Enza felt it would be another great morning from the moment her eyes opened.
The ceiling was farther away than usual, and the bed felt harder than usual…
I rolled off onto the floor?
She didn't let it ruin her good mood.
She stood up slowly. Gentle light seeped through dirty panes, casting rays on the cabin wall.
Need to clean those windows sometime soon…
An old leather armchair with stuffing poking out sat by a fireplace filled with logs. Books were strewn all over the floor. In another corner sat a small stove and an ice chest.
She looked down at her clothes. At this point, they were closer to rags.
When did they get so bad? I need to sew another pair…
She slipped on sandals and pushed open the door.
She gazed upon the lake and enjoyed the chirping of birds and humming of insects. She turned her face to the sky and enjoyed the sun's gentle warmth.
She began to walk a lap around the lake.
She thought about how to spend her day as she walked. She had already gathered enough logs for the next few weeks, and there was plenty of purified water in storage. She knew there were always some tasks to be done, but she lazily pushed them to the back of her mind.
I know; I'll try to make a flower crown again… I messed it up last time…
She was abruptly snapped out of her thoughts as she made it halfway around the lake. Deeply entrenched in the mud were a set of footprints. They seemed to lead out of the lake. Strangely, there weren't any prints leading in.
I couldn't have made these. They're too fresh, and I haven't gone swimming in a while…
She carefully traced the prints around the lake, right back to the cabin. They led up to the door, then turned around. Enza followed the prints with her eyes around the cabin's side—heading towards the rear—but they stopped and turned around before reaching it.
Enza was baffled. Other than the animals, she had assumed she was by herself out here. They were enough company for her, anyway.
Did someone break in while I was sleeping?
She reached for the handle.
GAHH!
For a split second, her vision was blasted with white, and her body went numb. She stumbled backwards, nearly falling.
"What on Earth is going on?"
In response, a young boy's voice chirped from behind her.
"Earth? Yeah, you wish…"
A small duckling was at her feet.
"Oh, hi Sariel… uh, what do you mean by that?"
Sariel the duckling sighed. "It's about time you learn the truth."
"The… truth?"
"The problem is, I can't just tell you everything at once. You wouldn't believe me, and it would make you go insane. I have to gradually submerge you—like how divers deal with water pressure."
Enza wanted to quickly laugh this off as a joke and go about her day, but this duckling had never spoken to her in such a serious tone before.
"Okay… then, what do you want me to do?"
The duckling gestured with its wing for her to take a seat. She obeyed.
"Have you ever tried to imagine a new color?"
"I don't think so…"
"Try it."
Enza's mind first went to the colors she knew. She imagined them one by one, then mixed them all together. She thought of red, yellow, and blue and how amazing it was that they could form so many different hues.
Now, a new color…
She first tried to carefully paint the color in her mind's eye. However, her palette was limited to the colors that she already knew. No matter how many mixtures she tried, it didn't make anything she hadn't seen before. It usually just ended up as brown.
I need a different approach… Thinking about this analytically will always lead to failure. Analyzing anything requires using previous knowledge. Since previous knowledge doesn't apply when trying to imagine a new color, I need to leap past that boundary… I need a spontaneous reaction…
She clenched her fists and tried to imagine a new color exploding into her mind. She even pinched herself to add to the effect.
Unfortunately, the result was the same as the first approach.
Everything she had ever seen existed within that color range. Room for more colors? It seemed impossible.
Every object I can see already has a hue assigned to it… If there are more colors I can't see, doesn't that mean what I'm seeing right now is false?
She took a handful of grass and examined it.
It's green. How could it be anything else?
She looked at the tiny Sariel and shook her head. "It's impossible. There can't be any more colors. At least not for me."
Sariel smiled. "Alright, now your mind's warmed up. Don't worry, I didn't expect you to succeed.
"Now, I'd like to ask you something else. Why is my name Sariel?"
Enza's mind went blank.
"What do you mean, 'Why?' You're just… you're Sariel…"
"Do you remember giving me a name?"
"Not exactly…"
"I've always been here, haven't I?"
"Yeah…"
"Tell me, Enza. When did we first meet?"
"Y-years ago, right?"
"Get specific. How many?"
Enza traced her memory to yesterday, then the day before, then a week before, then two weeks…
As she tried to think further back, her memories became foggier and foggier. With her peaceful life in the cabin, she hadn't spent much time thinking of the past, so she had never noticed this impenetrable haze…
"I… I don't know."
"How far back can you remember clearly?"
"A few weeks…"
"That's pretty impressive. What a detailed imagination… I didn't expect you to be able to recall yesterday. But forget that for now; next question… What do you make of those footprints?"
"It's another human. The shape of the print is similar to my own. They went to the door of the cabin. There's no lock, so I guess they decided on their own to turn around… for whatever reason."
The duckling chuckled. "But you've never seen another human before."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"It has everything to do with everything. Would a person who has always been alone accept the existence of others of their kind so easily?"
