Dreamer School

He opened his eyes slowly and looked up into her.

"You're a twisted kitten, aren't you?" He said.

"Excuse me?" Molly said shakily.

"Nevermind. Why don't you join me Molly," Sea said.

He sat up and caught his journal all in one smooth motion without losing eye contact with her. Sea patted on the marble bench next to him for her to join him.

He remembered her name from class? Molly's heart smiled. She wasn't sure he entirely knew she existed. But he did, and he knew her name.

Molly held her skirt and sat slowly next to him. It was all she ever wanted since she had seen him. Her fingers nervously fiddled with the edges of her book.

"Where's that shadow that's always around you?" Molly asked.

"She loses connection during the new moon, it's the only time I get to myself," Sea said, looking up into the sky, "that's our little secret though. Patricia would have me locked up in her office with her every new moon if she knew, that would be a drag."

"You don't like Patricia?" Molly asked.

"It's not that I don't like her," he said, glancing at Molly, "she's just wasting my time, she likes to tease herself with the possibility of intimacy, but she'll never go through with it unless forced to do so. And she's too smart for that... or so she thinks."

Molly scooped the left side of her black, silky straight bob over her ears so she could see him more easily. The way his eyes glowed in the dark and the perfect shapes his wonderful lips made as he talked, enticed her.

"I've seen you've changed quite a bit in the couple weeks you've been here," Sea said, "I like that look on you."

Molly blushed instantly and stammered, "I just, I don't know, I like this style I guess."

"What do you want Molly?" Sea asked.

Molly looked at him with searching eyes, what did he mean?

"I mean, what are you looking for?" Sea said, he peered up at the cosmos again, "for me, I want freedom."

"Freedom...?" Molly said, looking down into the grass under her flats, her previous life that seemed so distant now, flashed before her. She knew the feeling of wanting freedom, now she had it. She looked at Sea. A weird feeling bubbled up in her, like she was willing to give up what she had wanted for so long. She gripped her journal, what was she thinking? How could she give it up?

"This Goddess has me chained to her," Sea said, "I don't fully comprehend it, but she's pulling me through a bunch of doors towards her. Which is fine I guess. But something doesn't feel complete about it, I have a sneaking suspicion there's others involved. She's perverse, you know. She does things to me... anyway, I'm talking too much."

He paged through his journal as if he was playing with it while he thought and Molly felt the air from the fanning of the cream colored pages on her face. She became suddenly aware of how close they were sitting together and she felt herself begin to sweat for the first time since the day she arrived.

"Why are you telling me all this?" Molly asked.

Molly spotted a line in his journal as it flashed by her briefly, "there are three women in my house, no, goddesses, all of them crafty..."

He closed his journal, "because you're the only person I've been able to talk this closely with since I've been here."

Sea dipped his head down closely towards Molly. Her heart ran around the building and dove back into her like a flaming spear, was he going to kiss her?

He lifted one of his experienced hands and moved it up towards her face. Molly thought she was going to faint. She closed her eyes, no she opened them, she wanted to see, no that's probably weird, she closed them again.

She felt his hand on the side of her burning cheek just above her ear. Molly leaned into it, gently melting into his touch.

Sea lifted her wiry glasses off her face in one swoop. Molly jerked awake and opened her eyes.

He was cleaning them on his robe.

"These things are so dirty, how can you see anything out of them?" Sea held them up to the sky and inspected them before giving them another round through the folds of his robes.

Molly felt so embarrassed, she wanted to run away. But when he slowly and tenderly, replaced the glasses back on her face and fixed a strand of her hair, she gazed into the concentration on his face. She wanted to cry.

He was so lonely. Where was he? How could she find him? Express her desires to him. The two of them were just eyes, looking through the universe for something. Scanning for that perfect eye contact, the kind that lets you look behind and see the person's mind, they were just two eyes looking for each other, scanning, scanning, scanning, back and forth, back and forth. And now they were so close to finding each other's gaze in just the right way, if only she could find a way to get him to look at her. She was already looking at him like words on a page. Why was he writing all this, who was he writing for? Who was she? If only he would look at her eye, just before him, he would see it was her.

