"Dad..." Aaron muttered, "Thank you." he raised his head, looking at me with tear coated eyes, "Thank you for always protecting me."

When I looked into the eyes of my son, filled with appreciation, those eyes that bore a striking resemblance to Jessica's, my doubts all vanished.

My son was real, there was no doubt about it. I glanced over to Jared and Sarah. Jared had done so much for us. Because of his strong sense of justice, his need to protect people, he had risked his life countless times, even lost a limb. There was no way everything he had done was just an act.

We had just met Sarah yesterday, but already she had shown that she was ready to fight and survive together with us. And I remembered my vow... I needed to repay her parents. I was certain that she was not an illusion either.

Both encounters we had with the mind altering beings had a definite dream-like feeling to them while we were under their spell, and while our new life under the storm had been a constant nightmare, it was undoubtedly reality, twisted though it may be. We all had no memories of when we had met "Richard" either, while my memories of meeting Jared and Sarah were as vivid as when we had first met.

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They were real people, we had real experiences with each other.

That was one truth I knew to be real.

Eventually, the four of us returned to our original seats in the van. I think we had all gone through a similar process of thinking and reached the same conclusions. We had regained our calm, as much as was possible, but none of us even knew what we could say after that.

Jared slapped himself in the face, probably to see if he was really awake, "Shit... shit! What could we even have done in that situation?"

"We need... to really be careful in the future," Sarah said after clearing her throat, "I don't know if we can even do anything against something like that if it happens again... I don't even know what to say... Just, we need to stay alert, I guess... damn, that sounds like useless advice but... I really don't know what the hell we can do, guys..."

Despite everything, there really wasn't anything to say.

We had pitiable weapons, and our potential adversaries were all nearly unkillable monsters capable of even messing with the reality around us and our perceptions of reality. The sadist and the fairies were the only ones we had managed to kill, and both encounters had been close dances with death.

To say we were sitting ducks was still an understatement. We were ripe for the taking, at any moment something could come and kills us, or give us a fate worst than death. There was nothing we could do to prevent it. We might not even know it's happening.

...

Still.

We had to try to survive.

Even if none of it made sense...

Even if it was futile, we had to at least try.

We had to.