He knew he was dreaming.

So why did it feel so real?

And how did he know that?

What was this strange, black substance he swum between?

Those distant pricks of light, each seeming to scream with commentary and character, like the noble attendants at a royal court.

And before him, in the center, planet like, two huge spheres of amber, white, green.

A huge bronze shutter swept down each, simultaneously, then again up.

Mateo gasped.

They were eyes.

And they were watching him.

Mateo woke with a gasp, tangled in something and fighting it. He pulled and it tightened and he rolled and slipped off of something and fell, knocking his head against the floor, landing face to face with a dirty sock.

Ah.

He was in his room.

Fighting his blanket.

And he hurt.

For a while he lay there, trying to figure out what had happened. As he did he untangled the blanket and pushed himself along the floor till his back was against the wall and his feet set against the bed.

He blinked, head swimming, eyes gummed up with sleep. All over he hurt—in his bones, his throat, and for some reason especially his spine. He tried to remember what had happened last night and realized that he couldn’t remember anything. There was only one explanation.

Alcohol.

Out of the corner of an eye he spotted his journal, tossed on his bedside table. No matter how drunk you got, it seemed some habits were locked in. Groaning, wishing he had a glass of water, he reached up and grabbed it. He pulled the the blanket up to his neck. It is possible he may have whimpered.

Mateo flipped open the journal and there, written in his own hand, quite clearly, it said:

ATTEMPT SIX:

Those Deh Liksi tires are rad, stuck me to concrete like honey. Little slower on the road, but we made it all back going vertical. Halfway plus, no doubt. Dunno when the sirens started. Beetles sent a zus, a little flirty but couldn’t turn with the wheels. Left him in the breeze.

He lay back, shutting his eyes. A deep, rather self-indulgent sigh escaped him. Slowly a few memories from yesterday dripped back into his brain

In the morning his friend Wisely had roped him into that dumb job—stealing a bunch of handbags being delivered to Marty’s Home and Office Boutique. There wasn't a chance in hell they'd shift them, but it had been fun. Anyway it was good practice robbing a moving truck with a small team of F-bikes.

After that they’d all had lunch. He had katsu over rice for lunch, then come back to take a nap. Then he’d gone to the races with Lia in the evening. Just to watch a few, trying not to get excited, and absolutely not to participate. The races were all abuzz with the talk about Prince.

He'd dropped Lia off at her place and driven to Hosta at around 10, planning to make a run up the wall—his sixth. But for some reason he couldn’t remember it, nor could he remember getting home.

Weird.

He needed water. So, despite the agony in nearly all parts of his body, he stood and stumbled towards the bathroom. Mateo rented the attic room of a shitty old bar in Sedum Ward, Zone Six. Sedum Six was a rough neighborhood to begin with and “Sally’s Bar & Bistro” was the cherry on the cake. You had to take the stairs up passed pay-day loan and bail shops, half of which were fronts for something illegal, and only when your legs felt like dropping off, you got to Sally’s crummy little drinking hole. One more flight of stairs and you got to Mateo’s room.

The penthouse, as he liked to call it.

He stumbled into the bathroom, forced open the cold tap, and shut his eyes for thirty seconds while the water cooled. Then he ducked underneath the tap and drank deep, like a camel reaching an oasis after a months long hard crossing. He grabbed his toothbrush, rooting around for paste, stood and looked in the mirror.

He gasped, dropping the toothbrush.

Head to toe, he was covered in strange markings.

They looked like nothing he’d ever seen before, strange swirling patterns and lines, as if channels of energy in his body had been clearly marked. The more he looked at them, staring at his naked torso in the mirror, the more he thought of something.

They looked like burns.

But rhata were immune to burning, to heat and fire of all kinds. Everyone knew that. Mateo himself had climbed inside of an active furnace to pull something out, back when he was younger and his elder brother had worked in an industrial yard—as most rhata do.

But the pink, slightly raised scarring on his body looked like the damage that the other kīn received when they were exposed to too much heat. He recognized it. What could it mean?

He ran his finger tips up the strange markings that wrapped around his upper arm, frowning, looking closer, and then he saw something else.

Behind him, standing in the open doorway of the bathroom, was a young boy.

Mateo spun around.

The boy didn’t react. Mateo blinked, wondering if he was seeing things. Then a new thought occurred to him, and he immediately relaxed:

Ohh. I’m dreaming. Weird.

“Hey,” he called out, casually.

