[crow]

No matter how hard she tried to look though, she couldn't figure out what was past the mist. It was like her mind refused to register it. The only thing she could really make out was the glimmering within the mist, little iridescent flecks that came into sharper focus the more she zeroed in on them.

She tried, for another few minutes, to get anything--- absolutely anything--- out of the dream. Now that it didn't feel like a nightmare, she didn't mind trying to dig into it, but it didn't give her anything more for her efforts.

[crow]

Eventually she had to give up, because there was just nothing more to get out of it. She leaned back against the back of her chair with a sigh.

She was going to have a real interesting time explaining this to Akira.

When she opened her eyes, another two messages were waiting for her in the messenger, spaced maybe seven minutes apart.

Are you there?

I'll be here if you want someone to listen.

She must have been spacing out for longer than she had thought she was.

[crow]

Rubbing tiredly at her face, she fixed her glasses again and keyed out a response.

I was just trying to think.

It wasn't a nightmare.

The app immediately marked it as read, so he must have had the app up on his end. She wondered if he had been waiting up for her response. What exactly was he doing up, anyway? He had school and a part time job, like a real person who was a part of the day to day grind of normal people. He shouldn't have been staying up this late.

[crow]

She had half a thought to ask, but she realized that she hadn't really answered his question. All she had done was given him some vague, cryptic-sounding responses. He was probably just waiting on her to explain herself a little more.

If only it was any easier to explain.

She decided to just write whatever she could make out anyway. It had to be better than nothing, and maybe Akira would be able to make better sense of all this black sparkly mist business than she had been able to.

[crow]

Or maybe he would be able to tell her that it was just some bath bomb commercial that had been a viral hit on the internet lately, and that she had seen it one too many times, which was why she had been dreaming about it. Honestly, at this point, she would take that too.

There was this... mist? Fog? It felt like that, anyway.

This isn't going to make much sense. It's all... dream-like.

He didn't say anything to that either, so she figured he didn't mind, but she felt that she ought to warn him anyway.

[crow]

There was no delaying it any longer, so Hazel tried to get all her thoughts in order. It wasn't easy. She knew it was going to be a little stream of consciousness no matter what she did.

So this fog... I don't know. It didn't feel dangerous, but it was weird.

It felt kind of like the other dreams. You know, the monster dreams? The big freaky dude in a cape and a speedo dreams? The monsters she'd seen weren't really the type people might think of when she'd said 'monster'.

[crow]

Not all of them, anyway. Some of them were, but more were just... weird. Wacky Halloween costume shop reject bin weird, like walking slimes or, well, the speedo guy. But the funny thing was, even though a lot of those things had no business being scary, they felt like bawl your eyes out freakazoid scary. It was like they tapped into some part of your brain reserved for being scared, and then just let loose. She couldn't imagine having experienced them up close, like Akira apparently had.

[crow]

That stuff was already bad enough when viewed from the safety of her own bed, not that she was usually lucid enough to recognize that part when she was dreaming.

But those dreams had a certain quality about them too. She couldn't put it into words at all, except as a sense that it felt like someone was telling her something, a sort of almost tingly anticipation that forced her to pay attention even when she wanted to look away. The fog dream felt like that too, despite the absence of monsters.

[crow]

Or maybe it was just that she couldn't see the monsters. That was possible too. She hadn't wanted to entertain that idea, but that funny feeling that there should have been something beyond the black fog wouldn't leave her either.

Akira finally sent a reply. Yeah, I know. There was another laughing cat emoji to go with this one. Let's not talk about speedo man again though. The cat emoji was making a gloomy expression now. He couldn't see it, but Hazel had a little laugh at his expense.

[crow]

So the saying goes--- better him than her. Hehe. No promises.

You said it didn't feel dangerous? Akira said.

Hazel thought a bit before tying in her response. It didn't feel freaky either. It was sort of just there. It felt like the other dreams, but without all the adrenaline, like they'd taken all the percussion out of a song. It wasn't a perfect analogy, but it was the best one she could come up with on not-great sleep and with the task of trying to put this stuff into words.

[crow]

She went on. I think it's aware of you too, or something. It got clearer for me after I stopped trying to fight it, if that makes sense.

She knew that it sounded absurd, but the going assumption with everything that they talked about was that it would sound at least a little crazy. That was just how these things were. And when I calmed down, it wasn't just black, there was all this... stuff going on inside. Kind of like TV static, or glitter glue.

[crow]

Hmm.

That was Akira's reply. She didn't know if he had something else to say, or if he was just sending her a response to show that he was listening. Either way, she waited, both to pick her next words and to see if he would send anything else.

Sure enough, another message popped up. Was there anything in the fog?

For a moment, she wondered if he had maybe read her mind or something. That had been what she was going to talk about next.

[crow]

But she thought about it for a moment and dismissed the idea after all. If he could read her mind, why would he waste his time chatting with her like this, waiting for her to get her brain to focus enough to put this down in a way that he might be able to understand?

It would just be easier to get the information right from the source. It wasn't like it made any less sense in her head than what she was telling him right now. She was doing her best.

[crow]

She considered her answer to this a little more carefully, mostly because she didn't want to mislead him or get his hopes up. I think there might have been. In the end, she settled for saying that. But if there was, I don't know what it is. It wouldn't let me see. I tried. It just felt like it was hiding something.

Akira's reply came shortly after. I see.

Ha ha, very funny. Hazel sent an unamused emoji from a set of game character ones that she had downloaded last week.

[crow]

Now it was Akira's turn to laugh, possibly at her expense. Hehe.

Hey! Don't forget that I still have all those recordings of you and your boyfriend! Hazel shot back. And what's with the cat emojis?

They're cute. As if to drive the point home, Akira sent another one. You sound like a pervert, Hazel.

Hazel tried to come up with a response to that one, but looking back at her phrasing... Well, he had her there. All she could do was send a different, angrier emoji back at him.