Pallid skin and weary eyes were the hallmarks of Callum’s recent years. They suited his sluggish gait, unruly black hair, and icy gray eyes. With a mere two months remaining in East State’s Biochemistry program, a newfound urgency gripped the students—more like panic, really—to complete the projects they had neglected for most of the year.

Callum was no exception, though his reasons leaned more toward altered priorities than procrastination. Perhaps therein lay the root of his recent troubles, or maybe he’d simply imbibed one drink too many the previous night. Regardless, time was of the essence, and Callum’s watch ticked precisely at 60.00168 BPM. He knew this only because he religiously set his timepiece back 2 minutes and 13 seconds every 30 days—an eccentricity he had grown almost fond of, considering the watch had belonged to his father.

A yawn began to escape him but was interrupted midway as two hands grabbed his shoulders from behind and shook him violently. Callum didn’t need to guess the culprit based on those stubby fingers.

“Up and at ’em, Cal! What are you on now? Two pages in?”

It was Joseph, pushing him again to finish his dissertation. Callum rolled his eyes, brows furrowing at the void left by the unfinished yawn. “Sixty, but who’s counting?” He slowed his pace as white flakes of cold settled atop his back-left cowlick. Joseph was a huskier man with more beef than neck and a beard that warmed him better than most scarves. If ever a human resembled a hibernating creature, it was Joseph. The slump in his walk only made the sight of the two friends more comical from afar.

Callum shrugged his shoulders loose from the man’s stubby grip. “Did you bring it?” he asked, curious eyes flicking upward along with his chin. Joseph fell into step beside Callum, a small skip in his gait. His little hop looked even more unnatural with his red puffer jacket adding a good 15 pounds to his frame, quite the contrast next to Callum’s short, petite stature nestled warmly in his black windbreaker.

“Right, right, ri—” Joseph’s voice trailed off as he reached into his back pocket and revealed a folded piece of paper, clearly carried around for a few days. “That’s really all you needed?” His pitch rose, questioning his friend’s ulterior motives.

Callum didn’t even bother opening the note to check its contents. Joseph had scrawled what looked like a number in black ink, then later scribbled over it with blue. A sad face adorned the paper—perhaps it had been a girl’s digits. “Yeah. That’s it.”

Joseph simply shrugged. “Alright, man. Let me know if there’s anything else.” A large, booming pat from Joseph nearly knocked the smaller man to the ground, but through sheer habit, Callum recovered without much acknowledgment. The duo funneled into the warm building before them and went their separate ways.

The hardest part about Callum’s life wasn’t the research but the long hours and loneliness that accompanied it. It didn’t help that the office was kept so cold that one could consider it assault. He removed his hooded jacket reluctantly and replaced it with the lab coat he’d learned to hate and love over time. From there, he simply did his job, the same monotonous work that life required of him at what felt like an intern level. The grunt work left behind had Callum up at ungodly hours. If it even half-paid the rent, he might have been less likely to complain, but for now, he mostly lived paycheck to paycheck off caffeine, half-baked sarcasm, and an unnerving stubbornness.

Ten hours yielded decent results, putting Callum one step closer to escaping this frozen-over hell hole. The ninth circle of hell was beginning to sound like a walk in the park. He bundled up again and grabbed a taxi home, where exhaustion took hold as soon as the warm light of his home office embraced him. Callum reflected on the day, but it was in his nature not to dwell on unanswered questions. Another four hours of self-study found him forehead-down on a pile of papers, books surrounding his head like stray fireflies in the night, their contents beaming with knowledge that he swore held the answers he needed. As he fell deeper into slumber, the mild lighting of his room disappeared, and so, too, did the fireflies.

When Callum opened his eyes, he was no longer in the warm glow of his room, nor the unnecessarily cold lab, nor walking East State’s University with crunched snow underfoot.