“Hi.” Replied the boy. He looked to be about eight, his face blank.

“Who are you? How did you get here?”

“You found me last night. Don’t you remember?”

“Right,” said Mateo. He pinched himself, hard, wincing with the pain. But nothing happened. Then he crept up to the boy, looming over him, and suddenly kicked out. His foot passed through where the boy was standing, like he was a hologram.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Aha! I knew you weren’t real.”

The boy scowled.

“I am real. I’m just as real as you are! Don’t be mean. But only it’s just that I haven’t been in Creation very long and I’m not allowed a corporeal form here so I’m sharing with you.”

"Ahh,” said Mateo, nodding his head and smiling condescendingly. “Well, that makes sense then doesn’t it?”

The boy smiled, seemingly relieved. Mateo walked out the door, passing right through him, and the boy spun around.

“Don’t do that,” he huffed.

“Why not? You don’t have a corporeal form buddy. Remember?”

“Well it’s not nice anyway.”

“Whatever. I’m bored of this. I’m wanna wake up. I have shit to do.”

Mateo went to the window, where there was a half smoked cigarette in the ashtray. He lit it and put it out on the back of his hand, wondering if he’d burn. He didn’t. Then he slapped himself in the face.

“Urghhhh,” moaned the boy, standing behind him. “You are not asleep and you are being very boring. What’s your name?”

“Mateo,” said Mateo, over his shoulder. “People call me Smoke.”

“Why do they do that?” asked the boy.

“I dunno,” said Mateo. He stood on the window sill, un-shuttering and then lifting the window. He turned to the boy. “Look, kid. I’m pretty sick of this dream. Full disclosure: it’s freaking me out a bit. So I’m just going to jump out this window and wake up. Cool?”

“NO!” the boy screamed. “You CAN’T do that you’ll DIE.”

And the boy blinked.

Mateo felt something pass through him. It started at the top of his spine, and it spread through the muscles of his body, and seemed to take advantage of the strange new channels designated by the pink markings. He had a fit, each muscle spasming, and fell off the window sill and down to the floor, jerking in place like a landed fish.

Slowly the epilepsy subsided.

The boy stood above, watching him.

“You are NOT. DREAMING. You have been chosen by Fate, by Father and to play a role in the events to come. You have received a star, Mr. Smoke.”

Mateo lay on his back. He stared up at the boy. From this perspective he seemed bizarely tall.

“Kid, look, you aren’t making any sense. Stars don't fall on guys like me. Also, this dream is shit.”

“That’s what the markings are. Can’t you remember? You came and saved me last night.”

“I may not have the clearest recollections of last night, but that is no cause to take advtange. What I can say with confidence that I did not ‘receive a star’. Where are my superpowers? Huh?”

The kid squinted.

“Your expressions, as they are termed, are gestating. Obviously. That which is above Creation cannot simply join it. It has to adjust.” The boy grinned. "Like me!"

“Gotcha,” said Mateo. “Of course. So you’re not going to let me jump out the window.”

“No.” Harumphed the child.

The door burst open.

“Mateo, what the fuck is going on in here? We can hear you romping around even downstairs. Jerad is threatening to leave. Mobio wants to come and sock you.”

Mateo rolled over.

Sally, the proprietress to the bar downstairs, stood in the doorway. She’d inherited the bar when she was 16 from her father, kept it greasy and poorly lit as to the guests liking and, with the use of the double barrel under the till, fairly safe. It was a popular detail among Mateo’s friends that she was desperately in love with him, despite being more than ten years his elder. She was always making up lies to get into his room.

“ Sally, this room is private property,” he groaned.

"No it isn't."

"Well, I paid rent last week."

“Sure but I just don’t see why-”

“GET OUT.” He roared, collapsing back on the floor.

“Hmph.” Said Sally, turning and walking out, slamming the door behind her. Silence slowly settled back over the room.

"That wasn't the very nice."

The boy had climbed up onto the windowsill, was standing on it looking at Mateo. He turned around and looked out, pointed.

“What’s that?”

Mateo groaned, thinking about what he could do. But in the end he just stood and wandered over to stand next to the boy.

“That’s a v-farm,” he sighed.

“A what?”

“A vertical farm. Where food comes from.”

“It’s so big!”

“Yeah. Lot of people to feed in Tinjouki kid.”

“And what are those?”

“Maicha. You know what a vadu is?”

The boy nodded, big green eyes looking up at him, then back out the window.

