth did he know if any of it had actually been real? How did he know that...that like everyone at school had said...it wasn't...just his imagination? Just a dream? Not real.

He felt like he was drowning. This had never, ever occurred to him before. He didn't have any way to know. No keepsakes from that world except his own thoughts and his drawings, which he could have made up. No marks left on his body from run ins with nightmares or when he fell and scraped his knee in that world. Nothing. Just his own mind telling him it was real.

He could hear Akari's feet on the stairs.

"Seriously, Yuma, are you going to answer me? Don't make me come up there."

Fake. It could have all been fake. He could have imagined it. Just a little kid's dream. Just like all the kids at school always told him.

Fake. Fake. Fake—

A cry escaped his throat as the tears finally found their way out of his eyes, splattering over his drawings. He shoved to his knees and grabbed a handful of them into his fists. He heard Akari's hand banging on the trap door at the sound of his cry, heard her voice asking if he was okay without hearing the words fully.

He ripped his drawings in half.

At the sound of the ripping paper, Akari finally pushed the door open with a snap and a fwump and shoved her head inside. She saw Yuma reaching for another pile of drawings and digging his nails into them to start to rip them to pieces. Her eyes widened as she scrambled up and over the lip of the floor.

"Yuma! Yuma, oh my god, what's wrong, what are you doing—"

She grabbed his hands before he could grab a third handful. He screamed, trying to pull himself free, kicking out at her knees, but she wouldn't let go, trying to drag him against her and crush him in a hug, tried to pin his arms to his chest.

"Oh my god, what's wrong, god fuck fuck fuck what is going on, are you okay, Yuma please, stop!"

"It wasn't real!" Yuma screamed into her shoulder as he kept flailing, trying to get to those horrible, horrible drawings—he needed to get rid of them, all of them. "It wasn't real, it wasn't real, it wasn't real—"

"Oh, sh sh sh, Yuma, it's okay, sh sh sh—"

She didn't understand! He had thought—he had thought—

Lua isn't real, he thought. I made them up.

And that thought more than anything is what killed every bit of emotion he had left. He slumped all at once into Akari's arms and she swore again as he almost slid free of her. She got her hands under his waist and lifted him up.

"Sh...sh..."

Her hand stroked through his hair at a steady rhythm,

"It wasn't real," Yuma mumbled. "It wasn't real. Lua wasn't real."

"Yuma..."

"Everyone leaves," Yuma said. "Kaasan and tosan and Lua...Lua wasn't even here."

He curled his fingers tightly into Akari's shirt and buried his face into her chest.

"Don't go away."

Her hands tightened around him, curled into his hair and hugged him tighter.

"Never," she said, her voice cracking. "Never, ever, ever. I'll never go away. I'll always be right here. I promise."

The tears wouldn't be held back now. They rose up in his chest like a tidal wave and it was all he could do just to stay upright in Akari's arms. His remaining drawings lay crumpled beneath his knees.

He didn't ask about them later when they disappeared. He didn't want to know where Akari had put them.

Lua wasn't real. His parents were gone. The Dream World was his imagination. Miracles didn't exist.

Maybe it was time for him to accept it.