He allowed his gray hues to wander, taking in the odd lighting of the new landscape surrounding him. Crickets chirped loudly, their calls echoing through an unforeseeable distance of timber, brush, and rock. Leaves littered the ground, fallen limbs creating roadways for the small insects that scurried to and fro. He could smell the earth in all its glory, something he had gone without during his time in the man-made labyrinths of the New York subways.

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His eyes continued to roam and gawk, but his emotions remained mostly flat. It was just a dream, after all. It wasn’t the first time Callum had lucid dreamed, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Trees grew outward from the rubble, overtaking one another like some plagued monstrosity. Newly birthed trees grew cancerously from old, forgotten stumps and inward and through gnarls and giant rings. Their roots knotted and curled, sticking upwards and sideways and every which way in between. It was as if the land was in constant battle with itself. As strange as it was, his lucid dreams always took place within the same location—this overgrown battleground of flora and fauna. Pieces of it changed here and there, but Callum knew his way around.

His eyes shut tight, crow’s feet forming at the edges. A lengthy pause followed, punctuated by a deep sigh. “What a joke,” he mumbled. Of the dozens of times he had been here, he had never once made himself fly or even alter the world around him. What was the point of being able to lucid dream if he couldn’t have any fun with it?

Eight strangers stood before him. A mix of awe, fear, and confusion befell them, though the forest seemed to whisper with an eerie liveliness. He’d never been able to interact with them before, and he doubted this time would be any different. Callum seemed to be the only one who could see the others, and the only one who was never surprised to be here.

Sestr.

Sestr namid.

The trees whispered. Unheard.

Callum found it difficult to breathe, and yet the world around him was so full of life that he almost felt he didn’t need to breathe at all. It was fueling him in a way he could not yet explain. Brown eyes fluttered beneath the branches, taking in the grandiose trunks that were alive in their own way. He could feel their pulse raging through his body as he started to hear the faint whispers. Their chants echoed in his head, full of lifetimes of ancestry and knowledge as if they had collected the memories of those taken by the earth—all of that wisdom seeped and stored into their rings. He turned to face the other eight men and women who had also gathered. Each one of them looked as surprised as he did. Everything seemed so real. He felt as though he could reach out and touch them.

He inched forward, heavy winter boots crinkling fallen debris. “What a dream…” It was hard to believe it was anything but that—just a dream. The other eight seemed to ignore each other, eyes glazing over the others. Either glancing briefly as if they caught a whiff of perfume where only moss and rain and undergrowth should be present or staring dumbfoundedly about as if no one else was around at all.

The earthy structures surrounding them seemed to be several centuries old, worn down to mostly rocky rubble, weathered by nature over time. There was no evidence of civil life. Animals had made it their home, and the forest had claimed it as their own.

The forest continued to whisper as if the wind carried ancestral voices. With each minute that passed, he could swear that they spoke something other than English. It wasn’t a language he could identify, either. No. It was something much older, and yet he could discern its meaning as if he was somehow connected to the words.

Sestr.

Sestr NAMID.

It was that phrase again. It sounded so familiar. Heads turned in each direction in a dire attempt to find the source of the whispers. Some of the individuals would cover their ears, others would stumble backward and try to find their composure. The whispers sounded panicked as if sending a message through a coded channel.

A shiver went through his spine. The trees began to shake, and the ground underneath rippled and cracked. From afar, a green mist began to hurl forward. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong. Callum’s eyes widened. “Sestr…namid…” At first, it simply sounded like he was parroting the whispers of the trees.

A pause.

“Run,” he said.

“Run NOW!”

Callum didn’t stop to think. His legs were gone before his mind could question anything going on. The green mist was rolling in, its pungent smell quickly catching up to him and leaving the man gasping for air. He could feel his consciousness fading, his knees hitting the earthy ground, and then nothing.

His eyes opened to a more familiar scene—his bedroom. Several books still lay scattered about, their pages opened just where he’d left them.

It was just a dream.

A dream he’d had countless times before.

Each time feeling more real than the last.