“Well, these days, vadu all have a maicha, a machine they control with their water magic. They can do all sorts of things.” He looked at the kid, thinking. “We don’t like the vadu, okay? They all work for the government, and they do all sorts of horrible things, hiding in those machines. Trust me.”

The boy looked up at him. Staring into those eyes, that little shag of auburn hair, Mateo felt a twinge, like he was remembering something.

“Okay,” said the boy quietly. “I trust you,” he whismpered.

He turned back to the window, gestured. “That?”

“That’s a holoscreen. Like a piece of tinker tech. They use them for advertisements. Uugh, basically, companies, er-. Right people like to sell stuff. I hope you know what money is. And so they sometimes choose to show off their stuff and then other people can see it and they might decide they want it, so they give some of their money for it. And those are called advertisements, and they go on the holoscreens.”

“Like that?”

“Yeah. That’s the Bannerman Jawlid. Bannermen are like the big heroes of the city, the best of the best. They work for Chief Executive Rajore, protecting the Wall and fighting Dandelion and stuff. Only here he’s sort of doing some other work, cuz he’s just advertising Uriso, which is a sweet fruit drink thingy. Looks like they have a purple melon flavour now.” The boy wasn’t looking out the window anymore. He was turned to the side, staring at Mateo. “I don’t even really see the screens anymore to be honest. My brain just filters them out. Same with the sounds of the city, the smells. They’re all just a background for me. You know?”

The boy nodded his head up and down, like this was the wisest thing he had ever heard. “Do you believe me yet?”

“What?”

“These marks are from starfall. You have been chosen. That’s why I’m here.”

“Nah,” Mateo sighed. “Sorry buddy. There’s just no chance. I still reckon I’m dreaming.”

The boy nodded. He seemed to think about something.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, I have memories from up there.” The boy glanced up at the ceiling. “But they won’t last very long in Creation so I have to show you now or they'll burn up and I can't anymore. Okay?”

Mateo smiled. “You're gunna show me your memories?"

The boy nodded.

"Well, seeing as I seem to have run out of my own, you may as well go for it."

Again the boy nodded. He closed his eyes, scrunching them up like he was trying to recall something difficult. Then, his eyes still shut, he reached up with a small hand and tapped Mateo on the forehead.

The world disappeared.

I stand on a huge platform among the vastness of void, inky and purple, the sky at night around me. There are no stars. Before me kneels a tall, androgynous man. His body is made of metal yet his face is carved out of wood, and in the tassels of his strange headdress motes of fire dance. Even kneeling he is taller I am, much. Looking at his strange wooden face, I feel that I love and fear him. He has just finished saying something. Perhaps he is smiling as he stands.

He turns.

The platform is some kind of loading bay. Floating in the air all around are strange fish with bubbled heads and in these can be seen other distant figures, watching, similarly sexless. The platform itself is exposed to the air. There is no bubble.

The androgynous man turns around, comes back with a lacquered wooden box. He opens it. Inside is a piece of cloth shimmering with brilliant light.

It is radiant. Perfect. I recognize it.

“Go on, child. You must take it yourself and bring it down with you. You know your charge?”

I nod. I reach forward and take the mantle. It feels like cool water in my hands. Then I turn and face the ship.

A plain white elipsoid with a long tail of white rubber. As I approach it hisses and opens and then I enter and sit and it hisses and closes. The seat turns. The front of the ellipsoid turns to glass.

The androgynous man appears floating before me in the void. He gestures and the ellipsoid rises. He smiles again, gestures. Space moves around me, turns to liquid, runs with colours that were not present before, none of them starlight. In the distance something rises, expands quickly in the foreground.

A ruined planet.

The planet is intersected in many places by the purple void of the night. It seems to bubble and froth there, as if alive with the movement of strange and intelligent creatures that live among its muck. The elipsoid jars slightly as it changes course. For a while it circles the planet. In the distance a warm light rises, like the dawning sun, and as the planet turns it grows. The ellipsoid approaches.

The light is Tinjouki. A huge donut of grey buildings, tiny when placed in their scale, poking up out of the earth. And then there is the Wall, rising even higher, and behind it a huge swath of green, of blue, small motes of lights, strange buildings, and then there is a rush and all of it is growing and I am falling and then there is the collision and-

With a start, Mateo work, gasping for breath, drenched in sweat. He looked around him. He was lain in his bed. The boy was nowhere to be seen. He'd finally managed to wake up.

So why did he feel so sad?