That night I dreamt.

A pink tide poured from the Cave of Origins; down the side of the escarpment to fill the land below. Every plant, every insect, and every animal was soaked through, and they began to move as one body. They thought with one mind.

In Ikfael Glen, the kids and I were already stained pink. We welcomed the tide and let it flow over us, sweeping down the hills, following the folds and streams, across the cropland and pastures, over the walls of Voorhei, and all the way to Albei.

Nothing approached the glen without first having to go through miles of united consciousness. Those that threatened the pink were co-opted. What were once enemies, became allies.

Time passed, and the tide expanded outward, absorbing the new and the strange. Every consciousness added to the whole until, finally, the entire world was pink. Everyone and everything, united. There were no more enemies, and danger was a thing of the past. Peace reigned.

There was nowhere left to expand. No new stories or interesting events. Every day became the same as the previous. All that was, was pink.

Another dream began. There was a pink tide, but this time, only the area around Voorhei was affected.The unity was not as great as before. Yet, there was amusement from the adventurers who came to study it. Until they classified the tide as a threat.

People, cities, and empires joined together to neutralize the tide. The pink fought back, but by then, the world was prepared. Magic was a mysterious and potent force. It shielded the pink’s enemies and turned the tide gray, draining consciousness until nothing was left.

In the next dream, I was eating dinner with the kids when the King of Forest suddenly charged into the glen. I grabbed my spear, spinning up Dog’s Agility, but it was already too late for Aluali. His arm was torn off by the bear. Blood gushed, and he screamed.

My eyes opened, startled. I went to shake my head--to fully wake up from the nightmare--but I was paralyzed. My body was trapped somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. I felt the images rustling at the back of my mind. I glimpsed Otwei’s eyes looming large and Banan striding into the glen with his spear lifted to strike.

At the same time, moonlight refracted through the waterfall; enough for me to make out Ikfael sitting nearby. One paw tapped against her chin, while the other held her water tablet. I tried to get her attention, but I couldn’t move or speak.

Yuki, I thought. Are you there?

They’d asked permission to use my dreams, but I hadn’t expected to be stuck in a series of nightmares. The dream ended, and I was left with the image of a spear piercing my chest.

Okay, seriously, that’s enough.

I relaxed my thoughts, but it took time--enough for a dream to begin, end, and another to begin again--before I was able to let go and slip back into sleep; to inhabit my dreams once more.

I found myself immersed in a standoff with Otwei. The rest of her team were arrayed behind her, and they held Billisha and Aluali hostage in exchange for the location of the Red Room. Inside me, Yuki spun up Dog’s Agility in preparation for the fight. I noted that the kids didn’t have Yuki present in their bodies, but the uekisheile had taken over some of the surrounding trees.

“Can you even do that?” I said.

“Stop stalling,” Otwei said. “Tell us where the eilesheile is located, or else your Family will die.”

“Are located,” I said. “There are many eilesheile, so you need to use the plural.”

Anxiety and alarm ran through me. My sweat smelled of fear. We had to save the children. They were our Family and needed our protection at all costs.

“Such dangerous words--at all costs.” I drew my knife and walked towards Otwei.

While my body panicked, I forced myself to disregard the sensations flooding through me. I knew it was a dream and so did Yuki, but they were caught up in the simulations.

“Stay where you are, or else the children will die!” Otwei yelled.

I ignored her, and Kuros stabbed Billisha in the shoulder as a warning. She cried out, and blood ran down her arm.

“Zasha, it hurts!”

“Zasha, don’t let them hurt Billisha!”

Their pained cries added to the flood within me, but I walked steadily forward, ignoring Otwei as she barred the way. I ducked under her spear. She stabbed me in the calf to slow me, but I kept walking.

“Be careful,” she said. “He’s using that Anesthetic spell of his. Pain won’t affect him.”

I almost laughed--Yuki was pulling out all the stops with these scenarios. I didn’t though. What came next was going to be difficult, even if it was a dream. I took my knife and stabbed Billisha in the neck, putting her out of her misery. Then I did the same for Aluali.

The dream froze, the Albei hunters caught stepping back in shock. Otwei’s mouth hung open.

“We--we killed them,” Yuki said, their tendrils sprouting from her face. “But we thought we loved Billisha and Aluali?”

“We do. We do love them.”

“But then, why did we kill them?”

“Because we’ve gotten tangled up in our desires,” I said.

What reason did Yuki have to run these simulations? What intention lay at the foundation of each? The answer was me and the kids, and the desire to protect us and keep us safe.

I couldn’t let love turn Yuki into a monster.

“Life is difficult,” I said. “There’s suffering everywhere, and it’s easy to get caught up in it. To fixate on chasing after our wants and desires, the things we think will make the pain go away. But life never works out that way. Happiness is fleeting. But then so is sorrow. Both come and they go. There’s danger in getting stuck in either. In drowning in one and craving the other.”

I sat down and gestured for Yuki to come closer. They poured out of Otwei’s body and took the shape of a small human being, about the size of Tinkerbell from Peter Pan, except this fairy was pink and made of lichen. They sat on my knee and listened.

