(Disclaimer etc, see chapter 1)
Well here's the next installement... and yes, it's all metaphorical. This one is mostly from Sam's point of view. Thanks to everyone who reviewed, the feedback is awesome!
III. Dreamer
She had woken up at the break of dawn, before the sun had risen high enough to cast its late autumn light on the frozen city. But now, as they stood contemplating the sunset together, she allowed herself to forget about the cold and the darkness and the unwelcoming world that was both so close and so far from this moment. It was warm− warm in the room and warm in his arms and she let her mind wander to places it had never travelled to before.
Tonight, she'd walked through that dark spot in the room and become a dreamer.
He had fallen quiet with her, watching the dusk, the last rays of light bathing her face in a warm glow. He watched her dream. She observed the clouds, the rainbow of colors, telling him how the blue made her think of the ocean and how the billows of white were like smoke or foam you can never really catch. She told him which lines to follow and where the clouds melded together to form shapes; how the red became orange and how the orange faded into yellow and white.
She had dreamt that sunset. Dreamt about this moment. Dreamt about him. She wasn't the woman you call for a few hours or a night, wasn't the kind of woman who enters a hotel room late in the evening to meet a man who'd come only for that. That wasn't who she was, because this place wasn't really like other places where women like her become women like that, and where men like him can meet these women. This place wasn't about sleeping with your boss or risking too much, it wasn't work related, it wasn't filled with guilt and confusion, wasn't linked to the outside. This place was a haven. Here, they became no one; they became artists, philosophers, magicians. Dreamers.
It felt only natural that they would stand in front of the window together with the colors in background. She was a dreamer−and what was this but a waking dream? A waking dream that was more than an illusion, more than a thought, for in dreams you just imagine emotions, imagine things and sounds and smells, and here, he wasn't a vision, he was a man she could see and touch and feel and love as much as she wanted to. She dreamt of a world where this wouldn't be wrong. A world where murderers didn't exist and didn't target kids and where she wouldn't have to look for all the lost souls out there; a world where he wouldn't have to face kidnappers and criminals and feel the pain of all those who hadn't come home. She wanted a world like this place.
One day, she knew, she'd enter the room as an artist, she'd take a brush and she would paint the colors, paint the room, paint him. Her alias would be that of a painter and… she'd paint their dreams. She'd make it real− make them real, make this moment tangible, because she was a dreamer and dreams aren't meant to be explained, they aren't supposed to be analysed and understood− dreams just are. So she'd dream of paradise, dream of light and colors and warmth, and he'd hold her and dream with her.
He'd come here for an escape, a moment; but dreamers have more than instants, more than minutes and hours that go by and can be counted and measured; dreamers possess more than time.
Dreamers have eternity.