The place became brighter, but not as much as it had been the day before.
"So you can turn into a cat now."
Park Chung-Ho wasn't surprised by that transformation. He even accepted that the cat talked. After all, it was a dream, right?
"In this domain, my domain, I can do a lot of things." She laughed and looked at him with a smile. "I saw you being able to do some tricks yourself, too."
"Your mother has Friends at the Dreamers Society. They said it was nice, but that was only projections that I made."
"Friends? Could you tell me which ones?"
"Jane and Peter Burns and..."
"And Ida and Olaf." She ended. "Well... I know why they are here then, but they shouldn't try to come. I'm not in danger, but they would be. It's too deep. I can manage this, but they can't. And they wouldn't be able to go out. I'm not even talking about going here..."
"What do you mean? We're trying to rescue you."
"We? No, no, no, don't you dare do anything. It's way too dangerous. It is dangerous for veteran hunters, like my mother and her team; it would be suicidal for a newcomer. Trust me, I placed you in this safe place for a reason. You need to stay safe until you can act properly in the Dream Realm. Until you can protect yourself. You need training in here. And you need knowledge. Have you started to learn yet ?"
"Yes, I was in the library all day."
"And what did you learn?"
She was pressing him with her questions. He knew she was trying to change the subject of their conversation. He would have liked to know more about her and where she as, but he didn't ask anything else and explained the concepts he had seen and the explanations he got from the books and the hunters.
"But I'm curious about one thing. There was a sentence that said Be careful about what you bring into the Dream Realm. Be even more careful with what you bring out. I asked your mother if a dream could go out, and apparently that was a frightening question."
"It is a frightening question because you're asking about what should be avoided at all costs. It already happened in the past, and it always had bad consequences."
"You're telling me that dreams have Come Out of their realm to enter reality?"
"Do I look unreal to you?" Aislinn sounded hurt by Chung-Ho's words. "I told you I was a Dream. I come from this world."
"But your mother..."
"I've been conceived in this realm."
"You were... Oh... I got it. I'm sorry my words hurt you. I didn't think before talking."
"It's ok. I know you meant no harm. But what I confessed to you, no one knows apart from the hunters who are Friends with my family."
She took a pause, and Park Chung-Ho stood silent, not knowing what to say. They were both sitting on the ground. She was watching her feet. He was looking at her. Suddenly, she raised her eyes straight in his, and he blushed and looked away. For a moment, they stood silent, but Aislinn started again as she was standing up.
"Anyway, it's not good to have dreams or nightmares wandering in the physical world. There have been several times when it happened already and... well... that created legends you see."
"What do you mean by Legends?" Park Chung-Ho stood up too.
"Most of the time it's dragons, monsters, some ghosts, this kind of thing."
"You're telling me that every time someone sees this kind of thing, it means a nightmare ended up in the physical realm?"
"No! Not all the time..." She was smiling, almost laughing. "But most of the time, yes."
"And how is this not noticed then?"
"Oh, it IS noticed. But people who are not awakened to the Dream Realm do consider this a hallucination or something like this. They tend to look for a rational explanation."
"But if a nightmare enters the Physical Realm, how can it not destroy it all? Some nightmares seem really powerful."
"That's why we need hunters. But it's really hard to hunt a nightmare."
She was pacing up and down while talking. Park Chung-Ho's eyes were following every one of her steps.
"You said Ida was here, right?"
"Yes, we spoke a bit during dinner, why?"
"I'm pretty sure she reactivated the runes in the room where you're sleeping."
"Oh yes! I saw those runes glimmering before I fell asleep. What are those runes for?"
"Can you describe which ones are glowing?"
He tried to describe the best he could every rune that he remembered.
She made movements with her hands in the air, and the runes appeared in a bright white smoke. The way she moved was graceful and made the young man smile. He nodded every time she drew a rune that was in his memory.
"Ok, I see. Those are protective runes; they won't block what we're gonna do, thankfully."
She made new movements and all around them took a different shape.
"What is going on?" Park Chung-Ho asked.
"I will show you so that you understand why it's so hard to hunt nightmares."
They were in a plain with a bright blue sky, and ahead of them stood a big forest.
"What the..." Park Chung-Ho started.
