27. Zyran
ZYRAN
It’s different this time. There’s no glass between me and it, no window, no distance, not even a barrier to press my hands against. Just me, standing in the middle of it, every detail sharp and close and just as exactly as it was.
But the property looks wrong in the way things look wrong in dreams—familiar but just slightly off, like someone rebuilt it from memory and got most of it right but not all of it.
The tree line is too dark, the light above the door throws the wrong color, and the gravel under my feet sounds different as I take a step.
Raiden’s here; that part’s always right.
He’s across the yard, close enough that I could reach him in ten seconds if I ran, and I know what’s coming. I always know what's going to happen, which is the particular torture of this dream; I have all of the information I need but no ability to use it.
But I’m weak and I try anyway.
My mouth opens to say something, to warn him, to just say his name, but nothing comes out.
It’s like my voice is gone, like something reached down my throat and took it.
I’m left standing there, watching Raiden cross the yard toward the truck with that walk, that specific, unhurried confidence, and completely unaware, and I can’t make a sound to stop him.
So I run instead, and thankfully my legs worked this time.
But it’s different, and that’s almost worse, because I'm moving, I’m closing the distance, and I can see his face. Hope grows in my stomach; I think maybe this time, this time I can–
The shot cracks through the air.
It’s not at Raiden, though; this time it’s at me.
I can feel it, that hot wrongness of a bullet finding the place in your neck it was always going to find, the way the world tips sideways, and the gravel coming up fast. I hit the ground, and the impact knocks whatever air I had left out of me, leaving me there on my back, staring up at the sky.
I hear Raiden calling my name from somewhere I can’t see anymore; my vision begins to blur like it did before.
His voice is growing farther away, and I can’t get up. I try; every part of me is trying, but my hands are in the gravel, my arms shaking with the effort, but the ground has me, and I can’t move. I can’t hear him anymore.
Suddenly something touches my face, warm and real—a hand against my jaw, steady and certain, with a voice that doesn’t belong in this dream at all.
“Hey… Zyran, come on, my love; you’re here, you’re with me.”
I come up gasping, clawing at my throat, my finger automatically finding my scar, pressing against the raised skin like I need to confirm it’s closed. It’s my brain convinced I’m bleeding out on the gravel and the ceiling is wrong, the lamp is wrong… everything is fucking wrong?—
“Hey,” her voice cuts through. “Hey, look at me.”
I can’t find her face; my vision is doing that thing where it narrows at the edges The room is shrinking, and it’s dark around a center point that won’t hold still.
“Zyran.” Her soft hands find my face, both of them cupping my jaw and tilting my head until I have no choice but to find her eyes. “Look at me, right here…you’re with me.”
My chest is doing something I have no control over, pulling air in too fast and not doing anything useful with it, my hands still at my throat, and my heart slamming against my ribs like it’s trying to get out.
“I know,” she whispers. “I know, but hey, you’re here with me. Don’t think about it; focus on trying to breathe. In through your nose, come on now.”
I try but fail miserably.
“You got this; come on… good, keep going, again.”
The room is still wrong, but slowly it becomes less so. Her hands are still warm against my jaw, and she’s right there, close enough that all I see is her face, only her. And I hold onto it, her eyes steady on mine while everything else shakes itself out.
“Again,” she murmurs softly. “You’ve got this, my love, come on.”
It takes longer than I want it to, the air coming in ragged at first, and then slowly becomes closer to normal. My hands eventually drop from my throat, and the ceiling settles back into just a ceiling above me.
And not once does she let go of me, never moving once.
“There you go,” she says, when my breathing finally evens.
I close my eyes for a second, and when I reopen them, she’s still there, kneeling beside the couch, her hands still on my face like she’ll hold on as long as I need her to.
“I used to get them,” she mutters after a moment. “Bad ones, the kind where your body forgets it’s safe.”
I frown, blinking at her.
“My dad would sit on the floor next to me… he never made it a big thing, never talked too much. He’d just put his hand on my back and count out loud, slowly, until I could count with him.
” Her thumb moves slightly against my jaw.
“Only then would he talk, usually telling me something random, like the name of the first dog he ever had, or what the weather was like the day he met my mom.” Something moves through her expression; it’s warm and distant at the same time, almost like she’s back there talking to her father.