“There are two sides to desire,” I said. “One challenges us to meet the obstacles in our way and grow stronger. The other transforms into craving, and we become addicted to the things we think we want; never getting quite enough to keep the pain forever at bay. Love is the same way. It can nourish or deplete. Inspire us to be our best or make us smaller through jealousy and fear, turning us into monsters.”

I sighed and smiled gently, letting my love for Yuki pour forth. “Humanity is a spectrum. We become more or less human through our thoughts and deeds. It has nothing to do with DNA or biology. It’s all inside, here in our hearts.”

Yuki ruffled through my memories as I spoke, and I let myself be an open book to them. I had committed to sharing more stories, and I started with my own.

Yuki rummaged through all the broken relationships before I met Helen. All the painful lessons from my first family and the web of decisions that accrued over time and gave shape to the man I’d become.

“If...if love changes us into something we hate, then it’s not love at all,” Yuki said.

“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “Besides, this is a dream. You know I wouldn’t really hurt Billisha and Aluali. I just needed to make a point.”

“The dreams are helpful, though, to imagine what may happen.”

“They are. I’m not denying that. And searching for the most optimal solution might seem like a good approach, but we have to be careful to include other people’s lives in our solutions, even if they’re not friendly or there’s a chance they’ll become enemies later. We don’t have to be nice, but there are lines we shouldn’t cross if we can help it. Maybe even never.”

“Otwei intends us harm,” Yuki said.

“I know it. She’s angry and frustrated and has ideas about wringing the secret of the Red Room from us, but none of those ideas include the intention to do violence. We’re in opposition--in competition--and while her team engages in shady practices, that’s not enough reason to kill them or sublimate them into our consciousness. Now, that might change. She and the other Albei hunters may become desperate enough to threaten real violence, in which case all bets are off. We’ll respond appropriately.”

“It would be simpler if she never has the opportunity to choose violence in the first place,” Yuki said.

“Yes. Yes, that’s true, but such is the nature of free will.”

I thought, my mind sorting through what I knew of religion, ethics, sociology; anything that might help convince Yuki that taking over the world was a bad idea. All those philosophical approaches felt empty though. Intellectual, without any emotional resonance.

Justice, freedom, free will, individual rights, and responsibilities to the whole--they were tricky to explain. My mind understood the concepts, but it was my heart that provided the wisdom, the ability to feel their importance and how they messily balanced each other. How should I encapsulate a lifetime’s experiences? The experiences that fed into a gestalt of right and wrong?

The uekisheile was already most of the way there. They were committed to expanding their understanding of themselves and the world. They just needed an extra push to break through.

Yuki watched as I grappled with myself. A tendril shifted on their face, making it look like a smile. “You’re not going to write me an essay, are you?”

I sputtered in laughter. And then my breath caught. That was a joke. Yuki’s first joke. Okay, it wasn’t that funny, but I was floored anyway. Not because they’d learned the dynamics of humor--which was pretty damn amazing--but because they’d developed enough emotional and social savvy to realize we needed humor to lighten the mood. To help me from feeling as though I was the one and only bulwark between the world and an all-consuming pink tide.

Yuki shook their head. “We wouldn’t. We feel how much of a disturbance it would cause in our heart. We would lose...we would lose our growing humanity.”

And, well, that’s when grace descended. Not the spell, but the real thing. I’d felt it twice before in my life. Once, when I was in high school and thinking dark thoughts about ending it all. And then again, after Helen was gone, all alone in the mountains and wondering about life.

Then, and now, I opened like a flower; a communion between me and the universe. Everything that was, is, and will be flowed through me. The hard and the soft, the ugly and the beautiful, the light and the dark. All of it.

Those moments of grace were a gift. Unexpected. And it was so again.

Yuki shuddered as the sensations flowed through us both. We’d grown so close. They knew me, and I knew them. That’s why my fear of them had dissipated. I knew I could count on them to understand, to care, and to protect; not just my body but also my heart.

There was a part of me though that had always resisted; a kernel that held back because it knew too well the pain of loss. Even when our consciousnesses were merged and under the effects of the Grace spell, I couldn’t help holding back a portion of myself.

Not anymore. I let go, and the last wall fell.

I let Yuki read whatever they wanted from my thoughts and feelings, my memories and experiences, my ugliness and beauty. All of it.

We joined as never before. Not like through the land, but as individual consciousnesses resonating with each other, the experiences flowing back and forth. And then we did merge--one mind, not of two parts, but whole.

###

We extended the dream until the sun peeked into the glen and through the waterfall. The light warmed our toes. The rest of us was chilly, though, and sticky from sweat. It would feel good to wash off.

We stretched and separated. I propped myself up, and took a moment to gaze inside. Yuki glowed softly within me; a warm pulse of life added to mine. A wave of love passed through me. It rippled through them, and they cast it back doubled.

I thought I heard a sigh of relief, but when I turned my head to where Ikfael had been sitting, no one was there. I grinned, and got up. It was time to start a new day.