She was the farmer's daughter. The girl who lived around the corner. Someone to play with in a town of two children. We ate the same food, walked the same streets, and learned the same word for that long-legged bug fluttering in the top corner of a room.

Yet, I did not know her. From a distance, I might recognize the way she flowed across a market or the way she bit into an apple. If she made note of the weather or asked for directions, I could surely pin her as the farmer's daughter. But if given a glimpse into the inner workings of her mind, I'd say it was not the girl I knew. Not because I held a version of her in my head which did not match what I saw, but simply because I would not recognize what she held inside.

I did not know the girl. Not because she spoke few words, but because she was careful of which to speak. This was the type of girl that stood before me, parting the leaves at the top of the hill, asking what I was doing in the woods.

"I'm looking for Keeper," I said. "And food." Blood, really.

"How peculiar. Most do not know what they are doing in the woods. Are you certain that is what you desire?"

Hunger still prodded at me from inside, but it did not find the girl of particular interest. "Well, I am looking for Keeper. Have you seen a girl with large shears?"

She nodded and stayed so still that her long white dress didn't flow with the wind. "I know the name you speak of. Would you like me to bring you to her?"

A creeping confusion tugged at my ragged clothes, urging me not to follow. "Who… are you?" I asked.

"I am me, as you are you. To define oneself is to limit one's potential." Then, she tilted her head slightly and looked at the tops of the trees through the corner of her eye. "However, if you mean to ask for my name, I am Surreal of the Seers."

"A pleasure," I said, and my eyes scanned the girl once more. She wore no shoes and only a plain white dress. On second glance, she reflected the dawning light perfectly. Not even a hint of grass stained her feet or clothes. The girl didn't carry a weapon or equipment, either. No straps or hidden pouches, not even as much as an accessory for her hair.

"If you wish, I can bring you to The Dream Keeper," she said. "If you wish."

Watcher had tricked me into believing he wanted me dead. How can I be certain that isn't what you want?

The porcelain girl nodded her head, as if reading my doubt. "Would you care to learn a touch of magic?"

"To do what?"

She grinned. "Eager, are we?" And her eyes wandered once more. "Perhaps a magic to make a young woman smile." Her words held me at every twist.

"Is that possible?"

"Normally, no. But I am a Seer. And if you can make me smile, so can you make any woman in The Realm." She stepped down the hill, careful not to fall. She moved with a sort of inexperience, as if she'd only ever laid foot on flat ground. I watched her all the way to the bottom, where she stopped and then looked back up the hill, proudly. "It's simple. Would you like to learn?" she asked.

With only a heartbeat's consideration, I nodded. "What about the trial?"

"Yes, the ritual…" Her grin disappeared for a moment. "It is an old thing, for old people. You are young, as am I, and there is little harm in something such as this." For a brief moment, her eyes flashed, mischievous as a child's. "However still, you may wish to keep it a secret."

Before we began, she asked to be taken to a place befitting of laughter. I argued that any place should be fit for laughter. That garnered a terrible sort of frown from the girl. "Nonsense. One does not laugh at the death of a friend. Nor when lost in the middle of the woods," she said.

I decided to bring her back to the pond where I slept, since it was the only place I knew how to find. She nodded approvingly once we'd arrived and we walked along its edge. Occasionally, she would dip her toes into the water, flinch at the cold, and continue on. But despite how displeased her face turned whenever she tested its temperature, she tried over and over again.

"What is magic?" I asked.

"It is words." Her hand reached to grab a stone from the ground. "But to you, more than that." And she dropped the stone in the water with a plunk. "Words are but one part of a larger whole. There is much more to magic." She darted her gaze to me. "For example, exchanging glances." The girl spun around and stared into my eyes, then looked away purposefully. "Shaking hands." She reached her hand out, and stuck her chin up, adopting a superior sort of attitude. I took her gentle fingers and she grasped mine firmly, enough to hurt. "Acts of repentance." She leaned to one knee and kissed my wrist. Then, she tripped when standing up and splashed pond water on the both of us. "And everything else, too." She giggled, shaking the mud from her foot.

I only noticed my own charmed expression as it faded. "Then, I don't understand. Haven't I been doing magic since I got here?"

"Precisely." She flicked the word like a whip. "However, you are using it as an arithmetician uses their arithmetic. Magic is truly done when one knows what they are saying. Smile," she said with a graceful tonality. I couldn't help but listen.

I'd heard that kind of word before, too. When The Dream Eater spoke silence into Keeper. And the words he spoke into me, they sat strangely at the ready in my head, as if seared onto my mind: The Hearts Of Long Dead Past Reside In Stone. Eat Now And Learn The Path To Seize Thy Throne.

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She nodded, approving of the understanding on my face. "As an exercise, what word comes to you when I smile?"

"Who are you?" I asked without thought, as if perfectly normal, and her eyes went wide.

