“Proto!” Two hands grabbed his shoulders and, just an inch from the water, yanked him back upward.

  He blinked as one reality gave way to another. Before him was a fearful black gaze against stark whiteness. She blinked and peered from inches away, her long black lashes batting at him.

  The oar, lying sideways across the rowboat, slipped off into the black waters. Lilac gasped and whirled away from him

  The movement happened so quickly. Her arm shot out. It dipped elbow-deep into the blackness. It emerged with the oar, dripping dark water. It ran along her hand and wrist.

  Eyes agog, he stared at her. “Lilac?”

  Stiffly, she resumed paddling. “Try not to do that again. If you hadn’t let that flashlight sink so low, I’d never have known till it was too late.”

  “Your arm . . . the water . . . ” he began.

  “It’s fine. Forget about it,” she said flatly.

  “But won’t you forget—?”

  “No! Just forget about it.” She kept paddling without looking back at him.

  Proto pondered and was silent. He sometimes found his stare drifting to the river again. He was wary about peering too deeply now, but it was hard to resist.

  “You’re letting the flashlight drift again,” noted Lilac eventually, glancing over her shoulder.

  He met her gaze. It was as black and alluring and deep as . . . “Hm? What?” He realized he was staring. “Oh, the flashlight. Did you know your hair is very reflective?” He pointed it at a tress.

  She rolled her eyes, dark and deep, and resumed paddling. He fixed his mind upon an image of those eyes and found it easier to resist the water’s siren song.

  They soon reached the other shore and disembarked.

  Lilac proceeded into another cramped tunnel. He followed her, absently wondering just how far this trip would be and whether he should’ve brought supplies.

  He needn’t have worried. They emerged from the cave a few minutes later.

  He found himself on a patch of grass atop a small bluff. One tree grew here—a sakura, which was in bloom. Pink petals blanketed the ground around the tree.

  A slender path led down from the bluff to a beach—just a few dozen yards wide, a mere nook amid the craggy cliffs on either side. Ocean waves washed up quietly, wetting the white sands. Far away, mists roved upon the sounding sea.

  Standing a bit rigidly, Lilac regarded the cherry blossom tree. Her eyes flicked briefly to Proto, then to the cerulean waters.

  “I feel lucky to be here,” Proto found himself saying.

  It was true. He’d grown up on Cherry Blossom Lane—an aptly named street, which turned pink and white with the trees’ petals every Spring around April. Growing up, the week that the trees were flowering had always struck him as the most beautiful time of the year. Seeing them, he’d always felt like something profound was at work, even if it was just the blossoming of trees.

  Even after he’d grown up and moved away—to a neighborhood much less beautiful, but much more affordable to a guy in his mid-twenties—he’d made a point to run past his old house several times each year, during that week when the sakura trees were blooming.

  Lilac turned to him with narrowed eyes, as though searching for mockery, but found only a smile. Her lips curved up a little. “My little shore upon the Sea of Dreams.”

  He approached the tree and felt its trunk, as though to confirm it were solid. He felt a sakura blossom fall on his head.

  Lilac didn’t quite stifle a laugh. “Don’t you look lovely.”

  “Oh? Well.” He took two flowers and set them in her hair. “Same to you. And more of it.”

  Her black gaze met his, and her lips quirked upward. Some of the flowers’ pink seemed to have stained her cheeks. She stared as though considering something.

  Then, she turned to the sea. “First things first.” She started down the pathway toward the water. “We have to get what we came for.”

  “Shells? Seawater? Sand?” he asked.

  “Bottles.”

  Bemused, he followed her down to the shore. She reached down and felt the lapping waves. He couldn’t see her face, but her sable hair was billowing in the sea breeze.

  “Did you know,” said Lilac, letting the foam rush between her fingers, “when you visit a dream, you can take what you find there back with you?”

  Proto tilted his head. “I . . . did not know that.” He’d assumed things from a dream would vanish upon departure.

  Something about this new revelation bothered him. But, watching the sea wash over Lilac’s arm, as the brumy wind blew her clothes taut against her frame, he found it hard to focus on why.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “So, we could get the ingredients you need by visiting a dream?” he asked after a moment.

  “Mm-hmm,” she nodded. “But anything you take from a dream bears the imprint of the dreamer. Like if you took a lock of my hair, it would always be my hair. Not just shiny black hair.”

  “There can be no substitutes,” he affirmed.

  She didn’t look at him, but her lips curved up again.

  “So, we could get our ingredients from a dream,” she went on. “The problem is, there’s no way for us to visit my dreams. So if I want something that’s truly my own, I have to come here. To my little nook of the Sea of Dreams.”

  “Come here and . . . ?” Proto regarded the lone and level sea, then Lilac.

  “And”—she reached deeper into the ocean’s blue, beyond where the eye could follow—“dream of what could be.” From the foam and swelling waves, she retrieved a corked bottle. Inside was a reddish powder. She stood it on the hard wet sand behind her.

  Proto stared at it. He felt he learned a little more, each day, how little he understood. He watched as she retrieved another bottle from the sea, this one with a tawny liquid inside, and set it behind her.

  “These are from me. No one else.” She peered at them thoughtfully. “I don’t know if the difference is noticeable. It sometimes seems different to me. But maybe I’m just dreaming.” Her voice lilted with a hint of irony.

  “Only one way to find out, right?” replied Proto.

  She nodded firmly. “Yes. Let’s have a drink.”

  From her lilac-dotted basket, she retrieved a thin blanket, black with ornate white needlework along the edges. She laid it beneath the sakura tree and sat atop it.

