by Christy Shorey and you

ARCHIVE: NOV. 27 edited for spelling and grammar

2156 words

Dresden's mind was reeling. Margot had accepted his terms with little resistance. He was glad for that little, however. If she had flat-out agreed to them, he knew he would have doubts about her sincerity of keeping them, especially the part about using her power on him.

When Kyle had arrived with food, they had all gone inside. Dresden asked the young man if he would be willing to help grade papers for his class. Kyle had stared at him for a moment, then his eyes got wide. He had turned to Margot, who nodded her approval, and then turned back to Dresden. "If you're sure... I mean, I don't want to mess them up."

Dresden had told Kyle that he would show him what to do, and double-check his work periodically, and Kyle was practically glowing the rest of the night.

Margot had kept their conversation light, and Dresden could tell she was still uncomfortable with revealing exactly what it was he was looking for. She mentioned a new project at her job, and managed to steer the conversation to safer places most of the night. When she sent Kyle to fetch a pitcher of tea, she turned to Dresden with an apology. "I know I promised to tell you everything, but I hope you'll allow me a day to gather my thoughts? To find the best way to explain it to you?"

Dresden looked at her across the table, and for the first time he felt he was looking at an equal. He hadn't noticed the submissive feeling that had persisted in all their past interactions; an effect of her inherent power, Dresden now knew. He had relented. "Tomorrow, then?"

"Yes, tomorrow. I will tell you, though, that the matter is urgent - so I really don't dare wait any longer. My power is waning, a result of events I'll reveal to you tomorrow. But if I don't find an answer in the next month or two, I'll loose all my real power, and be stuck in dragon form forever."

After dinner, Dresden went home. Lional looked up as he passed the living room. "You working for that woman again?" his roommate asked.

Dresden nodded. He had been ranting about his situation for the past several days, and his housemates had even taken the time to listen from time to time. To Dresden's surprise, they seemed to have a sympathetic ear between them. Guido thought he should ditch working for Margot, and Lional had insisted that if he thought they could work around the personality differences (Dresden hadn't elaborated on this, because he knew his roommates would think him insane if he said his unease lay in the fact that Margot was a dragon); Raul had been quiet on the issue, nodding in sympathy when Dresden explained his predicament, but only shrugging when Dresden asked what he should do. Sally, on the other hand, had voiced her opinion with a squawk "Get outta here, bum".

"I start again tomorrow. I figured a bit more money could never hurt."

Lional gave a chuckle at that, and shook his head. "I really hope you're in it for more than the money. With women it always gets more complicated, and if it's just the money as your reward ... well, even I'm not sure it's worth it, then."

Dresden excused himself, and headed to get a shower. He was exhausted, honestly. It had taken a lot of energy to gather the courage needed to confront Margot. But it had paid off, and he was looking forward to the next day, if with a little trepidation.

What was it exactly that was affecting Margot, and why would it cause her to loose her power?

Dresden slipped on some pajamas, and crawled into bed, not minding his wet hair. His thoughts whirled around, and he knew even as he slipped into sleep that he would definitely be having some weird dreams tonight.

***

Lacey watched Logan sleep a while, and was amazed at how still he was as he was receiving dreams from other people. Every once and a while he would sigh, and shift, but Lacey noticed it was those times that the device was searching for a new subject, the previous dream having ended.

Lacey looked at the controls on the nightstand, and wondered if she could affect which dreamer he got. She waited until the device indicated it was between dreams, and she began playing with some of the controls. Light flickered behind her, and she saw the visual output device had been activated, and looked like a screen with small images on it, some of them grayed out, some of them in vivid color. She looked over the images, and realized they were people she had touched during the day while wearing the necklace - people she had collected.

Some of them had stats next to them, and she wondered if Logan knew about this feature. It seemed to keep a log of the number of dreams collected, as well as date they were collected. She presumed the grayed out images were those subjects not currently asleep. She looked over the images, and saw that one of the men she had gathered that day already had a dream file, but all the dreams were from a while ago. She figured out how to navigate the screen, and selected that dreamer. Logan gave a soft sigh, and slipped into the dream with the gray-haired fellow she had met at the shoe store.

Dresden, that was his name. He had seemed a bit strange, and said he was the housemate to Guido, one of her clients. She had been surprised when the smaller man had opened the shoe store, and had decided it would be the perfect place to gather more subjects. As Logan slept, she scanned through the images, until she finally found her own. It was ringed in orange, and there were statistics of when she dreamed, but indications that the device was unable to hone in to them. She tried to explore further, to see if the device could give further insight as to why her dreams were inaccessible.

She hit mis-navigated, and suddenly a dream appeared in place of the list. Lacey looked over the image, and realized that it was the dream that Logan was currently collecting. She found the sound controls, and turned them on low, so she could hear what was going on, as well.

