Dreamers [#Wattys2020]

6.

Noah.

My body jolts as I sit up. I'm afraid to open my eyes, but I can feel a light breeze past by me as I hear the faint singing of birds above me. I know I can't stay like this forever, so I finally decide to see what's around me. In the wind, I watch as the long lines of leaves dance on their branches creating a pattern of light across my face. I'm settled under one of the biggest willow trees I have ever seen, it's trunk saturated like dark chocolate while everything else is a bright healthy green.

I find my feet bare as I feel the grass under my toes, but I look back out ahead of me when I hear the plucking of strings. There's a boy in a white T-shirt sitting on an old wooden dock that stretches out into a lake. He's slightly hunched over and seems to be holding something in his hands.

I try to stand up as quietly as possible as to not disturb him, yet the sound starts again, so I take a step closer. From behind, I see his right arm start to move in a synchronized pace to the music. When he begins to sing, I know exactly who he is, but I still don't understand what my self-conscious seems to want to tell me. Why show me Rover three nights in a row? Am I that obsessed? It's as if I've returned to being a fifteen-year-old girl who can't stop but mention her celebrity crush every two seconds. Maybe I just never grew up.

"I wish the willows knew your name," he sings.

I feel pulled to his voice, so I move forward, yet I end up stepping on a stick that cracks beneath my weight.

Rover sits up instantly and stops playing the tune as he tries to look behind himself. His curly, normal, dark hair reflects the sun like a diamond and I find myself at a loss for words.

"Hello?" he calls out to me.

My breathing gets heavier and I still can't think of what to say.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

I stall my walking in its tracks, wary about getting any closer to him. He finally looks like the real him, the him from 2017 with his washed-out jeans and the dog tags hanging around his neck.

"Rover?" I ask to make sure I'm not mistaken.

"Yes," he replies. "Sorry, do I know..." his voice trails off, but the expression on his face is quick to change to one of confusion. "I know you."

"You do?" I question back surprised.

His mandolin comes into my view as he puts it down on the gray planks of wood keeping him from touching the water. He brings his legs back up from the ledge and stands up to face me. He stares at me intently and for a moment I think he might just rush me, pushing me down to the ground and cry out bloody murder as he stands over me, but he doesn't. He approaches me, yet stops a few feet short.

"You were..." he tries to explain. "You were in my dream."

His words don't make sense to me. "Your dream?"

"Last night," he tells me, "you were in my dream, inside that thing."

"Thing?" I question him as much as I question myself. "You mean, the submarine?"

"Yes!" he says as his eyes go wide. "I've never experienced anything like it, it felt like a movie."

I take a moment to think back on everything, yet I still can't fit all the pieces together. "But that was my dream. I don't understand what's going on. Why would I dream that you've been dreaming of me? For so long I thought I had let go of this fantasy."

"Fantasy?" he asks.

"You're the reason I was able to get through it."

"It?" he goes on.