Watercry - Edges of Reality

Tor left the farm at dawn. He traveled down the overgrown path to the northern village, swatting away spider-silk and trudging through delicate flora. He came to a clearing just before the village and stopped.
A girl sat in the meadow, braiding daisy-chains. She was dirty and bare-footed; her lips berry-stained and her hair thick with tangles and lichen. Her tunic, which had probably been white, was marred with loam and grass stains. She greeted him with a warm smile.
Calla, she was named. She spoke in a distant voice, sad-and-happy, like a fog as it burned into the morning. She told Tor that it would rain soon, just a drizzle, because she knew these things. That is why the villagers thought she was a witch. They wanted to kill her, she said – and then she predicted that a storm would come in a week's time.
When Tor left the village, Calla was gone, and it began to rain – just a drizzle. The girl was odd (and pretty, Tor admitted), but he hoped they cross paths again.
Tor came to the village a week later, to sell oats. He was just in time for Calla's predicted rainstorm – as well as her burning.

–

Thomas plunked his quill into the inkwell and sighed. Amelia the cat purred and curled around his leg, always knowing exactly what to say. Thomas plucked her from the ground and placed her in his lap, but she vaulted onto his desk, swishing her tail like a flag. Thomas only chuckled.
As usual, Amelia perched on the window sill and watched the sky. Thomas was convinced his cat thought she could fly, given the chance. Good idea for a short story, Thomas mused, and he penned the thought down. Amelia continued to watch the clouds.
Come nightfall, she had barely moved. Heavy rain pelted the streets and she watched it very intently. Thomas stoked the fireplace and readied himself for bed. Most nights, Amelia purred and crawled next to his side, curling into a ball at the crook of his arm. Tonight she stayed by the window, and Thomas let her.  
In the morning, Amelia the cat lay dead on the window sill.

–

Infinity –
The young woman was stabbed. She later died.
(He cried and he didn’t know why; he never knew her.)
A little girl fell. She broke her neck. She died.
(He put flowers on a stranger's grave.)
A woman was shot –
Drowned –
Poisoned –
She looked at him and smiled. She was pale and gossamer – dying. She whispered something, very softly, then died.
“Stop dreaming already.”

Isyc woke up, gasping for breath. He turned and saw Ara'ni, as Sophie, unfurling like a butterfly against the stark blue sky. Just as he began to smile, she died all over again, and it began to rain.

“No!” Joseph cried, waking as himself this time. He lunged over the side of his bed and landed in a chaotic heap on the cold floor of his cell. His head crashed against his arm and the blankets gave no care to falling on his feet to give at least a little comfort. Spots peppered his vision for a moment and he squeezed his eyes shut to the pain in his arm. Sophie’s face stayed like a fluttering breath in the forefront of his mind, tantalizing and horrid all at once. He didn’t rise right away, but instead stayed huddled beside his bed as silent sobs encumbered him.
This wasn’t how it was meant to be. He didn’t want the last four years of his life to have gone so awry, and he wasn’t sure what had really brought it upon him. Why he couldn’t he even believe the truth? So much was being thrown at him. He’d been found here, and against all odds refused to accept it as reality. Maybe Sophie was right. He had the proof right in front of him and he still refused to believe this was all happening. Then again, if this were real then he wasn’t supposed to have a Sophie to believe in from the start. Moses, what had happened?

