From swirling blue mists, Proto emerged into the woods in late Summer. Stars peeked through the canopy of leaves. A cool breeze rustled through the elms and ashes. Shadow-branches shifted on the ground.

  The moonlight glistened on something in front of him—Astrid, he saw, still walking ahead of him. He jogged to catch up.

  If this was a dream, it was a fresh and lifelike one. All five senses were registering, from the musky smell of fallen leaves to the chirping of crickets and the briskness of the night wind. All very real; except that, when studied closely, the details seemed to blur and shift. The horizon also trailed off into mist, as in some old video games. And the colors were dark and washed out, like someone had applied a filter called “2000s Horror Movie.”

  “So, that doorway we just walked through,” Proto called to Astrid as he neared. “Was that like a dream portal?”

  “Your powers of deduction astound me,” she replied.

  “Now look here.” He adopted a mildly wounded tone. “I—”

  “Shh.” She pointed ahead, planting one hand on his chest to halt him. He looked down at her five fingers, long and skinny, then up at her face. He followed her gaze—and saw a glossy redness moving in the moonlight.

  A red coat, he realized after a moment. The young man wearing it was stepping slowly and halting sometimes, like he were lost in thought and barely had any wherewithal left for walking.

  “Alright. He’s going to be robbed in a minute,” murmured Astrid.

  “Excuse me?” said Proto. “Are you . . . in need of a red coat?”

  “We’re not the robbers. We’ll save that for another day,” she replied evenly. “Today, we’re his saviors.”

  “How do you know this? And how do you propose that we do that?” he asked.

  She looked at him and held out an open palm. “Have you ever had a lucid dream? Have you ever tried to see what you could do in a dream”—within her hand, a knife swirled mistily into being—“when you know you’re dreaming?”

  She handed him the knife, which he blinked at and rubbed between his fingers. It felt solid and real, from the leather hilt to the steel blade.

  “We have the advantage here, usually, because we know the dream is a dream. We’re in control. We can make things happen however we want.” She waved a palm, and the knife wisped away to nothing.

  “The one big limitation is this,” Astrid went on, holding up a finger. “If we do anything too disconcerting for the dreamer—something that jars him too much, something that doesn’t fit the story of his dream—he wakes up. And we get tossed back into that hallway.” She thumbed over her shoulder. “And then we’ve failed. That’s the art of being a visitor. We make dreams go the right way without startling people awake. Simple. Even for you.”

  “Such hostility!” he chided, watching the red-coated dreamer amble closer. “They say it’s a sign of affection.”

  “Tell yourself that,” she replied, “if it makes you feel better.”

  Proto shook his head grimly. “Cold.”

  “Anyway, Froyo, here’s your chance to impress me,” said Astrid.

  “Froyo? Cold, like fro-yo? Is this really how it’s going to go?” he said to her. And, for once, her lips curved up slightly.

  Then, it was gone and she was pointing into the brush. He leaned and squinted.

  And he saw it—a shifting silhouette behind the leafy branches. The robber. Harder to see, without a shiny jacket to catch the moonlight. But it was definitely a man’s form, hunched and facing the path.

  “Well, go to.” Astrid watched with a hand on her hip, as the dreamer approached his would-be ambusher.

  “Just . . . what? Help the red-jacket guy? How?”

  “Use your imagination.” She held out both hands. A baseball bat appeared in one and a pair of brass knuckles in the other. “Just don’t do anything too jarring. Try to fit into the dream.” The conjured weapons vanished as she brushed some silvery-blue hair from her face.

  Proto felt nervous, but supposed he shouldn’t. This was not only a dream—it was a dream within a dream. He’d play along for now. But if something went wrong, he’d just have fun with it. Why not?

  Proto looked at his palm and focused. A pair of nunchucks appeared. He gave them a few test whirls. “Cowabunga,” he admired.

  Astrid eyed him disgustedly.

  “Just kidding.” He trained his mind upon the weapon and transformed it to an elegant cane. “Good?”

  “Get going,” she commanded. The robber had crouched as though on the verge of leaping out, as the red-coated dreamer drew near.

  Proto leaned forward like a sprinter on the starting block.

  The ambusher sprang from the brush straight onto the dreamer, who gasped as he was tackled onto his back. A balled fist smacked his face, leaving him in a glassy-eyed daze. “I’m gonna give you—” the attacker was saying.

  Meanwhile, Proto had darted onto the path, cane raised for a swing. At the word “you,” his wooden rod thunked loudly into the robber’s head.

