dream

D opened his eyes. Blue light graced his surroundings. It was the pale glow
of dawn, just before sunrise.
Slowly, D rose from his grassy resting place. Had it all been a dream? There
was no wound to his left shoulder. Where he was now was the same spot
where he’d gone to sleep. The cyborg horse that’d been absent from his
dream stood by the tree trunk to which its reins were tied.

As the Hunter took the longsword and sheath in his left hand and slung it
across his back, a hoarse and strangely earnest voice said, “No, sirree. That
was too damn real for a plain old dream. Hell, it hurt me.” The voice
must’ve been referring to the steel arrow that’d penetrated the Hunter’s left
shoulder. “That mansion was calling you, sure enough. And if they called
you, they must have business with you. Bet we’ll be seeing them again real
soon.”

“You think so!” D said, speaking in the real world for the first time. “I saw
him.”

“Indeed,” the voice agreed. But it sounded perplexed.
Setting the saddle he’d used for a pillow on his horse’s back, D easily
mounted his steed. The horse began walking in the blue light.
“How about that—it’s the same!”
What the voice meant was this locale they’d never seen before bore a
striking resemblance to the place in the dream, suggesting . . . that the
source of the voice had the very same dream as D.

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