The Sandman is coming for you, Benja’s words echo in her ears.
Aris knows he did not remember his time with the Dreamers. They were all erased with his dreams. He had meant a different Sandman, the one in folklore, who sprinkles sand in children’s eyes so they will sleep. If only she could.
She misses her friend. She wonders where he is. Has his body already been burned to ashes? What about his soul? Can she believe in life after death?
“Try wearing it and see if it fits,” she whispers to herself.
A gust of wind sweeps through, and the sky begins to clear. She can no longer feel her fingers. How long has she been sitting here?
Just a little while longer.
“Aris?” a familiar voice speaks.
She snaps her head up and sees Metis. Her heart leaps. She wants to smile, but she cannot—it is too difficult.
“Why are you sitting here in the dark?” he asks, his voice filled with concern.
Many emotions bubble up at once. They leak out as tears on her face. She is helpless to stop it.
“My friend died,” she says with a suppressed sob.
Metis sits down next to her.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
“Not really. Talk about something else.”
Metis leans back against the bench. A long silence follows.
“Or nothing,” mumbles Aris.
“I’m trying to find Vega.”
“You know Vega?” she asks.
“Someone once told me it’s quite a special star. The brightest in the Lyra constellation.”
“Yeah. It’s pretty special.”
“I can’t find it. It’s not where I expected it to be,” he says.
“In the winter, it’s in the northwestern quadrant.”
She points up. “Follow the end of my finger. That blue-white dot there.”
“Ah. Thank you,” he says.
They both stare up at the sky for a long time without another word. Melancholy leaks out of her skin like sap off an injured tree. Aris wants more than anything for his arm to wrap around her. But she does not deserve his affection, she tells herself. She has treated him horribly.
“Do you know that back in old Japan, Vega was called Orihime?” he says. “She’s a heavenly princess who fell in love with Hikoboshi, a mortal. He’s the star Altair.”
She shakes her head.
“Her father forbade her to be with him and separated them by the Celestial River—the Milky Way. The lovers only see each other on the seventh night of the seventh moon, when a bridge of magpies forms across the Celestial River, uniting the two.”
She sighs. “That’s a sad story.”
“Sometimes the best stories are the sad ones.”
A long pause passes between them.
“There’s too much light in the city, even here. I wish we could see the stars better. Have you ever seen the night sky out in the desert?” she asks.
“Yeah. A long time ago.”
“You know, there’s a question I’ve always wanted to ask you.”
Metis turns his head to look at her.
She continues, “The record says you were discovered by an AI. It says you’re a musical natural. How does that work do you think? How did that part of you survive Tabula Rasa?”
“The music has always been inside me. It’s not an act of remembering. It’s like I’ve always known and could never forget it.”
“Do you remember other things?” The question escapes her lips before she can stop herself.
Metis doesn’t answer. She wonders if he thinks she’s a lunatic. A woman grieving for her lost friend.
She clears her throat. “I mean. Some believe music is another language, a way to communicate. Maybe that’s why it lives so deeply in our brains, where Tabula Rasa can’t touch. Like a language.”
She imagines rooms inside her brain where various pieces of memories live. Tabula Rasa is the fog that rolls in, licking through the plains of her mind, searching and sifting the contents for what it will take to the underworld.
“Maybe. But I like to think that music doesn’t just communicate,” he says. “It expresses human feelings and moods in so many subtle shades and is very much subjective to the listener. Sometimes it can even express something which no words in any language can describe. A purely musical meaning.”
The wind blows. She crosses her arms close to her chest.
He takes off his coat and gives it to her. “Here.”
“But you’ll be cold.”
“I’m fine.”
She scoots closer to him and drapes his coat over them both. “It feels like it just came out of the dryer.”
“I run warm. So I’ve been told.”
She takes in a deep breath and lets it out.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
“For what?”
“Not returning your reaches.”
“It’s okay.”
“It wasn’t you. It’s me.”
“I know,” he says.
She can hear a smile in his voice. It makes her feel better. A thought comes to her.
“So, if you’re not upset with me, can I ask a favor?” she asks.
“Anything,” he whispers.
“I need a friend tomorrow.”
Chapter Seventeen
She hears water lapping against sand. A salty scent is in the air. Cool wind blows in, fluttering the white curtain. A balmy hand traces the outline of her face. Her neck. The curve of her breast. The hand rests on the valley of her waist. Her skin is on fire.
“Wake up sleepyhead,” a voice says.
His strong hand turns her body. She feels the suppleness of his lips on hers. His hand travels to her hair, winding around its strands. She opens her eyes and blinks at the brightness.
Aris wakes to the sharp feel of the couch digging into her back. She had fallen asleep on it last night. Sweat drips down her temples. She wipes it. The memory of the dream rises. It is replaying in her mind in slow motion. The feel of the heat. The soft touch. The bright light. The sound of the
