Zephyr pulled himself slowly out of the bed. As his foot touched the floor and he looked down he watched as his leg start to grow. Before his eyes he shifted, growing taller, back into the man he was. He shook off the last of the sheets. The quilt tumbled back onto the tangled pile of cotton. The shift back into a man made Zephyr feel stronger, like he’d left a small scared part of himself behind.

This room, it didn’t belong to him now, and it had never belonged to him, not really. Zephyr eyed his prize, the open door. He took a tentative step forward, then another. He footsteps grew more certain as he approached the threshold and no one appeared to stop him.

Finally he stepped through the door. The light around him was blinding at first but slowly his eyes adjusted. Nothingness panned out in all directions. It was like standing in a fog. Only, when he looked down, it was more like he was standing on the fog.

He started to breathe in but found he couldn’t. His hands flew to his throat. The oxygen felt stuck at the top. He clawed helplessly at the air around him.

As he dropped to his knees he felt hands grab him.

“Zeph! Zeph! Relax, just breathe. It’s all in your head. I promise.”

He recognised Amanda’s voice.

“You’re fine. It’s just a dream. Think of something nice. Something calm. You have to relax.” Her first words had been panicked but as she spoke, tried to reassure him, she slowed her speech, made her own voice calm and soothing.

Just hearing her voice helped him. The moment she’d grabbed him and spoken his name. That had been enough.

It didn’t work at first. The air was still caught in his throat but as consciousness started to slip, if one could call this consciousness, his thoughts wafted toward nicer things. He thought of a lunch they’d had a few weeks back at his place. Sirius and Wolf jostling for control of the BBQ. Falco and Amanda poking holes in the bottom of beer cans and seeing who could finish them faster. Indi trying to make a tower out of toothpicks while Kass and Cat watched. As he thought of that day, thought of how it smelt, how fresh the air had been, he finally felt his lungs start working again. Only then did he realise Amanda was holding him upright rubbing his back. Except it wasn’t just her. No, she might be the one rubbing his back, but someone else was holding him upright.

He leaned forward, placed his head in his hands for a moment, and then twisted around to see.

Stolen novel; please report.

“Sirius?”

“Hey,” Sirius replied.

Zephyr blinked. “What’s going on?”

Amanda replied. “You’re dreaming. We all are. We got pulled into the dreamworld. How much do you remember?”

Zephyr shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Just take it easy for a bit,” Amanda told him. “Do you remember the house?”

Zephyr shook his head, but he had flashes of something. An old house behind iron gates. They’d been exploring it. But how did he get here now? He looked at Amanda and Sirius. They looked worried. Should he be worried? Were they safe here?

As if reading Zephyr’s mind Sirius said, “Cat’s on her way. She’ll pull us all out. We just have to sit tight till then.”

It might have made Zephyr feel better if not for the look Sirius shared with Amanda right after saying it. There was something else he wasn’t sharing. Something else they were both worried about.

He didn’t ask. He didn’t want to know.

They sat in a circle in silence for who knows how long, each one of them grasping a hand of the others. The world shifted around them. The sky changed from day to night and then back again.

Stars twinkled in the sky. Sirius looked up at them and remarked, “If it weren’t for the unrecognisable constellations I’d almost think they were real.

As Zephyr looked up to see for himself the sky changed once more, turning a light blue. Fluffy clouds filled the sky which stayed blue for no more than a second before taking on a sickly translucent green colour. A buzzard circled overhead. All of it unsettled Zephyr so he turned his eyes back down to the ground.

Beneath the grass the earth was moving. The soil was more worms than dirt, fat, white pulsating worms. Zephyr watched as they grew and then shrunk, turned into maggots and then back to worms. Zephyr sucked in some air and decided maybe it was best to keep his eyes level.

At the sound of his gasp Amanda, who hadn’t taken her eyes off Sirius for the entirety of the time they’d been sitting there, turned to look at him. “Don’t pay any attention to any of it. It’s not real.”

But it felt real. And as Zephyr watched, half of Amanda’s face started to melt and slip off her skull leaving nothing but dripping blood and bone. She didn’t seem to notice. Zephyr shook his head and a moment later she was back to normal.

He closed his eyes tight. Maybe the best option was to not look at anything at all.

Amanda turned her eyes back to Sirius. She knew once Cat came and woke them, they’d be separated once more. Maybe Cat would be able to see where he was pulled back to. That was, she suddenly worried, assuming Cat could find them in the first place. But then she had found Sirius, and they had found Zephyr. That was, assuming all of this was real.

She caught Sirius’s eye then, emerald green, but far more valuable to her than any gem. Yes, he was real. She was sure of it.

She glanced at Zephyr. His eyes were shut now. Did they dare to drag him to his feet and off into unknown parts of the dreamworld to look for Wolf and Kass? She hadn’t at first, figuring Cat must have found one of them by now and given they were in a pretty decent sized group it might be better to wait at this point. But still she worried. Given the way Sirius kept glancing around she wondered if he felt the same.

The decision was made for her however when out of nowhere a figure appeared.

“I thought I might find you guys here,” Cat remarked with a grin.