I could tell you so much of the year that followed that dinner, or the one after that. In fact, I could extend myself for way more pages than this manuscript would allow me. Whole volumes could be filled with our mundane yet somewhat meaningful conversations, with my slowly growing relationship with Selus, or with the occurrences of Sihea and the mischief she and Dusk caused together. Yet, for the sake of brevity and narration, I will not. Those moments are just as precious as any other, and just as worthy of being recorded. This decision, therefore, could be called arbitrary, except for the fact that I believe the next big step in my understanding of the human condition, this breakthrough, as you may call it, happened about two years after that dinner. Consider that, by then, Cirruin had still not granted me a shadow, despite my best efforts to communicate it: he just swiped my coin messages back into the hoard and then forgot about the issue before going back to sleep.

Dariel had inherited a house in the country, being an only son, after the unfortunate passing of his father. This property was not a permanent dwelling for the family, but, now and then, he and Orphela travelled to the cottage to do a bit of maintenance and spend a weekend in peace. And, as it couldn’t be otherwise, wherever they went, Sihea and dusk had to follow.

By then, Orphela had nearly forgotten the issue with me calling her fat, and reduced her weight a fair deal, despite not returning to the one she had when we met for the first time. This could have been correlated with an increased happiness on Dariel’s part, but I cannot be sure.

It must be said, too, that they already considered me like a weird family member, or at the very least a quirky butler.

In this occasion I am about to narrate, I had finished a reading session with Orphela, and while Dariel and her weeded out the garden, I took care of Sihea and Dusk by the carp pond.

The child and I laughed at the dog as it splashed around the pond and tried to step on the carps to no avail. The agile fish slipped between his paws, making him bark at them playfully.

“So, do you like the fish, Sihea?”

“No, Uncle Terus. They are slimy! They have weird mouths. Blob blob!” She embellished her sentences by gesturing with her hands and lips.

“That’s truth, and yet, don’t you think their colors are cute? They look like rainbows swimming in the water.”

“They are liars. They appear cute and then are icky. Dirty liars!”

In that moment I began to realize Sihea fostered some really strong opinions about some things in spite of her short age.

Dusk came running out of the pond and toppled me over. I shifted to a standing position, which never failed to make Sihea laugh.

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“What are you, Uncle Terus? Mom says you are a wizard, dad says you are a sorceror. Which one is it?”

“Let’s go for a walk, shall we, Sihea?”

“Mom and dad say I should never follow you if you go far away.”

“No, let’s go up to that ombú tree, sit under its shadow, and then I’ll tell you what I am.”

“Last one under the tree is a smell—” before she could finish the sentence, I had willed myself at our destination “Cheater!”

Pouting and crossing her arms, an angry Sihea made her way down to the tree, and sat upon one of the gnarled, fat exposed roots. In front of me.

“I am a dragon’s dream.”

“A what?”

“A dragon’s dream.”

“What?” she asked a second time.

I repeated myself as many time as it was necessary.

“What does that mean, Uncle Terus?” she finally asked, all trace of anger gone from her expression.

“There is a dragon sleeping somewhere in a cave, and he dreams of me. As long as that dragon dreams, I am alive, I have a body and I can talk to you or your parents. When the dragon wakes up, I disappear until he dreams me again,” I tried to make myself understood by talking to her slowly and in a clear accent.

“But dreams are dreams. They are like books we see while sleeping.”

“They used to be, then a bad, very bad dragon cursed all of them, and now their dreams roam the world. Think about it, don’t your dreams do funny, unexplainable things, just like I do?”

She smiled, revealing the conspicuous window between her teeth, and then nodded energetically.

Dusk caught up to us and began running laps around the tree. One would think that that dog would overheat soon, given the thick fur and big size, but no, he was like a ball of pure energy.

Eventually Dusk, in his infinite clumsiness, head-butted Sihea, throwing her over the grass. She screamed and cursed the dog as he inspected his little mistress.

I helped her to get her footing and Dusk sat by her side.

“But, Terus, if dragons’ dreams are alive, are not their nightmares too.”

Nightmares. Of course dragons had nightmares. The curse would make no sense otherwise. Some dreamed of monsters that didn’t exist, others of the arrogant knights that had almost slain then. A dishonored few feared gods and spirits. And all of them had now the potential of making the world fear along them. So I cupped her chin with my fingers and then, for the first time since I had met her, I straight up lied to the sweet Sihea: “Dragons don’t have nightmares, you silly thing. They are far too powerful, far too mighty to fear anything. All their dreams are about as good as me. Yet maybe not this pretty, mind you.”

That made her giggle a tiny bit, and her giggle in turn, made me feel a certain warmth in my chest. Looking up, I saw a dragon flying in the distance, its scales of gold betraying the fact it was an avatar of my dreamer.

“Shall we go inside, Si? I can tell you the story of the friendship between my dreamer and a man called like me, but that was not me.”

She opened her eyes wide. “People can share names?”

“There are only so many names out there, Sihea. Because of that, some people need to share. Some dragons, too.”

“Then there are other Siheas?” She came closer with little steps. “Are they cuter than me?”

“To the first question: most likely. As for the second: I have no way of knowing. They may be, they may be not.”

She pouted once again. “Dad would tell me I am the cutest one.”

“I am not Dariel, I have my very own words to say, Sihea.”

She began walking away, arms crossed, back to the carp pond. “I like daddy’s words better, then! Hmpf!”