Sea took his hands back, "there, now I can see your eyes, you shouldn't hide them like that. They match your little patch of freckles."

His words killed Molly again and there was a small gap of silence in which she had to be reborn, "w-what are you going to do about your Goddess stalker?"

"Nothing," he said, "I've learned a new way of thinking. Now, I let my fate come to me."

"I don't really understand," She pushed up her glasses and ran a wondering finger down her cheeks, her freckles?

There was a distant door slamming from somewhere inside the building and it echoed out into the courtyard. Sea looked towards where it came from.

"Why don't we move somewhere more private?" Sea suggested, "I don't want anyone knowing that I'm so... available, on the new moon."

Molly nodded and her heart was in her throat, "s-sure." She wanted to hug that platinum mermaid with all her heart the next time she saw her. Was she dreaming?

"Let's go to my room," he said, "I haven't been able to talk to someone like you for a long time."

They walked back the way Molly had come, towards the dorm hallway. Five or six doors in, on the right side of the hallway, he stopped. Molly sidled in next to him, curious.

They were in front of a door that said: "M. Sea," with a crow that wore a floating crown.

"This is my room," he said, "is that okay? It's the most private place I know of."

Molly nodded, trying not to seem too eager. She was going to see inside Sea's room!? She subtly pinched herself with her sharp nails, no it wasn't a dream.

He opened the door and gestured for her to enter.

The nine by nine by nine cube of white stared out at her. Molly was surprised, she had expected someone like Sea to have an elaborate setup, he seemed leagues beyond anyone else in the class with his journal.

Molly stepped out to the center of the room looking around for some kind of trick.

"Hey," Sea called out, "come here, take your shoes off first."

She rushed over towards the door and slipped off her flats next to his black flip-flops.

He opened his journal and Molly saw him read a small line. A door shimmered to life on the left wall. Molly had never seen the effect of reading something into the room from an outside view before. She would read, and then look up, and it was there.

It was a glossy black door with a red hourglass in the center of it. He walked up to it, opened it, and ushered Molly in.

It was a room all in black, much larger than the cube in the room before. Molly smacked her forehead, she felt like such an idiot. Doors, of course. That's how you extend the room. The elegance of it excited her.

A small obsidian platform fell off the back wall like a peeling scale from a snake and hovered towards Sea, it followed him around as he entered the room. He placed his journal on it and the platform levitated slightly out of reach of his right hand. Always just nearby.

There was a large inky black leather couch, a kitchen kind of area and a dim orange light lit the place from in between the gaps of the scale like tiles that ran up the back wall and along the ceiling. The space, where the tile that was floating near Sea came from, was now a pulsing orange blank that added a little more light into the moody room.

"You like black huh?" Molly said, squinting, everything kind of blended in together, only the textures highlighted by the orange grid of the back wall were visible.

"That's part of the problem," Sea said cryptically. Molly pushed up her glasses, scrunched her pretty nose and stared at the couch. Was she going to get fucked on this couch? Molly blushed and shook her head, what was she thinking?

There was a smooth circle of a black glass table that grew up from the floor on spidery legs in front of the couch. In the center of it rested a book with a black cover and pages trimmed in blushing red edges. Molly walked over to look at it.

"Careful with that one," Sea said, "he's a vampire Lord."

"What do you mean?" Molly said, poking the book with one of her sharp nails, like it was alive.

"It was one of my previous experiments," Sea said, "a book within a book. But it didn't work the way I wanted it to exactly. Nothing ever does."

Molly sat down on the couch, and the puffy leather cushions ate her alive. Her skinny form sank into it and she felt like she was floating. She rested her book on her lap. Something about the place felt good. This was the place, she could feel it. She could sense Sea's mind in everything here. She felt at home in his way of thinking. That weird feeling bubbled up again and she looked at her journal, she was going to give it up, wasn't she?

Sea was doing something in the kitchen.

Molly perked her head up and watched, it looked like he was making a drink of some kind.

"What are you doing?" Molly asked.

"Just making a cup of tea," Sea said, "did you want any?" He looked over at her as he stirred in a small shot of milk.

Molly shook her head, "why do you still drink tea? We don't need to anymore?"

