“Ha ha, very funny Dyllan.” Andie showed an unamused frown - an expression she rarely wore and an adjective that almost never applied to her. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I!” Dyllan made a clumsy, offended, and confused sort of shrugging gesture. “No one gets more excited about doing dreamwalker stuff than you! I swear you’d do this every night if nothing stopped you. Now you tell me with a straight face you hate being in mindscapes? What do you expect me to respond with? ‘Oh yeah, Andie - that makes perfect sense!’ Seriously, there are only two rational conclusions to draw there: One, you’re joking. Two, you’re having some bizarre form of psychic stroke. Is that what’s happening? Do I need to call some kind of dreamwalker 911?” Dyllan paused. “…wait. Shadow Andie?”

“No! I -” Andie let her facial expression relax, clicked her tongue, and scratched the back of her head. “Look, I don’t hate being in mindscapes, and I get that it’s counter intuitive… but it isn’t being inside mindscapes I enjoy. I like exploring mindscapes, helping people, fighting Nightmares, watching the birth of Dreams… ” She twirled her hands in a vague spinny gesture, searching for the right metaphor. “I mean, when someone loves going out to the movies you don’t act shocked when they find sitting alone in a dark, empty, snackless, movie-free theater unpleasant - do you? There’s loads of things I love doing inside mindscapes, but being in a mindscape by itself just feels like being inside someone else’s house while they aren’t home. It feels wrong.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Huh.” Dyllan sat back down in the snow and turned to look over the mindscape. “Guess it makes sense when you put it like - Oh!” He scrambled back to his feet. “Shoot! I never got an answer out of Cedric!”

Cedric popped into existence in front of Andie and Dyllan, nearly bowling them over with surprise. “Never got an answer out of me about what?”