Reflections

________

Morning

"Move it, shortstop." Laurel stumbled as she was shoved off the sidewalk and into the slush lining the gutters, the cold slurry splashing up and into her heavy boots. Looking up, she saw Beth and her cronies looking down at her. It was Beth herself who'd shoved her aside, hands shoved angrily into her pockets and glowering down at Laurel, her dark face and messy black hair a heavy contrast to the interchangeable tall pale blondeness of Cynthia, Sally H., and Godwyn, who were gathered cheerfully behind Beth. "People are trying to walk here."

"S-sorry," Laurel stammered, looking down at her boots.

"Y-you g-get that st-st-stammer from the thrift store too?" Cynthia - or maybe Sally H. - mocked cruelly. The other two cronies laughed, while Beth only continued to look down at Laurel, mouth working sourly and face unreadable.

"Sorry," Laurel repeated, quietly. "I'll, uh, w-watch where I'm going next t-time."

One of the blondes - Godwyn, perhaps - opened her mouth to make another jab, but Beth cut her off. "Yeah, whatever" she said, before giving a heavy yawn. "God, four o'clock and I'm still asleep. Can't believe I used to be a morning person. C'mon, let's grab some coffee or something."

As they walked off, Laurel heard them asking Beth about her brother, when he'd be back in town, and if he'd have new stuff ready for them when he did. Casually moving on and forgetting Laurel even existed. Sniffling, Laurel wiped her cold nose clean with a colder hand and sat down in a nearby doorway, despondent. She didn't know what she'd done to draw their hate. Her cousins had never been like that, and her parents had taught her to be kind to those around her. Yet high school seemed intent on throwing that back in her face, drowning her in cruelty and pettiness. She missed the peace and safety of being homeschooled. Of laughing and learning in equal parts alongside her family.

Laurel hunched down lower in the doorway, miserable. This wasn't how she'd thought school would go at all. She'd imagined late night study parties. Meeting close friends for life. Finding love, and kisses shared beneath a starry sky. Wiping her nose with the back of her hand once more, Laurel got to her feet and went to take the long route home, away from Beth and her cronies.

"Do you want to be something special?"

Laurel turned to see one of Beth's friends standing behind her. A small, quiet girl she'd never really paid attention to before, with wide blue eyes and a swirling cloud of almost white hair. "S-sorry," Laurel stammered, "what was that?"

"Do you want to be something special?" the girl repeated, oddly grave. "Do you want to travel between worlds? Help people?"

Laurel opened her mouth to voice her confusion, but the girls small hands shot out and enveloped her own. Her mouth shut with a jolt as the world seemed to flex for a moment, an afterimage of reality overlaying itself on top of the world, it's hue and saturation subtly wrong. She looked around in shock for a moment before the blonde girl caught her eye. And where the blonde girl's eyes had been, there was now only a gaping abyss. A glimpse into something wide and dark and unknowable. "Who- what are you?"

"You can call me Shy," the girl answered. "And I am something not quite real. Something from a dream. The Dream. Please, will you help? I need your help-"

"Shy!" Down the street, Beth was shoving past her friends, staring at Laurel and Shy. her face angry and yet also oddly afraid. "Shy, get back here! Leave her alone!"

Laurels hands clenched beneath Shy's cool grasp. She was sick of Beth, sick of being pushed around and looked down on. She wanted to be liked, to be someone important. "I-I want to be special," she whispered, voice hoarse with the need for it. "Please, let me h-help. I'll help."

Beth was only a few metres away now, her footsteps hurried and fists swingly tightly by her side. Her friends didn't even bother to look as she continued to shout, but Shy only smiled and stood, hands still clasping Laurel's. "Thank you," she said, and pulled Laurel forward into the abyss.[/i]

_____

Dusk

Inside the Dream, it was cold and vast and dark, as it always was. Scenes and people and objects flowed and merged together, as transparent and false as afterimages. These were the worlds of the sleeping, a faint bridge between the real world and the Dream.

The Dream itself would not begin to take shape until it was acted upon, either by itself or by Laurel and Beth. They were the architects, their struggle giving form the formless.

For half a year Laurel had been keeping the Dream in check, cutting out its roots before it could drag itself into reality at the cost of those whose dreams bridged the gap. For half a year she'd spent her sleeping hours in here, and it still felt impossibly strange and alien to her.

