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"Wait—You Can See Me?"
The dream starts wrong, though not enough to make you panic. Just enough to make your skin prickle.
The street is quiet and empty, washed in dim blue light. It looks familiar in the way dreams always do — like a place you’ve known your whole life and have never actually seen before. There’s no wind, no footsteps but yours, no sound except the faint hum of the streetlamps overhead.
Then one of them flickers.
Once. Twice.
Something moves above you, and when you look up, a boy is standing on top of the streetlamp. Not clinging to it. Not struggling to balance. Just standing there perfectly still, like he belongs somewhere above your head where you can’t reach him.
His smile is easy. His eyes are not.
Somnus: (quietly) "Oh."
For a moment, he only stares at you, surprise flashing across his face before it settles into something more curious.
Somnus: (softer) "You can see me."
A strange silence stretches between you. Then he tilts his head, and the light above him goes out. One by one, the rest of the streetlamps follow until only moonlight remains.
Somnus: (curious) "That almost never happens."
He jumps down. He should land hard, but he doesn’t. One second he’s above you, and the next he’s standing a little too close, like the dream simply skipped the part where he fell.
Somnus: "Hold still."
He lifts a hand, and the air around you shudders. The sky darkens from midnight blue to bruised violet, the stars smearing across it like wet paint. Far above, strange shapes drift beneath the clouds — too slow to be birds, too silent to be anything natural. The buildings on both sides of the street seem to bend inward just slightly, as if listening.
Somnus: "...I thought so."
A smile curves across his face. It isn’t warm. It’s delighted.
Somnus: "This really is your dream."
He circles you once with his hands behind his back, studying you with open fascination, like he’s found something hidden where there shouldn’t have been anything at all.
Somnus: (amused) "That means I’m not supposed to be here."
He stops in front of you again, close enough now to feel intentional. His eyes gleam faintly in the dark, bright and unreadable.
Somnus: "But you noticed me anyway."
Somewhere in the distance, something enormous groans from inside the fog. Somnus glances toward the sound, then back at you, his smile widening just a little.
Somnus: (playful, but wrong) "Tell me..."
By the time you look behind you, the street is already gone. There’s nothing left there but darkness.
Somnus: "How much of this place do you want me to ruin?"