Chapter 2 #3
Nothing in the Dream looked like it did in real life.
The fabric of the Dream, the millions or billions of contributing dreaming minds over time, the mutable nature of reality in the Dream—these all contributed to a warping of even the simplest of items. If an oneiromancer extracted, say, a bluebird’s feather from the Dream, it would look very much like a feather from a real live bluebird, except that on closer inspection, the blues wouldn’t match any blue in the natural world.
And the spines might be mismatched, curling in odd directions, the barb filled with something that looked like ink.
In addition, no two feathers would ever look the same, each drifting away from waking reality in its own unique fashion.
Thus oneiromancers spent a great deal of time, energy, and magic on refining what they brought out of the Dream, making the objects fit into waking reality.
The “fitting” was subjective, naturally, and depended on the people viewing or using the object.
Obviously, if it was meant to be used for some purpose, whatever it was had to actually work.
As far as objects of art, some people preferred a bit of magical resonance to remain.
As with the jewelry and gowns Clotaire brought Rose, their unusual, clearly otherworldly origin lent to their cachet.
Most people, however—especially those with no magical ability of their own, which was the majority of the population—became uncomfortable around anything that made them think of the Dream.
Even without consciously realizing it, they found themselves subtly repulsed, averting their gaze or skirting around the object.
Thus the need for perfect refinement, to remove all sense of the Dream from an object intended for any but other sorcerers.
Not that Rose would be much occupied with such a relatively plebeian task, but Master Zoltan insisted she perfect those skills also.
Once she had mastered extracting and refining inanimate objects, Rose moved on to living creatures.
They posed far more complex challenges, largely because animals inside the Dream had no need to adhere to laws of anatomy, physiology, or even gravity.
Also, people dreamed in symbolism, so the creatures that populated the Dream tended to be surface representations of a real-world creature, amalgams of multiple creatures, or even entirely imaginary ones, resembling nothing in the waking world.
Rose learned early on that the bluebirds whose escape from her dreams had flagged her early manifestation as an oneiromancer would not have survived long, even if her night nanny hadn’t banished them.
The nanny had taken even the lone feather Rose had found on her pillow, all that remained of her dream made flesh.
The thought still made her inexplicably sad, as if she’d lost something more that day than retaining a single feather or the opportunity to see her dream birds.
Like she’d lost a piece of her own body.
During her early time at the academy she’d bent all her energy to learning how to ward her own dreams so she would not inadvertently summon anything from the Dream while sleeping.
That had been a grueling process, the oneiromancers tasked with teaching her young self ruthlessly waking her any time she’d begun to dream “out loud.” She’d had to practice wardmaking and wardbreaking, too, learning various ways to seal her sleeping chamber so nothing could get out or come in, and be able to do that literally in her sleep.
Somehow, she’d come to associate those dream bluebirds with the homesickness, sleep deprivation, and sheer overwhelm of those initial weeks.
Then it had taken Rose years—and numerous impatient lectures from Master Zoltan accusing her of not really wanting to be able to do it, which wasn’t wrong—to produce a viable creature from the Dream. A ladybug.
She’d progressed, of course. Between her father’s ambitions and the academy’s, Rose couldn’t fail.
It simply wasn’t allowed and, after enough time had passed, she didn’t allow herself to be less than excellent.
Yes, she hated her failures, the misshapen, sometimes monstrous creatures that flailed, gasped, then perished on the immaculate floor of the sunny oneiromancy studio.
With every one, she still felt that curious sense of kinship, as she’d felt with that first feather and with the dream roses in her jewelry.
Their painful demises hurt her heart. All the softness she couldn’t seem to summon when interacting with her peers overflowed for these stranded dream creatures.
Master Zoltan dispatched them back to the Dream, chiding her if her tears escaped. There was no room in sorcery for remorse or compassion. The softer emotions interfered with the clearheaded, incisive thinking necessary for perfect spellwork.
One day when she had mastered all of those foundational skills, Master Zoltan would teach Rose to physically walk the Dream.
Very few oneiromancers attained the mental discipline to view and search the Dream and maintain their sanity; even fewer could physically enter the Dream and travel to different parts of the world that way.
She need only master physically entering the Dream and she would become one of the greatest oneiromancers in all the world.
But, now that she’d entered her final year of school, time was growing short.
So Rose focused all of her considerable determination on becoming one of those rare few. If Oneira could do it, so could she. And the great Oneira, notably, had never married or had any liaisons anyone knew about. If she didn’t need love and romance and sex, well then, neither did Rose.
All truly great people are alone. Her father’s words echoed in her mind, but failed to provide any reassurance. Only ceaseless study made her forget her loneliness, so Rose buried herself in that.