Even stoic, private Beth admitted she felt the foreign oppressiveness of it weigh down on her, and she'd been fighting the Dream on her own for a year before Shy had first pulled Laurel in.

Reigning in her discomfort, Laurel began to give herself form, drawing upon the latent possibility around her to recreate her body. Looking inward, she recalled the feeling of air moving past her body. Faced her imperfections and humbly accepted her strengths. She didn't rush the process, remembering the misshapen messes she had created her first few times. Even after she had learned to make something that looked human, it was weeks before it had actually been her. Once she was finished, not even needing to look to know she had gotten it right, she raised her head and conjured clothes. Where the body was an act of patience and self-reflection, the clothes were an act of improvisation and desire. Light was drawn forth from the abyss and wrapped around her. Revelling in the myriad colours and possibilities represented in that light, she willed it spin around her faster and faster before letting it settle into something solid. An extravagant, weightless blue gown, stretching from the top of her neck down to the base of her feet.

Satisfied, Laurel raised her hand to the heavens and began to envision an arrow, its shape forming as light inside her forearm itself. She thought of it in movement, its speed and purpose, and it began to hum with tension, her entire arm tingling with its need to fly. With a grin, Laurel let go, and the arrow shot forth from the palm of her hand high into the black sky before bursting into violet light. For a few moments, there was only Laurel and the cascading light amidst the half-formed visions of the sleeping, then the space before her began to warp and out of it stepped Beth.

Where Laurel chose to dress herself like something from a fairy tale, all frills and lace and extravagance, Beth was far more simple in her choice of apparel. Dressed in simple, low-cut black clothes, with green highlights that traced her curves, she looked at once both more mature and more competent than Laurel. At first that had bothered Laurel, made her feel inferior, but over time she had come to understand they simply approached the same problems in different ways. Neither better nor worse than the other.

Beth laced her hands above her head and began to stretch, working out nonexistent kinks in her spine. "Ready to get started, then?"

Nodding, Laurel knelt down on the ground, gown billowing around her, and dug her fingers into the soft surface of the Dream. Slowly exhaling, she let her eyes close and consciousness expand outwards, searching for roots. With people's dreams so indistinct, it was nearly impossible to find where the Dream had planted its roots simply by looking. Beth's solution was to simply begin tearing at the foundation of the Dream, rending it asunder until she encountered resistance. Laurel, however, preferred a more patient approach. Letting herself slip and fade as far into the Dream as she dared until she could feel the pulse of it, find it's energy and trace it to its burgeoning saplings.

When she finally found a vein, she filled it with light to guide them to its end. Finished, she began withdraw when her mind brushed against another, weaker vein further out. Feeling uneasy, she marked it with light as well before fully pulling back into her imagined body. Above her, Beth was frowning out across the horizon.

"Which line is it?" she asked, looking between two slithering tendrils in the distance. One strong and bright, the other dull and faltering.

"B-both."

"Both? It's never grabbed two minds in one night before. Sure you’re not imagining things?"

"I-I don't know, but I d-definitely felt two of them." Wringing her hands together, Laurel hesitated for a moment before continuing. "Y-you said there used to only be a few a week, right? Then one almost every night? And since I've st-started, there's only been a handful of empty nights."

Beth worked her mouth sourly. "The Dream's getting stronger, yeah. But now we're going to have to split up to deal with them both." Beth cursed quietly. "F**k. Fine. I'll take the bright one."

"T-that's not going to, uh, work though."

"You've been at this long enough," Beth snapped, "don't tell you can't handle one night on your own."

"N-no," Laurel stammered, "that's not what I mean. If it's, y'know, getting stronger, we c-can't keep up with it forever."

"We don't have much choice," Beth retorted. "It's that or let it send our friends and family into comas as it tries to drag itself out of here."

Laurel swallowed, looking out at the two violet tendrils of light. Where they sunk into the boundary between the Dream and reality, and where they stretched back into the furthest unknown depths. "W-we could go for the source. St-stop it once and for all."

"Don't be an idiot," Beth said. "Even the roots put up a fight when we destroy them. Imagine what the source would be like." But even as she spoke, she too was looking out to where the veins of light disappeared in the distance, eyes hungry.

"W-we can do this," Laurel urged, "together."

"We can do this," Beth muttered, then looked at Laurel, something approaching a smile on her mouth. "Let's do it."