  Then, she made their drink, mixing in a bit from each bottle, among other things. She poured the resulting cocktail in two coupe glasses. It was brown with a hint of maroon.

  “Don’t tell me what you think yet,” she said as he sipped.

  “No?”

  “No.”

  She unpacked their food and they ate beside the sea. The milk bread sandwich squares and neatly apportioned side courses were simple.

  But perfection lies in making what’s complicated simple, Proto mused, staring at the blue serene. Without losing what matters.

  Sakura blossoms rained upon them as they savored Lilac’s creations quietly.

  White seagulls flapped across the sky and turned to black silhouettes against the sun.

  “I sometimes wonder what it’s like up there,” she murmured almost inaudibly.

  He looked at her, ready to say something about those winging birds. But her black gaze wasn’t trained on them. She was facing the mists, forming and unforming on the far horizon.

  He shrugged. “Nothing beats this.” He spread his arms toward the scene all around them.

  “Are you sure though?” She looked at him intently.

  He blinked and opened his mouth.

  She tapped one maroon-nailed finger to his lips. “No. Don’t answer that right now.”

  “Okay. But this though.” He lifted his drink and breathed in the aroma. “Trees. Flowers. The sea.” He sipped it. “And something more. Something I can’t quite put my finger on.” He touched his finger to the back of her hand. “There’s no imitating this. That, I know.”

  She looked at him, suddenly grasping that hand. She squeezed it. She leaned in toward him, lips parting, breathing in.

  Then, she scrunched her eyes and turned away, releasing his hand. The breath rushed out. “I hope you enjoyed this.”

  “Enjoyed?” he began.

  But she already was standing up. She smoothed her French waitress outfit of black and white.

  He scanned her face for some clue what this was, and whether he’d had something to do with it. But her dark gaze was on those mists again—forming fleet beauties, then wisping away.

  “I’ve left the bar unattended for long enough,” she explained. But her wistful stare, trained upon the heavens, seemed to reflect far more than an unattended bar.

  “Can’t the kitchen make drinks too?” he asked lightly.

  “Yes.” She started turning away, then paused, lifting her drink. “But if ‘there’s no imitating this,’ I guess that might not cut it.” Maybe the pink on her ears was just the sunset, splaying across the west.

  “Well,” he mused, standing up, “it’s been a dream.”

  She tilted her head wryly, then tilted her glass toward him. “To dreams?”

  “Cheers.” They clinked and finished off the last of her creation.

  They gathered the supplies back into Lilac’s basket and departed back into the cave.

  As Proto followed her through the grey mirk, he found himself reminiscing on an oft-repeated conversation that he and his band of friends had had back in high school—he and Yemos, Mannus and Quart. They’d often mused about what they’d do once they had jobs and had real money. They’d all sworn not to waste it on the boring things that most adults spend it on.

  Yemos had declared that he’d buy an old castle, or at least a small tower, depending on his wealth. Mannus had vowed to turn his house’s basement into an indoor football field. Quart had promised to buy some dragon fireworks of the sort set off at Chinese New Year celebrations and Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday, and launch them in the badlands of South Dakota.

  None of that had happened, of course. Yemos had bought a bourbon collection. Mannus had bought a sports car. Quart had eloped with a girl from Poland—which technically hadn’t kept his promise, but, to be fair, at least wasn’t boring.

  As for Proto, he’d vowed to live in the sort of place that people dream of living in, before he was too old to enjoy it. Exactly what that place would be had been unclear—maybe some beachy southern isle, or maybe one of those mountainous Swiss villages with the colorful rooftops, or maybe Iceland or Japan. His friends had agreed that these were all fine options.

  He’d always felt he’d betrayed his promise the most of all, by remaining in his boring hometown less than a mile from the house he’d grown up in, running by his old home on a near-daily basis. He’d kept his past close, as was his wont.

  Now, though—glancing at Lilac, her black eyes sparkling against the gloom of the long and windy cave—Proto couldn’t help but feel that, maybe, against all odds, he was finally fulfilling his promise after all.

  Absently, he realized he was smiling.

  With all this on his mind, it took him a while to notice that they’d been walking for some time and should’ve hit that black river by now.

  “That rowboat,” he said. “Why haven’t we . . . ?”

  “Because we’re on a different path this time.” Even as Lilac spoke, the white door back to Somnus’ Palace came into view around a bend.

  Proto looked at her. “We crossed a river that can make you forget everything, when there was another path the whole time?”

  “Is that what you think? Even now?” She looked both amused and wistful.

  “Not that I regret our odyssey, of course!” he reassured her. Quite the contrary.

  She chuckled quietly. “No. You had to take the odyssey first. Once you reach a place here, you can come and go safely anytime. But there’s always danger the first time.”

  “The black river, you mean?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Sometimes, the River Lethe. Sometimes, other things.”

  He opened his mouth to ask more, but held it back, feeling the moment beckoned something different.

  “Well!” he declared after a pause. “Homebody that I am, I’ll need a guide through all these perils.”

  “A guide?” She inclined her brow. “Well, I’m just a bartendress. But I’ll be happy to accompany you.”

  “All the way to the destination?” he asked lightly. “Through peril and pitfall? Harm and hazard? Thick and thin?”

  “Speaking one homebody to another”—she tapped a finger to the back of his hand—“as long as we stick together, I think we’ll be okay.” Her black gaze sparkled up at him.

  Then, tapping the white door, she led him into Somnus’ Palace and up the mirky stairway toward their destination.