Andie stepped out of the mindscape and back into the physical world. She called it that because referring to it as “reality” implied mindscapes weren’t real - mindscapes that were built out of a person’s hopes, dreams, fears, love, and hate - everything that mattered to them.

Andie couldn’t think of anything more real than that.

.....

Bleh. It was too late for philosophy and speeches, every time Andie tried to say something profound after midnight it came out sounding like the moral from a particularly sappy episode of My Little Pony. Honestly, she was just glad she hadn’t thought to say it out loud. Dyllan would’ve been laughing for hours if he overheard. Strange, considering he never laughed at anyone else like that. He was always overly careful not to accidentally say anything that could come off as dismissive or condescending. Perhaps mockery was just a special privilege Dyllan reserved for Cedric and Andie.

Lucky them.

Speaking of Dyllan, what was taking him so long? Andie turned back toward the mindscape she’d just walked out of. In the physical world, it appeared as nothing more than wisping strands of dream smoke - drifting up and out of the head of a sleeping young man in a spotless business suit. As far as Andie knew, only she and her two best friends could see or create this smoke.

“Sorry I’m late.” Dyllan hopped out of the forest green smoke, Cedric following shortly after. “It took longer than I expected to climb that fricken’ skyscraper. Stupid gravity.”

“He got flung off of the skyscraper.” Cedric grinned. “Twice. By the same patch of sideways gravity. It was hilarious.”

“C’mon man, those falls really hurt…”

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“I…” Cedric froze. “Sorry. I should probably head home early. I don’t really have filters, and the things that fly through my head when my Kindness is exhausted… aren’t very kind.”

“I know, Cedric. I’ve been your best friend for years.” Dyllan forced a reassuring grin. “You don’t need to say that every single time this happens.”

“…Thanks.” Cedric dashed off toward the building’s fire escape ladder.

“So… Yeah.” Dyllan glanced over toward the sleeping businessman, who was resting next to the railing. The railing that bordered the roof. The roof of the skyscraper. The skyscraper the businessman had been trying to jump off of only a few hours ago. “This… this is the third time we’ve found this guy up here. The third time we’ve cleared out his Nightmare.” He frowned. “Gotta admit, it’s a little frustrating and kind of depressing; the way we risk our lives to help him, and he just shows up here again the next week.”

“Maybe.” Andie stared up at the few stars she could see - the rest blocked out by the unrelenting city lights. “But we aren’t psychologists. There’s a limit to what we can do to a mindscape. At least, a limit to what we can do to help. Moving things around is dangerous when you don’t know what they represent.” She smiled. “Even if we did know, the mind is a complicated thing. There’s only a few really obviously bad things that we can remove or alter. …Cut out a little fear of failure here, a little crippling self doubt there… give them the boost they need to solve their problems instead of just falling further into depression.”

“I really hate how you do that.” Dyllan pulled all his stubbornness and pride together, struggling to hold back a smile. “How you agree with me when I say something sad and pessimistic, but… somehow…” A light chuckle nearly slipped out from his lips. “Turn it into something optimistic and beautiful.”

“Yeah.” Andie grinned as she hopped up onto the railing to get a better look at the city lights. The same railing where a man had tried to jump to his death three times, and the same city lights that drowned out the stars. Most would call the action morbid, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. Because Andie, Andie had a different way of looking at the world. The way she saw things, she was sitting on the railing where a man’s life had been saved three times by a group of selfless heroes, and admiring the unsleeping beauty of the sparkling city lights. “I’m just an awful person, aren’t I?”