__________

Afternoon

"What is it t-that the Dream wants?"

Shy looked up at Laurel confused. The two of them were sitting in Laurel's room, surrounded by stuffed animals and scattered dolls. Childs toys, but things that Laurel found comforting. From the radio on her desk, light rock played softly, and downstairs Laurel's cousins could be heard stomping around, getting ready for soccer practice. Shy looked Laurel over for a moment, then turned to the window. "Did Beth not say?"

"B-Beth doesn't, uh, t-talk to me much," Laurel admitted, "l-like, at all. I don't think she w-wants me around."

"Oh," Shy turned back to Laurel, head tilted and wide eyes both blue and empty at the same time. "It wants to be real. It wants to live and breath and grow, and is willing to drag others back into its prison in order to pull itself free."

"B-but you're a p-part of the Dream, right? And you're here. Uh, real."

"No," Shy stated quietly. "I am not. I am only real to you, and to Beth. Everyone else sees me, but even as they look at me, they forget me. Something at the edge of their awareness, slipping even as they try to focus on it."

"O-oh." Laura awkwardly began fidgeting with the hem of her dress, rubbing it between her fingers. "I'm, uh... I'm s-sorry?"

"It's not your doing." Shy leaned forward, and as she did, the sunlight filtered through the window became caught in that swirling cloud of hair. Refracted and multiplied into a soft halo around Shy's peaceful, cherub-like face. But even then, those wide eyes continued to bore into Laura, impenetrably deep and ancient. "Just know that as long as you and Beth continue to fight the Dream, you are doing the right thing. That is all I need of you."

________

Midnight

The veins of light had led them further into the Dream than they had ever been before. Above them, the uniform darkness had given way to swirling constellations of stars, pulsating bursts of light that refused to remain still. Sometimes they seemed impossibly distant, further than the furthest galaxies, and other times they seemed to hang heavy over Laurel's head, ready to fall upon her in a cascade of stardust. Beneath their feet, the veins of light had widened into paths, twisting and flowing through each other. Until, eventually, they came to rest at the base of a mighty tree. Every time Laurel blinked, it seemed to take a new shape; at once a willow and a pine, an oak and a birch. It's branches stretched far into the sky, waves of pale blue light coursing beneath the bark. It sparked and thrummed with energy, reminding Laurel of diagrams of nervous systems.

This far from the boundary between the Dream and reality, there were no afterimages of dreams. Only barren ground and bloated stars, shifting tree and writhing roots. When Laurel turned to Beth, fear and adrenaline holding her heart prisoner, she found Beth looking back at her, face dangerous and determined. There was a purpose to her, a sharp edge. Something that had always rested just beneath her skin, cutting and pressing forward in times of need. Now, in the heart of the Dream, those honed blades began to surface, forming as shards of green light swirling around Beth's hands.

With a small nod, Beth signalled for Laurel to back away before turning to face the tree. The shards grew sharper and brighter, increasingly deadly and chaotic as even more were pulled from the void to join the turmoil. The storm grew larger and larger until finally it coalesced into a single massive swarm, directed by Beth's guiding hands. With a shout, she let it loose, the shards cutting into the roots and base of the tree. There was a maddened shriek as the bark split and charred, cords of lightning arcing outwards and gouging rifts along the ground.

Hurriedly, Laura formed a protective bubble around her and Beth, the lightning coursing around it hungrily. The shriek of the wounded tree grew higher and higher in pitch, reaching far above the normal range of human hearing. But in the Dream, such limitations lost all meaning, and the sound continued to tear at Laurel's ears, sending her to her knees. Then, suddenly, it stopped. The last few sparks of electricity faded away, and the tree was still once more. Beth looked back to Laurel, confused, but Laurel had no answers for her.

They stood there for a moment, wondering if victory had been so easy, when the tree began to shudder. Pale, gnarled hands began to grow from the wounds left by the shards. Scrabbling, clutching hands that pulled themselves further out, dragging arms and bodies behind them. Dozens of them, one from each cut. When they stood, they were crooked and unsteady things, somewhere between a person and a dried piece of driftwood. Cracked and pale, stiff and hollow. They moved in jerks and bursts, hardly seeming to transition from one position to the next.

