Asleep

45 Why Am I Cooking If This Is a Dream?

Nora~~

Tye's eyes widen before he runs out of the kitchen and into his changing room.

With a sigh, I set the knife I conjured on the table. I should have gone with a blanket.

As far as I know, I'm a Class Two like Avery. She didn't have much advice for me on how to execute the traits of a Class One but did have me try to create a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She said Class Ones can create food.

I tried for an hour before she called it. She said I could be able to do it eventually, that the conjuring is like a muscle you have to stretch to be able to do it with ease and to be able to create more objects.

If I am a Class One, Charlie might have been the only person who could teach me. Now I have to try teaching myself.

I knock on the door to Tye's changing room. "I thought you might like to know I wasn't going to stab you.

"How did you do that?" he asks from behind the door.

"Because this isn't reality." Sitting down, I lean my back against the door. "Have you ever played a video game?"

"Yeah."

"Imagine being inside one."

"That's impossible."

"Just do it."

A few seconds later, "Okay. I am."

"We are essentially trapped in a video game. Except the game is in our minds."

My mind.

I stiffen, but then Tye says, "I've only ever known this life."

The blanket I conjure to lay over my knees comes easily. "I know. I'm not asking you to accept this right now."

"If I did have a life before this, how come I can't remember it?"

"I don't know." I'm sure he's not a Lucid. Avery said that dreamers are programmed to accept the things that don't make sense in Somnia, but Lucid can't. He's always been eager to say how all the things I've found confusing are normal.

But he's my friend. I can't leave him in the darkness.

*****

A few days later, Ricky invites me and Avery over for dinner at his place. He lives up near the conservatory in a small neighborhood of cookie-cutter houses.

Avery, wearing an off the shoulder top, her wavy hair swept over one shoulder, answers the door. Her feet are bare.

I step inside, following Avery. I expected to smell food cooking. Instead there's a scent of soy. Against the wall on an end table, votive candles burn, and a wooden cross is propped against the wall behind them. I haven't seen a cross since being in Somnia. Religion isn't a part of the dream. I suppose it would raise questions of an afterlife, when dreamers don't know what that is nor do their minds seem to be allowed to contemplate such philosophical ideas.

"We're having spaghetti for dinner," she says over her bare shoulder.

Ricky is waiting in the kitchen. On the island, in front of him is a jar of red sauce, a box of noodles, salt, shredded cheese and a strainer. There's a pot on the stove and a large wooden spoon on the counter beside it.

"Since you need to understand how to cook something to conjure it, we thought we should go through the steps of making spaghetti." Ricky rattles the box of noodles.

"I've made spaghetti before. Wouldn't I need to know how to make it from scratch?"

Avery joins Ricky, taking the box from him and opening it up. "Don't really know, but I guess we'll find out."