The poorly installed curtains of the apartment allowed plenty of sunlight in. Scattered toys littered the coffee table in the middle of the living room.

I walked to the kitchen, it was pristine, recently tidied up. The coffee maker wasn't still heating the coffee either, although there was still about two mugs worth left.

My mug sat on the small coaster clean and ready to use. My wife's mug sat next to it. Another little thing of hers that made my day.

Still I found no sign of her in the kitchen or at the dining table.

I checked the bedroom.

"Hey. You're awake already? I thought you said you were gonna take a nap for half an hour."

There she was laying in bed, the woman I'd vowed my life to. In her lap was my baby boy. He was focused on reading a children's book in silence.

Her brown wavy hair radiated with the little sunlight that peeked in and her sea blue eyes stared back at me with a warm smile to compliment them.

I almost felt too shy to speak. She was beautiful.

"I jus-, I-. The uh-"

I wasn't even sure what I wanted to tell her. She kept her smile but looked confused now.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to see you."

I approached and took a seat on the bed. My son looked up and shot up to hug me.

"Daddy!"

"What's going on? What're you reading?"

I hugged him back before he pulled away, jumping in bed back to his book.

"It's called the very hungry caterpillar."

"Oh, are you liking it so far?"

"Mhm."

"Heh. So, anything special you want to do today?"

My wife spoke again.

"Not particularly. Could I hug you?"

She looked at me with an exaggerated expression of confusion. I sucked my lips in.

"You don't have to ask me. Come here."

I leaned over to hold her. Her slender body pressed against mine and I smelled the serene scent of her usual perfume. The warmth she gave me was pure bliss.

I missed this, I missed this so much. I thought.

An unbearable sense of longing took hold over me. Drops of tears began to slide down my cheeks.

"I missed you a lot."

When we pulled out of our mutual hug, I held my wife's head and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

She didn't seem fazed by emotional outburst. Her smile grew wider when the light from outside the window of the bedroom intensified.

I turned to see the entire wall of the bedroom was crumbling into a bright white void. A different kind of tug began to drag me into light's emptiness.

My hands were still anchored to my wife's hands.

"It's okay, don't worry. You're going to be fine. I promise."

She reassured me with her words and smile. I didn't know what was happening in that moment, but once again she gave me the bit of courage to go on.

I let go and was instantly thrust back into the nightmare of my body being torn piece by piece.

In spite of the terror. The sense that it would never end all but disappeared from my mind.

The images of punctured holes across my entire body flashed rapidly as if trying desperately to disgust and disturb me further. It did nothing to me anymore.

That fragment of hope in the promise I was given, that was enough to tide me over what remained of the nightmare.

I arrived in Teresa's room soon after.

"Welcome back. I- Are you ok?"

Initially I had in mind to ask a simple question. What the fuck?

However, it dawned on me that the anger I felt was fleeting. The original strain on my mind was relieved long before I got back into the room.

Yet, frustration lingered regarding my ignorance of what occurred.

"Do you have any idea what that was?"

"A little bit. I only have an idea from what my father told me long ago."

She shook her hand to gesture the lack of confidence.

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"Well, are you going to tell me or not?"

I didn't intend speak very harshly but the words still came out somewhat bitter.

"First of all, I want to apologize. I didn't intend for you to nearly break like that."

"Break?"

"In lesser words, when you dream, the excitement and emotions felt within can stimulate and overload your mind far more than in reality. Usually it ends up causing you to wake up."

"Do you not have some control over my dreams too?"

"Not exactly. Understand, what I do is influence your dreams. Part of that influence is in the intensity of the fearful thoughts and feelings you perceive."

"You said 'breaking' usually ends with me waking up?"

"Yes, dreams of your own creation without any outside influence don't generally have any negative side effects other than awakening."

"In other words it's like the dream world form of passing out?"

"It could be seen that way, yes."

"And what happens if someone were to be influencing the dreams of another? Teresa, is there something you still haven't told me?"

I stared at Teresa but she couldn't hold her head up to look me in my eyes.

It appeared to me that she was ashamed of this event.

"Far more dire consequences can occur."

Teresa finally admitted.

"Like?"

"Your mind can take permanent damage, or even break irreparably leaving you in a vegetative state in the real world."

"You knew something like that could happen and didn't tell me?"

"Nothing like this ever happened before. I don't know if that's entirely correct either. I told you before no one's ever made it to this point before you. My father only gave me a warning of taking care of those I place into nightmares."

I sighed, I couldn't think of proper way to react to this grave news. Remembering the embrace I felt that consoled me, it calmed me over as my agitation started to grow.

Every night I experienced nightmares I was risking not waking up ever again. That was the gist of what Teresa decided to hide from me.

I wanted to know the cause of today's oddities.

"Why now? Do you have some clue why this happened tonight?"

"I do, that's why I apologized. When I influence your dreams I have to adjust the intensity to balance out your strengthening fear tolerance without breaking your mind. Tonight, I didn't notice you had loosened your will over your dreams. Once you lost control and the reigns over your dream slipped it was too late for me to reduce the intensity. As a result, you slipped into a deeper layer of dreaming."