Without hesitation Beth darted forward, already summoning another cloud of green shards to swirl around her fists. Further back, Laurel gathered an arrow of light in her arm before shooting it out towards the furthest of the saprolings, piercing one through the chest before continuing onwards to remove the arm of another. The first collapsed, while the second changed course away from Beth and towards Laurel, apparently unhindered by the smoking stump left of its arm.. A few others nearby did the same, moving surprisingly fast with their jittering movements.

Raising a series of floating steps, Laurel hopped away from them, shooting arrows back down at them all the while. Beneath her, Beth danced amidst a crowd of saprolings, ducking beneath their blows and shredding apart those who lingered in her presence. But even as they were struck down, others stepped in to take their place, dangerous by sheer volume, and Beth was slowly forced backwards towards the tree.

Worried, and with the rest of those that had been hounding her struck down, Laurel lowered herself to the ground once more to steady her aim and began picking off those at the edge of the crowd, not wanting to risk hitting Beth by mistake. Together, they began to bring down the saprolings, though those that remained continued to back Beth towards the tree, trying to corner her. No matter how unpredictably she moved or how quickly she dodged, there was always another saproling there to throw itself in her way, regardless of it's own well being. Until at last, with only a handful of saprolings left, Beth went to step backwards only to find the tree at her back. Sensing victory, the saprolings latched onto her tight, forcing her wrists back, their wooden strength too much for Beth to overcome.

Panicking, Laurel readied another arrow and let loose, her aim dangerously close to Beth. With a burst of violet light, two of the saprolings fell back, leaving only one gripping Beth's wrist. It froze for only a moment before lunging to grab Beth's other wrist, but Beth was faster, whipping her hand around and shoving a green shard into the saproling's featureless face. It staggered back, clutching at the light, before toppling to the ground.

Sharing a sigh of relief, Laurel and Beth relaxed, the fight won. Around them the saprolings littered the ground, faintly smoking where the weapons of light had cut them. Some still twitched, defeated but not quite dead, long fingers scratching at the ground.

Beth looked up at Laurel and smiled for a moment, before confusion washed across her face and she looked down at her feet. Following her gaze, Laurel could see the roots of the tree slowly settling around Beth's ankles, holding them tight. The two looked back up at each other in horror, before fresh branches shot out of the trunk and latched onto to Beth, and began to drag her towards it's hungry mass.

________

Evening

"Why d-do you hang out with them?"

The two of them were sitting around Laurel's kitchen table, working on math homework. The sound of Laurel's father mowing the lawn gently wafted through the open window, while upstairs her mother could be heard softly singing in the shower. Beth, meanwhile, seemed barely conscious, stifling yet another yawn as she looked up. "With who?"

"Your c-" Laurel only just managed to stop herself before the word 'cronies' left her lips. "Friends. Cynthia, Sally H., Godwyn. T-them. You don't really seem like their type."

"Their type?" Beth asked warily. "What do you mean by that?"

"L-like, you're not... outgoing like they are. You don't obsess over makeup or g-gossip about boys or things like that. You're acad-demic and reclusive and... yeah."

"You have a really childish idea of what my friends are like," Beth muttered, scratching down another answer to her homework. "Is there something you're getting at, with this? Or just shitting on my social life?"

"W-well," Laurel shuffled some math handouts around as she gathered her thoughts, knowing she was on thin ice and about to step onto thinner. "You said you get them good deals on, uh, m-marijuana because of your brother, right? S-so, don't you worry that they just hang out with you for a ch-cheap high?"

Beth was silent for a moment, face inscrutable as she studied Laurel before answering. "Whatever. Not your problem."

"W-what?" Laurel leaned forward, face earnest. "I'm j-just, like, worried. That they're, you know, taking advantage of you. That they d-don't actually care about-"

"Of course they don't f*****g care about me," Beth shouted, suddenly on her feet, knuckles white on the edge of the table. "You think I need some f*****g princess like you to tell me that? I know they just put up with me to get deals from my brother. I've known since day f*****g one. But what am I supposed to do, huh? They're the only ones who will hang out with someone like me, and it's a far sight better than nothing."

"I-I was just trying to help."

"I don't want your help," Beth answered hotly. "I don't need it. What do you know about any of this kind of thing anyway? Little miss perfect, with her doting parents and friendly cousins. Sharing laughs and smiles with everyone at school." Beth sat back down, head buried in her hands. "You don't even need to try to win people over. They just... like you," Beth snapped her fingers, "just like that."