"I don't think I could ever not have a cup of tea," Sea said, "if there's one thing I know about myself, that's it."

"But couldn't you just write a cup out?" Molly asked, "why are you actually making it?"

"Because the process of making it, is also the cup of tea," Sea said.

Molly didn't get it. Maybe it was like picking out an outfit?

He walked and stood next to her on the couch with his black mug. Another obsidian panel slid from the wall like a falling stone shingle from a temple and floated towards him. Another block of dim, golden-orange light flowed into the dark room. He automatically placed his tea cup on it and it took its place in line near the other tile with his dark green journal.

He grabbed the black tome from the circular table and paged through it. Molly watched as he read a line and a door opened up into the wall to her right. It was a red door with a rounded top and the door frame was made of white chalky stone, in the center was an image of a jeweled wasp in a white circle. Molly stood, and pushed up her glasses, staring at the door.

"Shall we share a secret?" Sea said with a shine in his green eyes that sparkled like a smile. He placed the book back on the table, tucked his journal under his arm, and taking a sip from his tea, gestured towards the new door.

Molly followed him through the door and out into a grand palace hall.

The door shut behind them and they were standing in a gloomy hallway with curtains periodically running up the sides and statues lining the ancient, ornate walls. Tiny bats fluttered up in the tall rafters that disappeared into shadow. Strangely shaped, red lamps hung from distant black chains and rattled with the gentle inhale of the palace corridor.

Molly was silent, her mouth gaped open and her large, moist eyes took in the otherworldly structure. Two tiny bats were chasing each other up high around the crimson lamps. Did Sea make all this?

He grabbed her hand gently and guided her down the hallway. Her heart was a whir with all kinds of emotions. Her head was overflowing with thought after thought. The place was amazing, but there was dust everywhere, Molly had a strange desire to clean it all up.

They walked deeper into the throat of the hall, the statues on the sides of the walls began to become stranger and more devilesque, beautiful stone demons were coupling in increasingly primal positions around her on both sides now. They were so well done, Molly almost thought they were moving around her like an ancient stone orgy.

An Asian woman in a long, trailing red robe with golden earrings the shapes of sideways eyes came out of a side door and spotted Sea. Her eyes almost burst out of her sockets. She hurriedly wiped a bunch of blood from her fanged mouth on the sleeve of her crimson robe and fell to her hands and knees where she stood.

"Father," the gorgeous, young woman said into the dusty, ancient runner of a carpet. Her long black hair fell out around her on the ground as she bowed down.

"Daughter," Sea said as he walked by and patted her head as they passed.

"How-," she began nervously, "how did you arrive here so quickly?"

Sea stopped, "never question me please, everything you are, and everything you do, and everything that happens to you, is because I will it so."

"Yes Father, sorry Father," she said into the ground, "are you going to punish me like you used to?"

Molly thought the way her voice trailed up at the end of the question felt a little strange. She looked up at Sea. He rolled his eyes at Molly, but kept a stern, commanding voice when responding to the bowing woman, "yes, now go to your room and I'll find you when I have time."

"Yes, Father," she said, gathering her robe excitedly and scurrying away.

Sea resumed walking and he guided Molly along by the hand, he was so gentle with her in his grip. Molly gripped his a little tighter.

"Who was that?" Molly asked.

"A daughter of yours," Sea said. Molly's head jerked in confusion.

They continued down the hallway which became narrower and darker. Soon the walls were more bored tunnels of shiny, intimidating obsidian crystal cave than oversized palace hallway.

Eventually, they came to a door at the end of the tunnel, Molly looked behind her, where they had started seemed so far away, she could barely make out the red lamps of the palace in the distance. She gripped Sea's hand a little tighter.

The door was circular and wet with a red triangle on the center of it.

Sea let go of Molly's hand and put a finger against his lips to warn her to be quiet. Molly nodded into his green gaze and he slowly opened the door.

Molly put a hand over her mouth. Behind the door was a massive, humid cave. Sleeping inside, on the surface of what seemed like an abyss of a circular black lake, was a woman similar to the one Molly had seen jump out at her from the shadow that floated around Sea. But she was a giant trimmed in pretty dragon scales and had a pair of thick horns atop her head. Her bewitching face must of been the size of two Mollys.