"Then that's what that was."

She's always with me, even now in my dreams. I thought.

"When you dive deeper into dreams you end up losing more and more of yourself, as the part of the mind you're normally unaware of surfaces. It's not shocking to find your most cherished thoughts there either."

"I believe that."

I spoke calmly after that. What Teresa said had to be true.

There was no doubt that if I were stripped of everything else the one thought I'd have left would still be of the family I once had. Buried somewhere in my mind.

"The nightmare attempted to devour that layer, that's why it crumbled like that. I was worried you'd end up diving into an even deeper layer once the nightmare flooded in. Once you run out of layers you're gone."

Her ominous warning echoed in my mind.

"You saw that part of the dream as well?"

It was something that I seemed to forget as time went on, Teresa can see all of my dreams. It was a form of entertainment to her.

I didn't resent it.

"Yes."

Teresa bowed her head as another gesture of apology.

"I loosened control? Then it's not really all on you. Today, my stepmother came back for the first time in over two years. I didn't get much of anything done. When I went to bed I completely forgot about all of this too. I was having too much fun."

I smiled while reminiscing about the past day.

"That sounds lovely, I'm sorry I ruined your mood."

"Nah, this was bound to happen at least once. I can't be serious one hundred percent of the time. I just have to make sure I keep up with the last stretch of these nightmares. For both our sakes."

If I ended up mentally gone, no one would ever reach Teresa again.

She'd probably blame herself and never enter anyone else's dreams even if they did open up that book.

"Could I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"That woman was your wife, was she really that gorgeous?"

Teresa managed to look me in the eye with a grin of her own.

"More than someone like me deserved for sure."

"She's the one that saved you at the end wasn't she?"

"No doubt. There's no one else that ever helped me get back up from feeling down. Not like her."

"Now you just sound sappy."

"I didn't expect you of all people to say that. But, it's true."

"Why did you hardly mention her when you told me about your world?"

"That was because you seemed more interested in the kind of world I lived in not my personal life. You disregarded me as an old man before too."

Teresa stayed silent, nodding in agreement.

I began to wake up.

I took deep breaths as I opened my eyes in bed.

The sky was still dark, sunrise still felt some time away. I couldn't tell if waking up early had been a subconscious effort on my part or an effect of the dream's lingering intensity.

I heard a knock on the door. It was an older maid. She had come to tell me that she prepared my change of clothes and the bath early. She was instructed to do so by Father.

Perfect timing. I thought.

My entire morning routine was brisk as I didn't want to keep my father waiting.

The sounds of my boots echoed as I ran through empty halls and down the stairs to the library. Luckily, all the bedrooms had decent soundproofing, so it wasn't like I was waking everyone up thoughtlessly.

I cracked open the doors to the central library and saw Father tweaking a gauntlet. At his hip was his ornate sword, Father normally didn't have his sword with him unless he was preparing to leave for some time.

"Ah, Fred. Punctual as always. You've caught me in time to see me finish configuring the tools for Today's lesson."

"We're doing rune-crafting?"

"Yes, good of you to remember. Although, we'll be saving the shape theory and actual carving for another day. I wanted to get you familiar with what uses it has to us as wizards."

"Ok."

"Here come look at this."

I moved closer to inspect the item my father had in his hand.

The silver colored gauntlet had several grooves around the knuckles and fingers that seemed like a painful fit. However, almost like he read my mind, my father made a sigil on the gauntlet glow.

The gauntlet turned loose and widened out to accept a hand.

"It has a resizing spell on it?"

"Correct, this glove uses earth magic to reshape and fit itself onto the wearer. That's just one ability the several runes inscribed to it can do."

"What else can it do?"

"I'll demonstrate. But first lets head out."

Father got up from the chair.

"To the field?"

"Nope, we're heading into the forest. Here, hold my hand."

I grabbed onto my father's hand.

We suddenly jumped to the courtyard.

"Was that?"

"That was time magic. It didn't even feel like we moved right?"

"It's strange."

"Heh, I get that a lot. Well this next bit is an even stranger experience."

Father attached the gauntlet to a hook on his belt. With his hand now freed he moved his index finger to his thumb.

We we're suddenly floating in the air. It was just as quick as the transition from the library to the courtyard.

My legs dangled without any firm ground beneath to stand on. I was never a fan of roller coasters or any large heights. Even so, I would be lying if I didn't think the sight was calming and reminded me of that first dream I had when I met Teresa.

"You can let go of my hand if you want. It's not needed for you to keep floating."

I looked at my father with wide eyes.

"It's ok to keep holding on if you're not comfortable letting go then."

He said that to reassure me he didn't intend on frightening me himself. I felt more shock about whether he intended to freak me out than fear over the height.

"I wasn't this brave about doing this when I was your age either. So, let's just get to where we're headed to now."

He smiled at me. We took quick strides through the night air getting further and further away from the castle.