Here’s a short but sweet Two tale to whet the appetite until I get home.
As Two’s dreams went on in the same pattern, she began to exert more control over them, in tiny and yet distinct ways.
Much like more willful golems would have chosen to use whatever latitude or ambiguity their orders allowed to wrench themselves away from the path their masters set for them, Two used the framework of her recurring dream to subvert it, willing her dream-mouth to open and blurt out an impossible, nonsensical word before the scenario could progress to its painful conclusion.
She still lost her cozy box in the laboratory where every single object has been imbued with a purpose, including herself… she still shattered the dream of returning to her former, simpler existence as an enchanter’s tool, but she did so willingly, on her own initiative, instead of being forced to do so due to the irreconciliable conflicts between the rules of her old life and the demands of the new one.
The death of the dream still dumped her into the conveniently labeled flat featureless plane, but she could cope with that. She could even handle its sole other regular occupant, some sort of ridiculous owl turtle thing that her sleeping mind had dreamed up somehow.
“It’s not much use wondering about that,” the owl turtle thing chided her, from its perch on the pole. “You dreamed me up because your friend Hazel told you that people dream about things like me. You didn’t even change the basic details that she gave you as an example. You’re just not very good at dreaming.”
“I know I am not,” Two said. “Maybe that’s why you aren’t a very good dream, ridiculous owl turtle thing.”
“You’re only insulting yourself, you know,” it said.
“It’s rude to insult other people,” Two said. “So that’s good.”
Two concentrated a few moments and she began to rise up into the air
“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” said the owl turtle thing.
“I’m practicing dreaming,” she said. “People don’t get better at things if they don’t practice them, you know.”
“I know everything that you know,” it reminded her..
“I know!” Two said, irritated. She began to wobble in the air and then started to descend. “But flying is something else that people do in dreams.”
“I think that’s more hovering than flying,” the owl turtle thing said as she touched back down. “And now you’re not even doing that.”
“You interrupted me when I was just getting started,” Two said. “You are much too rude, ridiculous owl turtle thing.”
“And what do you think that says about you?”
“I don’t know,” Two said. “And so neither do you.”
“I know everything that you know and many things that you don’t.”
“I don’t see how that could be,” Two said.
“Who said it could?” the owl turtle thing asked. “Whether it could be or not, it is so because you have dreamed it to be.”
“Well, I’m not a very good dreamer,” Two reminded it.
“That isn’t actually a bad bit of dreaming, in my opinion.”
“Your opinion doesn’t matter very much,” Two said. “Since you are a bad dream to begin with.”
“You think I’m a bad dream?” the owl turtle thing said. “That bit in the laboratory is a bad dream. This is just a not unpleasant bit of absurdity.”
“Not from where I’m standing,” Two said calmly, staring down at her feet. She began to lift up off the ground again. She kept her focus on her feet and the upward motion until she was a good twelve feet above it, then looked up and around, proud of her accomplishment.
“Look down again,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing said.
Two did, and saw the ground was once again beneath her feet, though she hadn’t moved.
“That’s not fair,” she complained.
“Fair, shmair,” the owl turtle thing said. “It’s the ground. That’s what it does.”
“It doesn’t do that when I’m not dreaming,” Two said.
“It doesn’t rise up to meet your feet?”
“My feet come down to meet it.”
“It’s the same thing,” the owl turtle thing said. “It’s like the difference between coming here and going there… the same thing from a different perspective. Like the difference between this side of the pole and that side. It doesn’t matter which is which because it all depends on who’s looking and where they stand.”
“Last time you told me it does matter,” Two said.
“It does.”
“But then you said it doesn’t,” Two said.
“Naturally,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing said. “It all depends on where you stand.”
“I really don’t like you, ridiculous owl turtle thing,” Two said, and she looked down and tried to concentrate on levitating again, but nothing happened.
“You’re too aware of the ground now,” the owl turtle thing said. “And what your position is supposed to be, relative to it. You’re never going to fly while you can see it.”
“Then I won’t look,” Two said, and she tilted her head back to look upwards into the endless expanse of the sky and tried to imagine herself lifting up off the ground she couldn’t see.
She couldn’t feel herself moving, but she hadn’t really felt anything the other times. She kept concentrating all the same.
“It’s working!” the ridiculous owl turtle thing cried from somewhere far below.
The stupid thing’s excitement infected her, and Two actually smiled gleefully as she looked down to verify… and saw her feet right on the ground.
“It was working,” the owl turtle thing said. “But you wrecked it.”
“I really don’t like you, ridiculous owl turtle thing,” Two said. She looked around at the flat featureless plain, stretching away in every direction all the way to the horizon. “The ground is problematic.”
“The problem is you.”
“Hush,” Two said. She turned her face up to the sky until it was all she could see, and she scrunched up her face and screwed up her will, then looked down. The plain was gone… she was floating in space.
She giggled.
“That’s cheating,” the owl turtle thing said.
“It worked,” Two said.
“You didn’t deal with your actual problem, you just avoided it.”
“It worked for me,” Two clarified. She raised her arms and turned around in place.
“You’re not even moving,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing said. “You didn’t really do anything.”
“And you aren’t really anything,” Two said. “So I win.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” it said.
“Hush,” Two said. “I’m dreaming.”
This could have been written by Charles Dodgson.
Two and Dee are so damn awesome 🙂
Two needs to get some lucid dreaming lessons.
I was promised sex!