A pressure was building in Enza's head. She was beginning to feel that something was fundamentally off about her existence.
"You've been alive for five minutes."
Enza was certain she had been awake for longer than five minutes. Despite that, she sensed a deep truth to what the duckling said. She took a deep breath and steeled her nerves.
"Explain what that means, and tell me the whole truth. I can handle it. No more beating around the bush."
Sariel broke into laughter. "Don't say I didn't warn you…
"You're dreaming. In the real world—on the Mountain—you've been asleep for five minutes. I'm sorry, but your life here is too good to be true. When you woke up just a few minutes ago, that was your birth. Those memories of peaceful cabin life are just implants."
Enza immediately tried to protest but was cut off.
"There's more. In a normal dream, there are two possible outcomes when you realize you're dreaming. If you're lucky, you can stay in the dream in a lucid state. Most of the time, you instantly wake up. But this is a dream induced by the powers of the confessional. Just becoming lucid isn't enough to awaken you."
Enza remembered everything at once. She was on an expedition with Athalia. They had entered the cathedral, and she had taken the role of the Fearful.
For some reason, this reality-breaking knowledge didn't scare her. But she certainly was confused… she was supposed to be the Fearful—trapped in a nightmare—but she wasn't scared of anything right now.
"Why isn't this a nightmare? Did I accidentally enter the wrong booth? Am I in Athalia's subconscious? No, I definitely remember getting cozy under those blankets…"
Sariel squinted. "You seem awfully calm considering what I just told you. I expected a nervous breakdown at the very least…"
He went into deep thought for a moment. Suddenly, his eyes burst open. "Think of your memories in this dream. In any of them, have you ever felt scared?"
Now that Enza thought about it, there wasn't even a wink of fear present in those memories. Those days were harder to visualize now that she was lucid dreaming, but when she thought of them, she was overwhelmed by a feeling of peace.
"I haven't… What does that mean?"
"It means I have more explaining to do. You remember who I am, right?"
"You always appear in my dreams. I started calling you Sariel because the color of your fur is just like his hair… And then there's the bluebird that shows up along with you—Athalia. She doesn't have blue hair in real life, but the name was an inevitable choice. They act so similar sometimes…"
Sariel the duckling nodded his tiny head. "Because I'm in a lot of your dreams, I have a certain intuition about how your mind works. The same goes for that bluebird. After you fell asleep in the confessional, something went wrong as the booth attempted to pull you into the nightmare. Your mind rejected it so fiercely that your personality split into two. You're only a fraction of yourself right now. The other half of you is stuck in the nightmare. Meanwhile, you're in your own subconscious.
"And I think I know why you don't feel any fear. This alternate version of you that stands over me was created without the ability to feel such a thing. I bet that goes for anxiety too and all other negative emotions. You are the ideal you. The happiest Enza."
Enza chuckled. "And I'm guessing it won't last. If it were fine for me to stand by and do nothing right now, we wouldn't be talking."
"I'm glad you understand. You have to abandon this place and go to the nightmare. You must reunite with your other self. Athalia's already there and searching for you as we speak. Those footprints you saw were hers. She just missed you by a few minutes. And if she gets to your other half before you do, there's no saying if she'll be able to complete the Assurance. That other half of you is probably highly unstable…"
Enza frowned. "She's already there? How did she reach the nightmare? Did she look for clues, or did she tear through the fabric of the dream?"
Sariel sighed. "When she came here, she met Athalia the bluebird. I wanted the real Athalia to ask the bird's name; it would have given me a good laugh. Anyway, at the time, I had fallen down from a tree and injured myself. I was unable to move, and Athalia the bird made a deal with the real Athalia to fix me up. Although it's strange, because that bluebird seemed to be mad at me. Only the heavens know why… Nevertheless, even though healing isn't Athalia's specialty, my wing is just fine now. Thank her for me once you wake up."
"Did you say a deal? What could that bird have offered the real Athalia?"
Sariel frowned. "She was having trouble finding any clues to the fear. This world is simply too peaceful. I think the reason for that might be related to the personality split you went through… This fearless and content version of you being here must have had a great influence on the physical appearance of your subconscious world. That only left Athalia with the second option—tearing through your mind. However, she knew it would be too dangerous, so she was stuck. That's where the bluebird comes in. Because of that special relationship she and I both have with your dreams from being recurring characters, she was able to help Athalia tear into the nightmare without causing too much psychological damage… I hope.
"The problem is, I can't use that method to bring you to the nightmare. It's already dangerous when it's performed in the mind of someone else, but to tear through your own mind… who knows if this part of you would even make it to the other side. And if that happened…"
Enza bit her lip. "Yeah. So, I'm forced to use the first method… I just have to look for clues? But how… Even if there was anything scary here, I wouldn't be able to tell. I fear nothing. I can list off all the things I remember being scared of in the real world, but it won't help. That's way too long of a list…"
Sariel grinned. "A detective's job is never easy."