The dream started the same way all her dreams as of late had. She was running. Forever chasing a truth that was always just out of her reach. Someone was always chasing her too. Tonight was no different, except that whoever was chasing her was calling out to her. That had never happened before. As much as she wanted to keep running after whatever it was she was chasing, the voice calling her intrigued her. She then did something she’d not been able to do in the past; she stopped running and turned around. At first, she saw nothing. Well nothing that wasn’t par for the course for a dream like this. The voice hadn’t stopped calling her, which was good, but it hadn’t gotten any closer now that she’d stopped. She moved to take a step towards it and suddenly found herself in a castle-like structure. She recognized this place. She’d only ever seen sketches her mother had done of it but she’d captured its detail perfectly. Even going so far as to add the Arabic script on the walls even if it couldn’t be read. El Alhambra. She’d always dreamed of going there and seeing it in person.

She turned at the sound of footsteps.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she demanded.

The man in front of her merely chuckled.

“Well?”

“You were the one that called me here,” he told her.

“How? I’m asleep in case you didn’t know!” she snapped.

“Ah, and how do you know you’re asleep?” he countered.

“Because all of my dreams have been the same recently and that’s exactly how this one started but…” she trailed off.

“But?” he prompted.

“But this time I heard someone calling me and I was able to stop,” she told him, confusion lacing her words. “I’ve never heard someone calling me before.”

“You’ve had dreams like this before now?” he questioned.

“It used to be a reoccurring dream when I was younger, mostly when I was with the nuns,” she answered.

They fell silent as she studied the room’s gorgeous detail.

“My mother had sketches of this place,” she murmured. “I used to stare at them as a little girl and imagine her here sketching this place.”

“How do you know she was the one who made those sketches?” he asked.

“I’m not really sure,” she chuckled. “She didn’t look like she had any artistic talent but then again she also didn’t look like she had multiple chemistry degrees.”

“That’s very true,” he laughed.

“You knew my mother?” she asked curious.

He sighed deeply.

“Yes, I did know her,” he answered at length. “A very long time ago, I knew her.”

“She never mentioned you,” she told him.

“I wouldn’t think she would,” he muttered.

“Why?” she questioned.

“Because I made her forget she ever knew me,” he told her, tears gathering on his lashes.

“You loved her.”

It wasn’t a question and she didn’t know what made her say it. She covered her mouth in surprise. The man looked over at her.

“You look like her, you know?” he gave a halfhearted smile. “Even with your white hair.”

She turned away. She hated people bringing up her hair color. It always made her self-conscious. Her hair hadn’t always been white like this. It used to a deep auburn. It made her look a little more like her mother because in the right light it looked almost black. What puzzled everyone who saw her when she was younger, was the fact her father had copper blonde hair that looked molten in the right light. None of her siblings had her hair color either. It made her stand out more than she already did, and she always hated that. Marie Antoinette syndrome. That’s what the doctors called it.

“Even when my hair wasn’t white I didn’t really resemble her all that much,” she sighed. “My hair used to be a dark auburn. So dark, in fact, that it looked black in the right light.”

He froze. She tilted her head in confusion. What had she said that had made him freeze like that?

“I loved your mother more than anything,” he told her. “My father thought me incapable of love and for the most part, I did too.”

“Why?”

“I am not the best of men, Akira,” he told her softly.

“How do you know my name?”

He laughed lightly.

“I have known whose dream I stepped into as soon as I was called,” he smiled softly. “You’ve been dreaming about me, haven’t you?”

Akira’s face flushed scarlet.

“Come now, no need to be shy,” he chuckled. “It’s hard not to dream about someone so incredibly good looking.”

He gave her a cocky wink.

“But in all seriousness, it’s probably because of the remnants of my curse that you keep seeing me in your dreams.”

Akira nodded absently. She was studying the room they had just entered. She reached out and touched the wall.

“I don’t feel like I’m dreaming,” she muttered to herself.

“It’s called lucid dreaming,” he told her.

She turned to him.

“I’ve never been able to lucidly dream before,” she whispered in shock.

He nodded but said nothing. He must have been letting her process all the information.

“You said you knew my mother,” Akira began haltingly.

He nodded.

“Tell me about her?”

He took a deep breath.

“She was incredibly intelligent. And had a quick wit when need be. You’re more like her than you know.” He paused to gather his thoughts, it seemed, before continuing. “She was an incredible flamenco dancer, though none would know it. She actually lived in one of the cuevas, or cave homes, in the Sacremonte.”

“Wait, my mother danced flamenco?” Akira interrupted him.

He laughed and his eyes took on a far away look.

“She was one, if not, the best anyone had seen in a very long time,” he replied wistfully. “And to think flamenco was not something she learned at her mother’s knee like all of her friends.”

The dream suddenly began to change around them.

“What’s going on?” Akira asked, fear creeping into her voice.

He looked to her and it was then that Akira remembered one very specific drawing her mother had done a very long time ago.

Akira was maybe three or four when her mother pulled her into her lap one evening when her father was at a distant dig site. They sat together in an old rocking chair that had been handed down through the generations from the founding of the Empire. In her hands, her mother held a coloured sketch. She vividly remembered the way her mother’s fingers had traced the lines of the sketch. She watched her mother simply trace the sketch before she turned her gaze to the sketch.

On the paper, was a sketch of a beautiful man. His hair was medium length and was auburn in color. His eyes were a strange green that seemed to be one shade one minute and another shade another minute. He was fair of skin with high cheekbones and a strong jaw. The only thing that marred his features was a single scar that spanned the entirety of his face. It ran from the curve of his jaw to somewhere on the right side of his forehead. She couldn’t see exactly where it ended because of the tilt of his head in the drawing.

Akira gasped as realization hit her. The man in front of her was the man her mother had drawn. She told him as much.

“My mother had a portrait of you!” she told him.

“How? I never allowed anyone to take my picture!” he exclaimed.

“It wasn’t a photograph,” she whispered.

“Then what was it?” he demanded.

“It was a drawing, more like a colored sketch, that she did a long time ago,” Akira told him. “She only took it out when my father was away on a dig. She didn’t speak about the man and I never asked who he was. She always looked so very sad staring at that sketch.”

The scene around them began to settle. Akira looked around and inhaled sharply. It was her home, the way it looked the first time her mother had pulled out the sketch of the mystery man. The room they were in was not a room many knew about.

“My mother’s hidden room,” Akira whispered.

She hadn’t been in the room since she was shipped away to the nunnery that nearly killed her.

“It’s just like I remember it,” she murmured.

The desk against the north wall was still there and looked just as wobbly as it always was. The window with its window seat on the west wall and the drawings littering the remaining walls. All of it was still the same. An unfinished drawing lay on the window seat. Akira picked it up and nearly cried. She brought her fist too her mouth and dug her teeth into her finger to muffle the sobs.