Serena entered the room and sat across the table from Joseph, making herself look as benign as always, never failing to torture his mind. He looked right into those icy blues eyes and wished he could extract the icy-ness out of them. If he were Isyc, then that would’ve been nothing. He would’ve asked Efreet to take the fire out of her hair too, but Efreet was not present here.
“I was told you fell out of bed last night, like you had a nightmare,” Serena began in her straightforward manner. “Do you remember what you saw?”
Joseph moved his gaze away from her face, unable to take her unwavering stare. He wanted to cover it up so badly. It was haunting enough to see it in his dreams. Having it in this alleged reality made him feel as crazy as everyone else here seemed to believe he was. He focused his eyes on a small scratch in the surface of the table.
“Well, it was a lot of different dreams,” he began. “They were all short and it was like they were all different versions of me. Like…like past lives or something.” He glanced up at her intent expression and then focused on the same point on the table again. “And you were there too. Well—sort of—there was one where you were a cat. And you kept dying. I didn’t always know why. It was never me, but I would see you every time. You would be perfectly fine, and then something would happen and it would get you killed, Sophie—”
“Serena,” she corrected.
“I don’t care,” he answered. They sat in silence for a minute. Joseph shut his eyes and took some deep breaths to stop his chest from shaking so much. The air carried a sterile chill in it, although it was at a comfortable temperature inside the room.
“So what would you think these dreams meant?” Serena asked softly. She looked at him with the same benign interest—such a professional. Man, what was with this woman? Joseph wasn’t sure if he wanted to keep her around forever because she was the closest he had to Sophie, or if he wanted her to disappear so she couldn’t remind him of her.
“I dunno, they all felt very real,” he told her. “Sort of like this one does.”
“This one?” she said, puzzled.
“Until proven otherwise, this right here—me being in a facility for crazies—this is a dream,” Joseph quipped.
“Well I am here to help prove that where you are is your reality, and your dreams or visions are a product of your mind and nothing more.”
“But you see that’s my problem!” Joseph started. “You, of all the people who could be helping me, are the spitting image of everything I am seeing. I know you’re a doctor but you can’t possibly help. I just have to look at you and I question whether I’m alive or dead!” Serena kept her face firm but he could see her desperate want to have this meeting over with already. Joseph leaned forward.
“I’m twenty-one. I hardly remember the last four years of my life, and all I’ve known is that I’m still lost somewhere at seventeen, where I was taken by surprise and shown what I was missing. I had a part of who I was returning to me, and I’m supposed to just let you take all of that away from me.”
“You won’t be letting me do anything until we come to understand where everything has come from,” she said. “Your dreams are very lucid, Joseph. You believe in them more than anything else, and because of that, you are not able to function at the level you feel you are capable of.”
“But I’m perfectly fine!” he said in a raised tone. “I was someone. I’ve done stuff that matters and I don’t get to cherish any of it because I was suddenly landed here and force fed this crap about my whole life since I was seventeen being a huge lie. Is that fair to you?”
“You were found outside a grocery store manhandling an innocent woman,” Serena inserted. “You have records Joseph. Several accounts of running from foster homes, stealing, abuse of antibiotic drugs—your life has led up to something like this. I don’t blame you for not remembering much of it because those kinds of experiences are the kinds of things we want to wipe from our minds. It is highly possible for an individual to develop alternate realities in their own mind and convince themselves that they live in the present.”
Joseph began to laugh and shook his head. “You don’t get it Sophie,” he said.
“Serena,” she replied.
“You’re Sophie, Your Highness,” he came back with a biting tone. “We were amazing together. We had everything at our fingertips. I have a song about you. You haven’t even heard it yet.”
“Joseph, this is flattering, but I’m no Sophie under any circumstances.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you held my hand and looked me in the eyes.” I dare you, Joseph thought. Serena shifted uncomfortably and then sat more upright in her chair.
“I understand what you may be trying to do, but if you please, treat these meetings as strictly doctor to patient.”
“I see that ring on your finger,” Joseph nodded toward the object. “You’re married?”
“Engaged.” It was a curt response.
“Sophie had a fiancé too. What’s the guy’s name?”
“Ryan.”
“Oh, a Ryan, is he? Sophie’s was Aroion. Not so different from the other one. I wonder why that is.”
“It must simply be a coincidence, Joseph.”
“Got any pets?” How much was coincidence? This wasn’t going to be the end.
“A corn snake named Kramer. No relation to any names in your past as far as I am aware.”
“Oh, but you’re wrong,” Joseph said with a wry smile lighting his lips. “You know who I was with almost every day? A dragon. A huge, magnificent dragon named Gaurmer. He was closer to me than any grandpa you could sit at this table.”
“You realize dragons are creatures of myth, Joseph. I’m not here to argue with you about the similarity between your dreams and reality. I’m here to find the bridge between them.”
She said more of her spiel but Joseph didn’t listen. He wasn’t stupid. He knew doctors were sent for when people needed help, especially with their minds. But he was fine. He would’ve agreed with her not too long ago that dragons were real. He would’ve laughed at a girl who claimed that he looked exactly like someone she had been in love with for a great period of time and believed that he was heaven-sent. But staying here and getting rehabilitated (so to speak) and then being dumped out into the dull life of a normal human being until the day he died wasn’t worth it. If he had the Rain Kingdom and everyone he knew in it, he would definitely take that over this heap of lies. How this was happening he was entirely unsure, but no matter how realistic it could get here, he promised never to give up hope.
“What would your fiancé do it I ever tried to kiss you?” he asked her, interrupting her sentence. Serena stopped and stared at him for a moment, barely masking her annoyance for his question.
“I’m not sure exactly,” she told him. “He might hit you.”
“Ah, one of those guys. It’s ok, I’m not in the mood right now. But he should know that if anything ever happened to you, I’m going to be the one who hurts the most. You wanna know why?”
“Why, Joseph?” Her tone was slightly impatient.
“Because you always die first. Doesn’t matter how old you are, if you’re a dragon goddess or a little girl, or even if you’re a cat. You always die first and leave me to try to understand what I’ve done wrong. I’m almost beginning to think that in the grand scheme of things, someone is trying to keep us separated. Don’t know who that could be, nor how or why, but my surety becomes more solid every day I sit in that cell and think. I look at you, Sophie, and the torment never ends. Neither does the pure joy of knowing you’re alive somehow.”
Serena just looked at him. Her discomfort had faded quite a bit and she sat easier in her chair, but she kept her expression slate.
“That could be a very important thing to keep thinking about Joseph. I can’t imagine anything killing me any time soon unless I was in a car accident, but I assure you that you mostly likely won’t be around.”
“Don’t bet on it.” An emotion flashed in her eyes that he couldn’t read quickly enough.
“What about those other dreams? You haven’t mentioned any of that since our meeting last Wednesday.”
“I’ll get to that,” Joseph said. “I want to tell you what I’ve observed.” She returned her face to the benign professional state she had cracked out of and was ready to listen. “No matter how uncomfortable you may make it seem to have me say all those things about you, I know that I charmed you on the first second you saw me. That’s the other crazy part of this deal. When I met you on the bench outside in the rain, I wasn’t sure why I stuck around. Nothing in me wanted to stay at all, but I did anyway. We are drawn together by some force that reaches throughout time and space. I can’t help but think that you are special because in every spot of trouble I’ve gotten myself into, it’s been you who brings me back to life.”
Serena sighed and didn’t meet his eyes, thoughtfully silent. After a moment she spoke.
“Well, if there’s anything I want to do, I want to try my hardest to bring you back to life once again.”