"This is a nightmare. Not mine, I collected this one from someone else." She spotted that he was surprised and wanted to ask something. "We'll talk about this later. Just remember that you still have a lot to learn. Let's go on one step at a time ok?"
He nodded, and she kept going on with her explanations.
"What do you think here is the nightmare?"
As she asked her question, a dragon appeared in the sky above the trees. It was huge, and it seemed to come for them, with a great killing spirit. Aislinn moved her arm and placed her hand in the direction of the dragon to stop it. Everything stood still. The dragon was frozen in the air, the trees weren't moving anymore, and the grass was the same. It seemed that she stopped time.
"What's going on?" Park Chung-Ho asked.
"This is a nightmare. I stopped it."
"I saw it all, and I saw that dragon !! No wonder this is a nightmare! It's coming for us!"
"You think that the dragon is the nightmare, right?"
"Of course! That's what I'm scared of !"
"Well, the dragon is only the threat. The nightmare is all this." She had opened her arms and turned around. "The nightmare isn't just the threat for a dreamer. And if a full nightmare enters the physical world, this can be way more tricky than just hunting a dragon down."
"You mean we must destroy the whole place ?"
"Not destroy, turn it back to its original state."
"How?"
"That's what I said. It's difficult to hunt a nightmare. Some will only need the threat to be taken down. But some nightmares will be way more tricky to tackle."
"To me, hunting a dragon already seems complicated."
"It is. And that's why sometimes, hunters have to work with a Dream to send the nightmare back to its Realm."
"I have questions."
"I'm sure you do."
"Are you a hunter too?"
"Not really. I haven't hunted any nightmares. I'm more of a detective. I gather intel, I track, I find things. But I never fought yet."
"You said that the nightmare is harder to hunt than the threat. What do you mean by that ?"
"I'm not sure how to explain this without doing something you won't like at all."
"What do you mean?"
She didn't make any huge movement. She just snapped her fingers.
The plain, the forest, the dragon, everything vanished.
Suddenly, he was back in his own nightmare. The fire, the heat, and the smoke were there. There was no panic in him, but the surprise made his Heart rate jump suddenly.
"What's the nightmare here?" Aislinn asked.
"This is my nightmare, Aislinn, I know this place perfectly."
"How do you hunt this then ?"
"I don't hunt it, I escape it."
"Your nightmare is a place. The threat is the fire, the heat, the smoke, everything related to this fire, in fact. But the nightmare is the whole place."
"But if this happens in real life, firefighters will stop the fire, right?"
"The nightmare will then be over ?"
"I guess so."
"Have you ever tried to stop the flames in your nightmare?"
"No, I spent most of my life thinking I was unable to do a single thing in this nightmare, that I had to suffer it."
"You felt helpless, like everyone who would suffer this nightmare if it came in the physical world. The nightmare isn't only the threat. It can also be the place. Now that you have this in mind, you'll need to think of a solution to the problems of your own nightmares before you even think about someone else's nightmares. OK?"
"You say that I should find a solution to this? This is a house on fire."
Park Chung-Ho seemed lost; something felt off in his reasoning, but he couldn't see what. Aislinn looked at him and saw the confusion in his eyes.
"This definitely is a house on fire. But your nightmare is not only this trauma. This nightmare is the personification of your fears. To fight it, you have to overcome your fears. Stopping the fire will help. It will make you comfortable for a time, but the nightmare will strike again. And when it does so, you will endure it even harder than before."
"Then how can I fight it? How can I overcome this nightmare? I mean, I lost my family in this fire. I almost died in it, too."
"You lost your family in a fire. But that doesn't mean that this nightmare has to engulf you, too. You made changes to what was around you last time. Try it again now."
The fire was roaring stronger around them, but Park Chung-Ho wasn't afraid. He was calm and focused. He looked at the wall where the door stood. He closed his eyes and pictured a wall without flames, a room without smoke, with a light coming from the lamp on the roof. When he opened his eyes, it was there. All like in his vision. He touched the wall and felt no heat, no burn, nothing but the cold of stone behind the wallpaper.
"Did you?" he asked Aislinn. But then, he spotted her smile and her sparkling eyes.
"No, I did nothing. You did it all by yourself. You changed the nightmare."