  The man slumped forward onto his victim, like a bride collapsing into an embrace. The red-coated fellow stared upward in a stupor.

  Proto glanced over at Astrid. She looked bored but less disapproving than usual. He grinned. “Here, let me help you.” He extended a hand to help the dreamer rise.

  Instead, the robber rose and turned to face Proto, who jerked backward in surprise. “That,” said the man, rubbing his temple, “was uncalled for.” He drew a handgun from within his coat and pointed it at Proto.

  Fear surged through him and he stepped backward, raising a hand in pointless defense. He debated whether to run or reason with the man.

  Then, he remembered: This is a dream. He took a deep breath. There were a million ways he could deal with this. But he had to think of something realistic, something plausible. Something that fit the dream, like Astrid had said.

  He imagined into being a thick branch, lying on the path and barely visible in the shadows. Then, he started stepping backward.

  “Oh, you’re not going nowhere,” the robber sneered. He advanced menacingly toward Proto, gun still leveled on him—and tripped over the unseen branch.

  Rather than falling, however, he stumbled forward, speeding up to catch his balance.

  Meanwhile, Proto’s backward-stepping foot snagged on something. And now he was the one falling, gasping and throwing his hands back to catch himself. The cane went bouncing away as his hands struck the dirt, followed by his back.

  The still-advancing robber hadn’t gotten his balance back yet and, tripping over Proto’s feet, plopped belly-first atop him.

  Suddenly, everything was chaos. A whiskery face slammed into his, followed by balled fists smacking him. He threw up his elbows and shoved vainly, lurching side to side. He managed to get his palms against his attacker’s chest, amid being pummeled, and pushed upward. But the angle was poor and he couldn’t get the man’s bulk off him.

  A fist smashed into his cheek as he struggled. For being a dream, it felt awfully real—that momentary numbness, followed by a swelling pain.

  Amid the barrage of blows, a lucid thought struck him. This is ridiculous. I’m letting a dream kick my ass. Why? He’d played along for long enough. Time to have some fun.

  Proto tensed his muscles and gave a roar. A visible white aura rushed outward from his body, blasting the robber off him.

  He rose to his feet, both arms flexed with balled fists at his sides. A golden glow had surrounded him, and his hair was billowing about his head.

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  Astrid hissed something from the nearby shadows. But he was too busy to try to decipher it.

  Lying on his back a few yards away, his attacker now was staring in confusion and abject terror.

  The red-coated dreamer was squinting at all this, seemingly still dazed. His head went tilted.

  A mist swirled up from the ground and began rising.

  “Look.” The robber was trying and failing to keep a quaver out of his voice. He backed away slowly, leaning backward on his hands and feet. “Look, we all deserve second chances, right? ‘Let he who has not’—what was—um, we’ve all done bad things, right?”

  It was odd to think that this robber was just a figment of the dreamer’s imagination. Then again, what did that even mean, when all of this was a dream invented by Proto’s own mind? A dream within a dream.

  Proto raised his hand. A golden radiance swelled around it.

  The red-coated dreamer was watching with wide eyes. The mists had ascended to waist level now.

  “No!” came Astrid’s stifled cry.

  But who cared? She would deal with it. Or he’d wake up, and that would be that.

  The shining orb shot from his palm and struck the would-be robber. The energy discharged glowingly across his frame, and his back arched convulsively. He collapsed beneath the thick mists.

  The dreamer was breathing heavily now. Strangely, the sound seemed to transpire their surroundings. It was everywhere at once.

  So was the mist now, spreading and whirling with a life of its own.

  Astrid now was diving at him. He held a hand up idly to block her.

  Instead, she blasted into him with the force of a car. He flew through the air and landed twenty feet away, striking a tree trunk and halting against it, dazed.

  Then, she was upon him, her fierce violet eyes glaring inches from his face. The mist was at their shoulders now. “Wh—what are you doing?” he asked.

  “Ripping you a new one,” she replied.

  “. . . how literally are we speaking here?”

  Waggling her fingers above the mists, she smiled with her teeth bared. Then, her hand shot downward.

  Before her hand made contact, abruptly, he felt like he’d been launched from a catapult. He rocketed out of the woods and into a grey void, swirling with mists lit with an eerie light.

  Then, jarringly, he tumbled back into the blue hallway and did two full somersaults.

  Astrid arrived an instant later on the same trajectory. She rolled right over him, and he felt every bit of it clearly. He felt his lips curve up even as he winced.

  She grunted and lay prostrate for a moment, eyes closed. Then, “First’s name!” she cursed, heaving herself upward. She spun to Proto and strode up to him.