The dreamer, both Logan and Dresden, Lacey realized, though Logan was a hitchhiker on the dream, was standing in front of a classroom. The students there were an odd mix of actual students, and a mob of people waiving plastic swords at him. They were all laughing as he tried to give a lecture on the appearance of mythical creatures in Shakespeare.

He looked down, and he was wearing very flashy shoes, a pair that Lacey recognized from the shop, a showgirl had worn them in a famous show in Vegas decades ago. The dreamer looked up, looking for escape, but he was surrounded by laughing faces. Lacey was surprised when the dreamer turned, and faced a blonde haired woman with green streaks in her hair. She was wearing a flight attendant outfit, and had a captain's hat under her arm. "Just fly out," the dream-her was saying. "I'll give you a lift."

The dream shook his head. "No thanks, I'll fly on my own." He looked down again at his shoes and his feet had turned into scaled claws. The dream her looked down at the new form, and said, "Okay, have a good flight." And the four-legged dreamer pushed off, just missing the grasping hands from the people who surrounded him. But the ceiling was gone, and replaced with open sky. The form took flight, and spiraled higher and higher, then swooped down towards the sea. In the imperfect reflection of the waves, it could see it's new form, a great scaly dragon.

Voices still called to him, laughing at him, but he simply breathed fire at them. "I told you to pay attention to the mythical beasts in literature." he said. "They were important all along."

The dream faded out, and Logan stirred. Lacey turned back to the device, shutting the sound off again. She set the subject selector to random, and went to bed herself, shaking her head. It was amazing the crazy things that happened in people's dreams.

***

Dragon dreams invaded Margot's sleep again, even though she had gone to bed in her human from. Memories from her distant past, that she had hoped had been buried with the passage of time, were now coming back to haunt her.

The worst of them echoed pain over the centuries, and she felt it as though she were in the moment. Anger overtook her as she relived the day the curse had been set - the blasted spell that had set in motion a vicious spiral, that had marked the beginning of the end of decent.

Memories replayed emotions as well as the facts of the events, as she slept, Margot was puffing with righteous anger. Her own words echoed in her mind, spoken with distain and arrogance "You are small and squishy. Please cease and desist or I shall be forced to crush you."

The laughter that had answered those words, the flash of magic, and the sudden loss of senses. She remembered it felt as though she had been cut from her power, and that scared her more than anything. The dream was unforgiving, and didn't fade blissfully away at that point, but rather thrust forward to the revival of senses, hearing regained first carrying the smug tone of the spell caster.   "You claim to be so powerful - let's see how you handle this."

Vision followed quickly after, then the sense of the body. And the sudden realization of what had happened. The anger, the fear and distain. The rage to get vengeance. But she'd had to walk away at that point; the spell had also weakened her own power.

But she vowed to return, to get retribution. In her dreams, however, the moment of her humiliation was revisited over and over. When Margot finally awoke, she was exhausted from the emotional tempest that had swept her in her sleep. She gathered herself, and managed to put on a smile, but underneath she was seething.

One way or another, this time it would be the end of it.

****

"So, did you have any interesting dreams last night? Anything useful?"

Logan closed his eyes against the unforgiving daylight. Lacey casually held one of his hands as she served up breakfast. He didn't understand how she could be so chipper in the mornings.

"Maybe," Logan said, stifling a yawn. He reached with his free hand for his orange juice, gulping it down.

"I learned something interesting. Did you know that you can view dreams on the visual output while they're being collected?"

"Um, no," Logan shook his head. "But then I'm usually asleep when they're being collected, so how exactly should I have known that?"

Lacey shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe the past yous build it this way because they, you, knew that you would have someone helping you. Someone who could use the interface and select which dreamer you got, for instance."

Logan arched an eyebrow. "Another feature?"

"Yep. Pretty cool, actually, though I only used it once before I went to bed. I think I'll go in to work today."

"Which dream did you see, then?"

"One with Dresden, the gray-haired guy. I was in it, actually, and then he turned into a dragon and flew away. What?"

Logan stared at the toast. Something about that dream had bothered him, but he couldn't pinpoint what. "I remember that dream," he finally said.

Lacey let go of his hand, and picked up a piece of toast and the butter knife. Even as her hand moved away, her bare foot reached out and touched his under the table. But she didn't say anything.

"It was one of the ones I wanted to review again," Logan admitted. "I've seen his dreams before, but this one was different. The other ones...they were just as weird, don't get me wrong, but they, they felt different."

"Do you think he could be the one you're looking for?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I know where he lives, if it helps."

Logan found himself surprised again. "Really?"

Lacey merely nodded, and bit into her freshly buttered toast.

Logan gave a sigh, and picked up his own toast. "Well, it might be worth checking out, I guess." As he finished breakfast, he wondered which he wanted more, for a lead to finally pan out, or for it to be a false alarm.