The girl's body changed, it stiffened. More than that though, it became honest. Her smile was gone and she only stared at me with pupils growing larger. Her chest moved in an odd pattern. Her hands trembled. Ah, yes. I am Fear.

She inhaled sharply and took a step back. Hands pressed against her collar bones. A building giggle came from her cheeks, and soon she was laughing. "I asked for one word, not three. I should have guessed that would happen." She grinned an honest grin. "Better to hold my end of the promise." She nodded once. "I, Surreal of the Seers, hereby grant you, Ferrowill, my blessing."

I raised an eyebrow. "Even though I gave three words?"

"Let us not discount the smile that came to cover the fear." Surreal stepped closer to me. Her eyes remained soft and trusting.

"I'm really not so terrifying."

She gave an incredulous grin. "That is something I would like to believe." Then she stood and regained an air of authority that I hadn't noticed fade from her face. "Do you still wish to find The Keeper of Dreams?"

When she'd first asked the question, I hadn't thought much of it. But now, I had seen who she truly was, and for that I wanted to give her a true answer. What do I want? Keeper to help me awaken, to teach me magic, to eat The Nine, and to escape The Realm.

"The answer depends," I said. "What do you know of sending items back to my world?"

Surreal narrowed her eyes. "I know it is impossible." Then, her head tilted back and forth. "However, the impossible is possible for one name alone. The Dream Eater."

"Could I send myself back?"

She giggled and placed a hand on my shoulder. "This question makes a most puzzling assumption. You are one of many, Ferrowill. One must concern themselves with the wolf staring them down."

"Of many?" My tone sounded harsher than I had intended, though Surreal did not flinch, she only brought her hand off my shoulder.

"Precisely. A countless number have been afforded a contract by The Eater of Dreams. You are but one of them. Failure is a possibility one must accept," she said, moving into the shade of a tree I hadn't noticed before. It twisted, unlike the others, as if shaped by a hurricane.

"Wait… what? Didn't the gods choose me? There were others? What happened to them?" As I asked the question, the answer came to me. The Hearts Of Long Dead Past, that's what happened to them.

"Truthfully, I have not met another of your fate. I learn what is taught by the Seers, Ferrowill."

I shook my head. "How do you know my name? How did you even know I had a contract?"

The curve of her lips grew concerned. "I saw it. That is what I do, I see."

"And can you see my future? Why do you talk as if I've already failed?"

"You've not already failed, simply…" Her hand went to fidget with the hem of her dress and the expression on her face only grew more sour. "I… It would only further upset—"

I adopted an uncharacteristic growl. "I want to know."

"Your duty," she said with her eyes closed. Shaking. "It is impossible."

"Except for The Dream Eater."

Her head swung violently. "That is not your—"

"Surreal!" My voice echoed with the trees. "If there is one thing you will see in this lifetime of yours, it will be my name on his throne." My heart thumped wildly. My body: tense and shaking. Only then did I notice the sweat stinging my eyes and the hunger screaming through every pore in my skin. My arm had grown three claws, and my tongue was itching for blood. "Which way is Keeper?"

The Seer pointed her shaky finger in a direction, eyes still closed. I wonder, was it the claws that got her to drop the act again?

"Wait!" Surreal called out, before I had made off too far. "I hope we see one another at the ritual."

I gave her the consideration she'd earned and simply replied, "Likewise." Then, I was gone.

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"Keeper! Where are you? Keeper!" I struggled through the underbrush, resolved to move as straight ahead as possible. When I came over the crest of yet another hill filled with those orange, twirling flowers, a voice called out to me.

"Ferrowill!" It was the voice of a man.

"Who are you?"

The voice sat silent for a moment. "I… It is The Dream Watcher."

As I slid down the other side of the hill, I spotted the fleshy figure behind a tree. His clothes covered far too much of him, and he didn't smell quite as strongly of blood as I'd have wanted. "Where's Keeper?" I asked. "I left her sleeping."

"Alone? Out here? Are you mad?"

I should rip your head off and drink from the hole like a freshwater spring. "Slightly. Is the trail nearby?"

"I just came from it when I heard your shouting," he said, eyes locked on me.

"That's good, I'll be able to find her from there."

He placed both hands out in front of him. "Wait, Ferrowill—What… what in The Realm happened?"

I looked down. Cloak still covered in vegetation; the rest of my clothes falling to pieces; my skin covered in thousands of cuts, scuffs, bruises, and a few lumps; and, of course, my shadowed arm. "Right. Quite a bit, I would say." And I walked past him, in the direction from which he came. This monotheist rat smells more of Dreams than human. I ought to spill your insides for—

"And one more thing," he said with a reluctant determination. "Did you steal a dagger?"

Maybe I'll just taste him. Wait. "What are you talking about?"

"A dagger made of bone. It was sitting in a box wrapped in ribbon, underneath the bedding I laid out for you. Do you have any clue what the punishment for theft is?"

"I do not…"

He shook his head, one hand rubbing his temple. "I cannot believe you."