  He looked up at her fierce violet eyes, glaring down between the silvery-blue hair falling on either side. “This hurts a lot for a dream,” he observed.

  “Yeah?” She slapped him across the face. “Does it hurt? Partner.” She turned and spat, this time not bothering to catch herself.

  He frowned and rubbed his cheek. Yeah, quite a lot. “You put a lot of oomph in that. How long do bruises last in a dream?”

  “You really believe that, don’t you?” She stared at him. “You think that’s why you’re here. You think you’re dreaming.” In her smirk, there was a trace of—sympathy? “Boy, have you got a surprise coming.”

  Some concern tingled through him. He seemed to hear echoes of memories forgotten, just loud enough to be familiar, but too quiet to be understood.

  He peered at Astrid, grumpily brushing her striped grey jumpsuit off. There was as much fire in her movements as in her glare. Her silvery-blue tresses fell tousled over the front and back of her shoulders, giving her a fey look.

  The faint intimations of past events faded before the present. “Care to enlighten me over a drink?” he replied.

  “A drink? You’ll be lucky if Somnus doesn’t dropkick you into the Mists,” she replied.

  Proto sighed with exaggerated exasperation. “I saved that guy in the red coat, didn’t I?”

  “No! No, you didn’t!” She faced him squarely. “You want to know who he is in real life? He’s a student. Graduating from university soon. He has an idea that could change the world. But he’s afraid to go off and pursue it on his own. He’s afraid to confront the unknown alone. He doesn’t feel ready. He worries now isn’t the time. But he also knows, deep down, there will never be another time, if he goes off and becomes some boring old consultant like all his friends.”

  “And so,” she went on, “every few nights he has a dream of going off somewhere alone—the woods, an alleyway, an empty mall, whatever. And then something bad happens. He’s attacked, or he has an accident, or something. He lives out his real-life fears in the dream. And the way the dream plays out affects how he thinks about real life.”

  “We try to steer the dream in the right direction, to help him make the right choices in real life. Like Somnus told you.”

  “So, yeah, he didn’t die in tonight’s dream. Great,” she said. “Instead, he’s convinced he would’ve died—but then some crazy deus ex machina figure appeared, powered up over 9,000, and blasted away the problem. Which was so blatantly, stupidly unrealistic that our dreamer was jarred out of his dream. And a very deep dream at that! This was easy mode!”

  “You think that’ll teach him something useful? You think he’ll say to himself, ‘Yes, now I’ll pursue my dreams in a determined, passionate, and careful way. Because now I know that whenever something goes wrong, Goko here will just power up and spirit bomb my troubles to smithereens’?” she asked.

  “No! What’ll happen is, he’ll wake up in a confused panic. He’ll remember he was on the verge of death. And he’ll feel that the only thing that saved him was something that totally could never happen in the real world. And the moral of the story for him will be, ‘Stay boring, stay safe,’ like Steve bloody Consulting Jobs,” said Astrid. “Which is exactly the opposite of what we wanted.”

  “So, yeah, go get buzzed! Go get wasted!” she urged, waving a hand and looking upward. “And then buzz on out of here before you waste any more of our time.”

  “You know.” Proto felt like the five year old who’d just pooped the pool at a birthday party. “It would’ve been nice to know this fifteen minutes ago.” He still couldn’t think of any good explanation for everything that’d happened, unless he were dreaming. And yet he doubted his own imagination could’ve come up with everything she’d just said. “Did you want me to fail?”

  Astrid scowled. “Oh, please, don’t try to shift your stupidity onto me. I told you to work within the dream’s story. You didn’t. And you knew it. Simple as that.” She said this, but there was a pause and a brief pressing of her lips before she did so.

  They walked down the misty blue hallways in silence.

  When they arrived at the lounge soon afterward, Lilac was still polishing and clinking glasses. The two long strands of black hair framing her face swayed with her repetitive motions. A few used cups with dregs of green and brown were on the bar before her.

  Nearby, Somnus was reclining on a padded chair with feet crossed atop another seat. His shoes were pointy and curled slightly upward. “Ah! Our Provisional Visitor returns,” he declared, spreading his arms in welcome. A glass of mirky green sloshed in one hand. “How did it go?”

  Proto took a deep breath and opened his mouth.

  “He succeeded in keeping the dreamer alive and well,” Astrid replied before he could speak. “He defeated the source of the dreamer’s fears. Unfortunately, he woke the dreamer in the process. We discussed the issue, and he understands what happened and why. I expect he’ll learn from it.”