The sight of the wonderfully gorgeous dragon Goddess wasn't what surprised Molly most of all however, it was the golden girl sleeping on top of her.

It was Rebecca. She was curled up and almost glowing like an attractive, girly sun on the Goddess' snow white breasts.

Sea shut the door quietly and kept his finger on his lips until they were back in the first room with the large black couch.

"That's her," Sea said, "she sleeps during the new moon, I tried trapping her in that book, but she took it over."

"That girl," Molly said, shaking a little from the rush of it, "I've seen her, she's Rebecca."

"No, Rebecca is the Librarian," Sea said, "that's Claire."

"Claire? But she introduced herself to me as Rebecca," Molly said confused, "didn't you ever see her at class?"

"What do you mean?" Sea said, placing his journal back on the floating tile that came out to greet him.

"Don't you remember the first day in class," Molly said, pushing up her glasses and catching her breath, "she was dragging me out of the class past you."

"No, I only saw you," Sea said, he plopped down on the black couch and his tea floated towards him, "that's why I looked at you, I thought you were pretty weird the way you were running down the aisle with your arm out."

Molly blushed, imagining how stupid she must of looked.

"W-well," Molly said, "that was her!"

"I'm not surprised," Sea said, leaning back into the couch, "I told you she's beyond me, always one step ahead, she must know something about you I don't. She may have been playing with you."

"She kept trying to get me to go outside the school walls," Molly said, clutching her journal.

"That's dangerous," Sea said, "don't ever do that, trust me. At least not until you have more of an understanding of what you are."

"So she sleeps on the new moons," Molly said, "is that why the shadow disappears from you?"

Sea crossed his arms, "no, I don't think the real her ever sleeps, I think her energy is reflected to me from the moon, that was just a representation of her I showed you, so it sleeps when it's disconnected."

Molly climbed on the couch next to him and played with her silky, dark hair nervously. She couldn't believe how close she had come on that first day to leaving the school with Rebecca. Who was the real Rebecca? She would have to visit The Library and meet her, maybe that's why she never received a real introduction to this school with all its rules and nuances, the real Rebecca never came to talk to her that first day.

"What's that?" Sea asked.

"Huh?" Molly said. She noticed he was pointing towards her arm.

The white cuff of her left sleeve had slid down to her elbow and revealed the pale skin of her forearm. Her scar was shining under the dim orange glow from behind and above them.

Molly snapped back up the sleeve and hid her arm.

She had forgotten all about it since she had been in this fantasy of a dream world. All those horrible emotions came up and attacked her with a panicked clawing. It was the last thing she wanted to think about right now. Her body tightened and she felt her chest constrict.

Sea's face softened.

"No one heard you did they?" He said, "no one understood that there was nothing for you there? They all equated their shallow understanding of despair with yours. But you were drowning in the dark depths, and no matter how hard you tried to explain the emptiness, the lack of joy, they didn't hear you, did they? They thought you were exaggerating. Until it was too late."

Molly felt a wave swallow her up and pour out of her eyes as a chain of sobs vomited from her in shudders like the anchor of a ship dropped into a storm. She felt like someone had opened up the hatch to her soul and it was pouring forth.

"I was so alone..." Molly wept.

She looked up at Sea with big, horribly sad eyes as her trauma seeped out of her.

Sea pulled her scrawny sadness into him without hesitation onto his lap. He encircled her in his grip, kissed the top of her head once, and placed his chin over her as she shook violently in his arms.

Molly sobbed and whined in his embrace for a long time. Sea absorbed all the sorrow and trauma that leaked out of Molly until she was empty and it was all gone from her.

"Sorry..." Molly eventually said when the storm subsided, she looked up at him. She didn't want him to ever let go. This feeling... the two of them, it just felt right to her.

He looked in her eyes, she couldn't read them. He took her glasses off and wiped the ocean from her face and the snot from her nose with his robe. He kissed her forehead and pulled her back into his chest, blanketing his robe around her like dark wings.

He didn't say anything for a long time, he just held Molly and she sank into the vastness of his understanding. Her sharp nails gripped into the fibers of his robe as she held on to him.