That night Dick has strange dreams, glimpses into scenes that flash and fade behind his eyes.
He dreams of an inky black sky draped in an endless sea of stars, a dazzling backdrop for the ethereal blue glow on the horizon. Earth hovers there like a solitary stone on a blanket of darkness, a strange and fantastical sight.
He dreams of training tirelessly in a body that is not his own, unfamiliar in its shape and movement. In a training hall, he is set apart from the other children. An overwhelming sense of loneliness causes the sting of tears to burn at the corners of his eyes, but he forces himself to focus on his training instead.
He dreams of a strict tutor wearing an unfamiliar face that, for some reason, he seems to recognize. She has high expectations of him, pressuring him to study harder, to do better. He feels like a disappointment, and that makes him angry with himself. This setting is unrecognizable but the feelings settling into his heart are all too familiar to him.
He dreams of a field of flowers stretching out to the horizon, bleeding into the emptiness of space. The flowers are strange and alien, but beautiful. This dream is more palpable, more tangible, than the other ones.
Here, white petals flutter on the breeze, scattering their warm scent in the air. It is sweet and light, like some soft harmony of vanilla and honeysuckle, lingering in his nostrils as he looks out on the scenery. Hidden among the flowers he spots a small, silver-haired girl, her knees huddled to her chest. His heart aches when he looks at her, feeling an empathetic sense of sadness and loneliness. She doesn't notice him, however; her gaze is fixed forward to the sky, full of a woeful longing as she eyes the "Blue Star" on the horizon. That wistful look in her eyes pulls him in, making him want to reach out and comfort her, but as he starts to approach her, she throws him a look that makes him stop in his tracks. Finally acknowledging his presence there she speaks to him; a quiet, timid voice lurching from her throat.
"Don't. You shouldn't come any closer."
"It's okay, I want to help."
"You can't, I'm…broken. Cursed. Everyone stays away. I think…maybe I should go away, leave here. Maybe I should go back."
"Go back?"
"Yes, to Earth. I guess… I don't belong here either."
"How could you say that? I'm sure that isn't true, everyone has a place they belong! Let me help you; we can look together."
"You've seen what I've seen, haven't you? I used to think I didn't belong on Earth, but now that I know I don't belong here well…" she pauses for a moment and looks back at that fixed point in her sky. "It's funny how some distance changes the way you look at things, don't you think? From here, it looks warm and inviting, full of promise even. Even after all I suffered down there…I can't help but wonder."
This conversation is familiar to him, but he's not sure why exactly. He doesn't remember having it before, but it reminds him of the words he shared recently on a rooftop. Then it hits him. The Earth on the horizon, the alien flowers, the familiar sights and conversations that he's never seen before, all of it points to one conclusion. These images and feelings are hers.
"Gal?"
Once he recognizes her, a gust of wind kicks up a swirl of petals around him, obscuring his vision. Galatea's recognizably melodic voice, weighed down with sadness, echoes around amongst them.
"I envy humans," he hears her say. "That sense of change that drives you forward…I want that too. Do you think someone like me could find a place down there, somewhere to belong?"
"Of course! I thought that maybe…maybe you already had."
The wind dies down and he recognizes Galatea in the spot the girl was, looking the same way she did that morning on the roof. She looks at him again with those steely gray eyes, and speaks as though his words never reached her ears.
"I want to find home. I've never really known what it's like." She turns away from him and back towards that beacon of hope in her sky. "I don't want to feel alone anymore."
The look in her eyes is heavy with so much sorrow, but still she won't allow herself to cry. Her tears never find their way to the surface, instead she keeps her eyes focused on that Blue Star.
"You're not, Gal, you're not alone! I'm right here."
He starts to run towards her, determined to reach her this time, but then the petals swirl again, forcing his eyes closed once more. The swirling wind engulfs him, surrounding him in that sweet floral smell it carries with it. Frustrated, he fights against it, trying to press forward, to get through to her. The sudden embrace of caring arms wrapped around him halts his advance. He opens his eyes and finds it is Galatea hugging him.
"I didn't tell you this before because I was too embarrassed, but you're my only friend. That's why…that's why I don't want to lose you; I care about you."
It makes him so overwhelmingly sad he can't help but cry.
"Please stop saying such sad things. I get it now, I understand. So please, let me help."
"I'm sorry, Dick."
"Why are you the one comforting me? I'm the one who should be apologizing. I'm sorry I didn't realize it sooner. You're always smiling; I didn't know what you were hiding behind it. I didn't know just how lonely you felt. I'm so, so sorry"
The hot sting of tears in his eyes wakes him. With a racing heart, he sits up in bed and wipes them from his face. But that sorrowful look in her eyes is burned in his mind, and his heart will not slow its pace. "Gal's memories...It felt so real." He tries to reason with himself, challenging his perception, but no matter what he says he cannot convince himself of an alternative resolution. The more he thinks about it, the more resolute he feels about those having actually been Gal's memories. Still, they were just memories, and so he attempts to calm his heart with some comforting words. "It was just a dream," he says aloud to himself.
Unsurprisingly, saying it out loud doesn't quell the anxiety in his heart. Instead he finds himself pulled towards her room, now suddenly fixated with her wellbeing. After everything he saw and heard in his dream, he worries she is no longer okay alone. He taps lightly on her door but there is no response. Curious, he peers inside, a light creaking echoing out as it opens. Inside the machines monitoring her health sound their medical chimes, but she herself remains silent. As if he can't believe the monitors she is hooked up to, he watches patiently for other signs she is still alive. When the rise and fall of the covers tell him she's breathing he lets out a relieved sigh. Then he chuckles quietly at himself.