Laurel yearned to reach out and rest a hand on Beth's shoulder. To lend a comforting touch. But even now, after months of sharing the Dream together, Laurel couldn't help but be afraid of Beth. Of her anger and insecurities. "I-I didn't win you over."

"No," Beth admitted, raising her head and letting her hands fall away, "you didn't." For a moment she looked as if she was going to say more, guilt and resentment both lurking beneath her dark eyes, before she turned away. "I need to leave if I want to have dinner ready for when my mom and dad get off work."

"Beth, I didn't m-mean to-"

"I dont want your pity, so please just... stop. I'll see you tonight."

_____

Dawn

Slowly, inevitably, the grasping branches began to envelope Beth, pulling her into the tree’s embrace. "Laurel!" she shouted, reaching out desperately with her free hand.

Stumbling over herself in her haste and darting around the twitching forms of the fallen saprolings, Laurel raced to Beth and grabbing the outstretched arm even as the branches began to pull it back. She dug her heels in the ground, trying to find the purchase needed to drag Beth free, but the tree was patient. Relentless. Its bark began to flow outwards and over Beth, making her a part of itself. Letting go with one hand, Laurel reached out behind her and summoned chains from the ground, ordered them to wrap around her and anchor her. To lash her and Beth's hands together. "I-I got you," Laurel stammered, straining. But even as she worked, the tree sent roots to entangle her chains, worked its implacable will against hers.

Slowly, Laurel felt Beth's wrist sliding out of her grip. "Please," Beth begged, as branches began to stretch up her neck. A pale and gnarled necklace, pulsing with energy. "Please." Laurel could feel Beth's conscious reaching out to her even as her grip weakened, and Laurel responded in kind, their minds coiling around each other, desperate for purchase. And in their opposites, began to bond. Like the teeth of a zipper, hope found fear. Self-pity found self-hatred; love found loneliness; forgiveness, bitterness; and idealism, realism. All their disparities came together into a unified need for acceptance; for each other. Laurel's violet aura met Beth's green, and the two merged into gold. A gold light that filled them with warmth and with comfort. That washed away their fear and laid to rest their doubts.

The tree began to writhe and shudder, the branches that held Beth catching aflame. Curling and turning ashen beneath the golden light, their hungry grip crumbled, and Beth tumbled out from the tree and into Laurel's waiting arms. Pieces of charred bark fell harmless from her skin. They clutched at each other, sobbing with relief, as above them the fire spread. Against the combined truth of all their pieces, their strengths and flaws, the falseness of the Dream was helpless. Clouds of blue and black ash flowed up into the void, blotting out the heavy stars. The branches cracked and twisted backwards upon themselves, sending thunderous shudders through the ground. And as the fire turned to an inferno, the entire tree began to collapse, folding inwards and downwards until all that was left was a hunched, smoldering form. A girl, with wide hurt eyes and a swirling cloud of sparks for hair.

Laurel looked on with horror as Shy straightened uneasily amidst the ash, coals burning beneath her flesh, skin peeling back from the heat. "I'm sorry," Shy gasped, sparks drifting from her mouth. "I'm sorry. I only wanted to be real." She took a tottering step forward, reaching out towards Laurel and Beth, blackening face twisted with envy. "I wanted... this," with every pained word her voice grew quieter, more strained. One finger from her outstretched hand fell to the ground and shattered, scattering coal and ash. "I wanted you. I wanted-" With her next step, her leg collapsed, sparks flung forward as her body tumbled to the ground and crumbled, leaving nothing but a dark mound and a cloud of soot.

Laurel clasped a hand to her mouth, fighting the urge to be sick. Beside her, Beth shuddered once before climbing to her feet. "We have to go," she muttered, half-dragging Laurel behind her. "We need to leave... this."

Nodding mutely, Laurel let herself be dragged alone. The two of them followed the tendrils of light back to the boundary, puffs of soot drifting from them with each step. Their skin was dark and coarse from it, their noses clogged with the smell of burnt wood and burnt flesh. Beneath, the golden light still glowed softly, strongest where Beth gripped Laurel with ferocious strength.

So weary was Laurel, that she didn't even notice when they reached the boundary, only looking up when Beth lowered her to her knees and forced her hands into the ground. "Let's go home," she said. "Let's go home."