“I just mentioned how the Nightmare’s words stung a little.” Dyllan shrugged dismissively. “Nothing too important.”
“Given that mental health directly correlates to our dreamwalker form’s ‘physical’ health… I’d actually call discussing our emotions mission critical.” Cedric gave a short, huffy sigh. “If it makes you feel any better, though, those almost certainly weren’t Andie’s thoughts.”
“Yeah, I know we all have intrusive thoughts sometimes. I know it’s normal to have little globs of unhealthy thoughts in the back of your mind, and I know we aren’t our worst thoughts - we’re what we do with those thoughts.” Dyllan’s eyes drifted downward, and his voice grew slightly quieter. “It just sucks to hear it out loud is all.”
“You misunderstand.” Cedric tracked Dyllan’s body language as the two of them spoke. Dyllan was taking this harder than he should. Maybe he was insecure about his intelligence? Andie was the priority right now, but Cedric made a mental note to unpack that later, when Dyllan was ready. “I don’t mean those aren’t her real thoughts, I mean those aren’t her thoughts period. Full stop.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“…why do you say that?” Dyllan spoke with an uneasy eagerness, clearly really wanting Cedric to be right.
“Because Andie doesn’t dwell on people’s weaknesses, and in spite of how much she cares about others - she kind of sucks at empathy.” He paused. “The skill, I mean. She isn’t good at seeing from other people’s perspective. So she takes shortcuts, using tropes from stories and psychological projection to try and understand what people are thinking. She doesn’t even think of herself as ‘above average’, let alone a genius.”
“But she’s always -”
“Bragging?” Cedric waved a hand dismissively. “Humans are naturally self contradictory. Andie calls herself things like ‘the best’, but she’s just as quick to praise others the same. She confidently declares that she’ll win a race by a mile, and is then shocked when she laps everyone. Neither part is a lie. Logically, she knows that in order for someone to win a race by a mile everyone else must lose by one - but on an emotional level, a part of her expects everyone to win the race.” Cedric chuckled. “Honestly, it’s hard to imagine her insulting my athletic ability when she is routinely surprised by my utter inability to keep up with her regular-exercise-having ass. We’ve known each other for what feels like forever. She does sports, I nearly die every time we have PE. You’d think she’d see it coming, but no.”