"I'm not sure what I was expecting."
He shakes his head, but he can't shake those nagging feelings pulling at his heart. The images from his dreams won't let him be, and he feels drawn to be at Galatea's side. That lonely expression in her eyes keeps replaying in his mind and he can't stand the thought of leaving her alone now. Deciding to keep her company, he moves the reading chair from the corner of the room next to her bed and plants himself in it.
"You're not alone anymore, Gal," he says quietly to her as though he can convince the girl in his dream by telling the one in front of him.
He makes himself comfortable in the chair and watches the rhythmic movement of the blanket as she breathes. The sight of it gives him comfort for some reason, allowing his heart to settle down in his chest. Eventually, sleep finds him again.
As Dick finds peace at her bedside, Galatea wrestles with her own demons within it. Behind her delicate eyelids Galatea fights against a darkness she has seen time and time again; her dance with death invited It back into her subconscious. She is back there again, in the woods and running, filled with fear. She's being chased, but she doesn't know why. All she knows is that she's in danger, and if she doesn't run, she won't get away. The sound of her pounding heart echoes in her ears, interrupted only by the sound of arrows whizzing by. The arrows are meant for her, and she knows it. She has to run, she has to get away before one of them finds her.
It's useless.
Eventually one of them does. Pain, sharp and ferocious, radiates from her leg and she can't run anymore. She tumbles down onto the cold hard earth beneath her. As the ground collides against her small body her fear evolves into terror, gripping her heart like an iron vice. With as much strength as she can muster she stifles the sound of her cry, burying it deep into the dirt. She tries, in vain, to get back up on her feet, to continue her flight, but the arrow in her leg has other plans.
It only takes a few moments for one of them to catch up to her. "Gotcha" A heinous, toothy grin spreads across his vile features and he pins her down. Her small limbs are screaming under the weight of him, and then she's screaming.
He's smiling. He's smiling and I'm screaming. Why is he always smiling?
He pulls a blade up to her throat, a wide and jagged hunting knife. Her screaming suddenly halts, held in her throat as though it could protect her from that knife's edge, terrified that the slightest noise will push her that much closer to its cut. She squeezes her eyes shut in preparation of her fate, too afraid to face it head-on, too horrified to have that villainous smile be the last thing she sees.
It's almost over, she reassures herself.
But then something strange happens. The warm spray of blood, the bright glow of Artemis' light, the stench of fresh death: none of it followed as it normally did. The weight of the man disappears all at once and the smell of dirt is replaced by a strange combination of canvas, wood shavings, manure, and sweat. Instead of the cold, solid earth on her skin she feels a warm rush of air. The fear gripping her heart turns to a rush of excitement.
This is new.
Curious, she opens her eyes again. Her focus hones in on a beautiful woman reaching her arms out to her, her warm smile a welcome change from the man's cold one. Instinctively, arms that are not her own reach out and grab hold of the woman's. With an unfamiliar trained precision her body uses the woman's momentum to catapult herself into a flurry of aerial maneuvers. The brightly lit surroundings blur with her movement as she soars through the air until she lands on the platform at the end of the chasm. With her feet firmly planted on its wooden surface she strikes a victorious pose. Amazed gasps and cheers erupt from the crowd, filling her heart with a swell of pride.
This is not her body, and these are not her memories; that much is clear now. Still, the thrill of the experience is much preferred to the terror of the last. Or so she thought.
An audible eerie snap echoes out as she enjoys the crowd's praise; the sound of it rips her attention away. Her heart sinks at the sound of it and the crowd's cries turn to shocked gasps and worried shrieks. The rope supporting the trapeze bar she had just dismounted is severed and the woman with the kind smile is careening towards the ground. She watches frantically as a familiar man in a matching costume glides over the divide in an effort to rescue her. He stretches out a protective hand and manages to grasp her wrist. The crowd and Galatea share a collective sigh of relief before another snap.
"No," she screams in horror in a voice that is not her own.
She watches in horror as the second trapeze bar disconnects from its support the moment their hands connect. With their hands now together, the couple hurtles towards their deaths as one. Terror sets in once more; it's a different breed than the one she felt before but its hold is just as strong. She is powerless. There is nothing she can do to stop their imminent demise and that makes her want to scream. So she does. She screams out until there is nothing but silence, deafening, dark silence.
Finally her mind takes her back to her safe space: the field of Asterosi back on Luna, Kasthsteri. The warm, gentle smell of the flowers envelopes her like the soothing waters of a hot spring on a sore body. She breathes it in and releases the tension in her body with her exhale, pushing out all of terror and helplessness that had seeped into her. A strange thought occurs to her, then, that the Asterosi smell of honeysuckle and vanilla. Stranger still is the sense of belonging and companionship she feels as the thought crosses her mind. This place has always been a haven of quiet solitude, a place to quiet the voice in her mind and hide from the glares of others.
This time, however, it holds a different kind of comfort for her. Feeling a kind of serenity she's never before experienced in a dream, she finds herself leaning into it. She falls back into the embrace of the flowers' soft petals, welcoming the metallic scent of the soil with their sweet one. The vast, speckled darkness of the sky spreads out above her, giving her a sense of connection to the beyond. She breathes in again and slips into a peaceful dream of nothing for the first time in a long time.