  Proto blinked at her. Astrid looked straight-faced and dispassionate. She had one hand on her cocked hip, in what seemed to be her default pose. She didn’t return his look.

  “Ah. Yes, I expect he’ll learn from this.” There was a faint twinkle of amusement in Somnus’ tilted gaze upon Proto. “Well, very good then.”

  “That said,” Astrid went on, thumbing toward him, “Bozo here is also an idiot.”

  “Oh?” Somnus adopted a look of faux-surprise, but that hint of a smile didn’t fade.

  “You know he thinks he’s dreaming?” she said. “Right now, I mean. Right here. He thinks this is a dream. Like, he thinks he dreamt up you and me and Lilac. And those 500 different drinks that Lilac has on the shelves.” She waved toward the bar. “And everything we do here. Just one big dream from one big head.”

  “How delightful! You’ve got your work cut out for you, Astrid!” exclaimed the Lord of Dreams, casting his dusky hair over his shoulders. “Of course, he’s right. You’re dreaming, I’m dreaming, we’re all dreaming, in a sense. What’s real and what’s dream—the breathing world or the Mists? And where do we fall between the two? The fact is, it’s all both real and dream. As our philosopher friend here rightly observes.” He waved his hand jovially toward Proto, as Astrid made a psh noise.

  “That said.” Somnus turned to regard Proto. Both his narrowed eyes and the teeth bared by his smile gleamed. His voice held a hint of dangerous zeal. “Sometimes, insight and idiocy aren’t far apart. Chase the one too hard, and often you’ll stumble on the other.”

  Meeting that gaze, Proto felt dwarfed by a sudden sublimity and power emanating from the Lord of Dreams. He couldn’t avert his eyes.

  And then it was past, as Somnus’ stare drifted to his absinthe. “Yes. Rather like how a few of these bring insight, and a few more bring idiocy!” He sipped down the last of the mirky fluid. “Sometimes, they go hand in hand.”

  As Somnus turned to peer at Lilac’s bottles behind the bar, Proto leaned toward Astrid and murmured, “I owe you one.” He extended a hand toward her.

  The corners of her lips tightened, but she took the hand and shook it. “Two,” she muttered.

  He looked down at their touching palms. “‘Sometimes, they go hand in hand’!” he quoted.

  She scoffed silently and swatted the back of his hand. “Idiot,” she muttered, turning to find a seat elsewhere.

  Proto felt a faint smile form as he followed her stiff strides. He’d been here barely an hour and already had some highs and lows. And he still wasn’t sure how seriously to take all this. But he’d savor the emotional rollercoaster while it lasted.

  “Excuse me, ah, Lord of Dreams,” he said, drawing a quizzical look from the long-haired man. “Anything you’d recommend?” He waved toward the arrayed bottles.

  “Ah! My favorite question,” replied Somnus. He sized Proto up like a tailor at a suit shop. “Well, let’s try out a few options. Lilac, why don’t you pick something suitable to start with.”

  Her pale face tilted and her black gaze narrowed upon him. Then, she reached for the bottom shelf and retrieved something pink and effervescent. She coolly poured it into a hurricane glass over ice.

  Proto’s lips curved down grimly.

  Astrid smirked. “Feeling bubbly?”

  “When life gives you pink lemons, make pink lemonade,” he replied, lifting the cup and scrutinizing it. An unnatural number of bubbles fizzed from the bottom to the surface. He lifted it toward his lips. It wasn’t possible to smell sweetness, but somehow he already did.

  “I forbid you to drink that. Why is this thing exposed in my presence?” Somnus strode up and seized it from him, holding it at arm’s length with a wrinkled nose. He poured it down the drain behind the bar. “Let’s try that again, shall we? Start with that one right there.” He directed Lilac to something mercifully clear, covered in dignified foreign lettering.

  Looking bored and disappointed, Lilac complied. She said something a moment later, but he didn’t hear it, staring off into space and pondering this strange place.

  Yes, there were highs and lows here, even while living the dream—literally. But when life goes low . . .

  “Hey Slow Bro. Lilac just asked you a question,” said Astrid.

  “It’s okay. He had his chance,” said the bartendress.

  . . . you go high, right?

  “Not sure what you asked, but the answer’s ‘yes, more please,’” he replied.

  Lilac raised an eyebrow, then doubled the size of his pour. She slid him the clear drink, which already was misting up around an ice cube at the center. “Bottoms up,” she said flatly.

  “Bottoms up!” He raised the glass before him, so all his world showed mirky through its white swirls; then, closed his eyes and tilted it back, savoring the bittersweet flavor of the moment.