“It was always stupid things, things that had nothing to do with anything, but it worked. Every single time, probably because it was impossible to stay inside the panic when someone was telling you about a dog named Gerald.”
The corners of my mouth move despite everything that just happened.
“Gerald,” I repeat, my voice sounding only slightly off.
“Yup, brown mutt, three legs,” she laughs, “my dad loved that dog more than was probably reasonable.”
I look at her in the nearly pitch black, kneeling on the floor of her own living room at who knows what time, her hands still cupping my face while she tells me about a three-legged dog named Gerald because she knows how to bring someone back and she’s learned it from a man who isn’t here anymore.
The weight of it sits heavy on my chest.
“He sounds like a good man,” I whisper.
“Yeah…” she trails off, giving me a sad smile. “He was one of the best men I ever knew.”
Was.
I hate it. I hate that I can’t bring them back.
Esperr stands after a moment, her hands falling from my face. I expect her to tell me to try and get some sleep, something along those lines, but what I don't expect is her reaching her hand out to me.
“Come on, let’s go to bed.”
I take her hand and stand, letting her pull me through the living room, down the hall to her bedroom. It's not until we’re standing in the middle that she drops my hand and climbs under the blanket on her side—her side, as if we’ve established sides.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, I press my hands flat against my thighs, trying to stop them from shaking.
“You don’t have to explain it,” she mutters behind me. “Tonight or ever, if anyone understands… I’d say I do.”
I look back at her over my shoulder, finding her lying on her side, hair spread across the pillow, watching me with those eyes that always seem to be doing more than they let on. And then she pats the bed.
I give her a sad smile and turn back around, elbow resting on my knees as the dream still sits on my chest. It’s fading but leaving residue: Raiden’s voice, the gravel, and the helplessness of a man who couldn’t get up when it mattered most.
“Zyran,” Esperr whispers.
Blowing out a breath, I stand up and move to the other side of her bed, lying down next to her. She doesn’t move toward me, but she also doesn’t move away either, just lies there in the dark beside me.
I don’t know how long we lie there in the silence before her hand finds mine between us. Her fingers slide over mine the same way she did the first night, but unlike before, I turn my palm up and let her lace our fingers together.
“I was six the first time I understood what my parents really were.”
Six years old.
I frown, confused for a moment.
“Maybe not understood…” she pauses. “But it was when I accepted it. Because I guess you don’t have the language for wrong yet, not really. You just have what’s normal, and what’s normal is whatever your parents show you.”
Her thumb moves across the back of my hand.
“I remember my mom’s gloves, the way the latex snapped against her wrist when she pulled them on.
” A small chuckle slips out, like she’s remembering the exact moment.
“I thought it was funny at the time, the snap. I used to try to do it myself.” A quiet exhale, her thumb pausing for just a second.
“I didn’t know yet what the gloves were for…
I knew what they were by the end of the night. ”
I think back to what I was doing at six: Raiden, who was ten, taught me how to throw a punch in the backyard.
Cyran and I fought against each other while Slater watched from the treeline; Rhys was always inside helping our mother, who was always baking something.
It was a normal, ordinary, unremarkable thing that I never once had to think about.
She was six years old.
“Some nights I wake up and I’m still there. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop being there.”
My hand tightens around her, because right now I don’t have the words to say.
I stare at the ceiling, trying to understand something that’s not making any sense. The gloves, the snap of latex against her mother’s wrist—something she learned by the end of the night. It’s something that’s keeping her awake. But I’m coming up empty.
And I don’t ask. It’s not because I don’t want to know, but because she’s handed me so much, and that’s already more than she gives anyone. Pushing her right now would be the wrong thing.
Whatever she’s carrying, whatever that night was, she’ll tell me when she’s ready or she won’t—either way, I’m not going anywhere.
So I lie there, holding her hand while her breathing slowly evens out, and I turn her words over in my head.
Gloves–I knew what they were by the end of the night.
What does a six-year-old learn in a single night that follows her into adulthood like that? And what does a mother teach a child that leaves that kind of mark?
I feel stupid that I can’t figure it out.