I dream every night. Every night, and I remember it with perfect detail. I didn’t know that wasn’t common for most of my life. From the research I’ve done, it seems like it has something to do with how fast I can enter a REM cycle. For as long as I can remember, my mother encouraged me to write my dreams down in a journal. I keep one near me at all times, just in case, and I’ve never missed one.

 

These worlds from my dreams took a fixed shape in my mind, and on the page. Before long I could recognize landmarks forming within. Sweeping vistas of city streets set alongside a massive river. Impossibly steep sidewalks in terraced suburbs, styled after the hanging gardens of Babylon. Deep green forests with sleepy cul-de-sacs at the center. Buses and trams with unknowable schedules, next stop: nowhere in particular. 

 

My dreams were a sacred place of exploration and adventure. Writing them down seemed to solidify them, making them real and substantive. They meant everything to me, and to some degree, completed me. I was a world unto myself, and it unfolded and evolved on its own.

 

There was, however, one pervading anxiety in all of my dreams: I was late. For what, I had no idea. Late for class? Late to a friend gathering? Late for work was the assumption, by the time I was an adult. The stress I experienced in dreams was stretched to its limit these days. Since starting college two years ago, my dreams weaved between making me late for class and my next shift. Sometimes paradoxically, at the same time.

 

What drove me crazy about all of this, is that I was almost never late to anything. Not class, certainly not work, none of my buses, not even my dentist appointments. I had no idea what I had done to deserve the stress of being late every night. I kept to myself, got my work done, and somewhere deep down I think I still hated myself for what little I had accomplished. For all my dedication, I didn’t have any friends or opportunities to show for it.

 

It’s not like I’d never tried to be outgoing. I dated back in high school, but it all felt wrong. The girls I had crushes on all turned out to be gay, and the ones I dated may as well have been for all the affection they could muster. To say I was jaded may have been a bit much, but it was the closest I came to describing this hollow feeling each breakup left me with. 

 

Between classes and my part time gig as a barista, I didn’t have time for an extended social life; certainly not a love life, either. Something was digging at me, though. Despite being productive and on a steady course to graduate, it all felt like a waste. I saw my peers socializing, and seemingly being happy with who they were and where things were going. I questioned what really made my physical existence worth it every day.

 

To say I had no friends would be a sad exaggeration, but to say Drew was my friend was also presumptuous. We knew each other in grade school, got to be friends in middle school, then he went to a different high school. I barely recognized him when we were assigned to share a dorm together by surprise. Sure, the name was the same but I must have asked several times if it was really him. 

 

The Drew I knew was awkward, a little overweight, and had the worst bowl cut imaginable. Now he was witty and always laughing, seemingly much healthier, and his hair was getting shaggy. He still had the same dumb blue zip-up hoodie he’d worn since 6th grade, but after all the patchwork he’d done it looked kind of nice. What had been an oversized jacket for a boy his size had grown on him to be less baggy, and more form fitting. 

 

Those days of playing games in his basement before school were a distant memory now. We’d grown apart. Or rather, it seemed he’d grown up and I’d been left behind, only I had no idea where ‘behind’ was. My attempts to reconnect had been surface level, at best. Small talk, making dinner together, and a single sad evening with an hour of some indie couch co-op game before bed. Aside from delivering him coffee after work, I spent almost no time with him.

 

I suppose I also had my manager, Astra. She was kind of weird, if I’m being honest. Into things like Wicca, healing energies and tarot card readings. I tried to veer away from those topics with her, but I usually didn’t have to since we both shared a love for literature and vintage adventure games. If we weren’t busy with customers, we were discussing the complexities of starting a Myst fan fiction.

 

Since we had the closing shift and this sleepy little shop closed at 2:00 AM on Fridays and weekends for some god forsaken reason, I often found myself sleeping on my lunch break. I kept a throw pillow I made in tenth grade Home Ec in my locker, ready to break out in case of an emergency nap. One night, after a particularly stressful finals, I woke up to Astra shaking me. 

 

    “Hey. Hey you, you’re finall-” She started, with a hand on my shoulder and a dumb grin on her face.
   
    “Don’t finish that sentence, please.” I pleaded, groaning from the realization that my head had slipped off the pillow in my sleep, and into imminent neck pain.

    “Your break isn’t over, but I came in because you started shouting. Bad dream?” She said, with some concern. She’s always been nice to me, but something about the look in her eyes said she was more concerned than she was letting on.

 

    “My dream? I- I don’t…” and then, it hit me. 

 

I didn’t remember my dream. The shock of it all had drained the color from my face, and Astra could tell. She put her hand back on my shoulder, and rubbed it softly. Most people that knew me were aware of my sleep journal; the care I put into documenting it, and my reputation of never forgetting a dream. It seemed stupid, but it was integral to who I thought I was. I had nothing but this, and one random evening in the break room had violated that.

I grabbed my journal from my backpack and opened a blank page, then proceeded to stare blankly. What was it? What could have made me scared enough to shout? Maybe I dreamt I was late for finals, or god forbid,  failed them. I was certainly stressed about that earlier, but it felt so far behind me already.  I was ready to get my shift over with and celebrate when I got home with the usual tub of Ben and Jerry’s. Now, I was exhausted. Admitting defeat to the lined notebook paper, I looked to Astra for guidance.

 

    “Did I say anything in particular?” I asked.
With a nod she replied,
    “Yeah, you said ‘I’m lost’ a few times, then started crying out for help. It was so sad and desperate sounding, I thought you were having a panic attack.”

 

Writing the words ‘Astra told me… panic attack’ before my dream description felt like sacrilege, but this was the closest I could get to keeping my journal in order. I’d never missed a dream and I’d keep it that way, even if it meant a second hand account. 

 

    “Is there more?” I asked, after jotting it all down. She shook her head from side to side, then squeezed my shoulder again.

    “I know how much these dreams mean to you. You’re a much more spiritual person than you seem to think, Noah.”

I kept listening intently, waiting for her to say more, but then I realized she had already addressed me. Noah. I have this issue with my name. It’s not that I dislike it, it’s just that someone can say my name to my face and I have to remind myself that they’re talking about me.

    “Thank you. Astra, I really appreciate the… uh, you coming in to check on me.” I said, not really sure where I was going with that sentence the first time around. 

 

    “Dreams can be perilous places for the rest of us, you know,” she said, getting up from the table to grab my timecard. “Have you considered the possibility that you can’t remember your dream because it may have been traumatic?”

No, no. Nightmares weren’t something I dealt with. Stress sure, but I could always count on my dreams being a place of safety. That suggestion seemed far more wild to me than the simpler explanation: it was finally my time, and my perfect dream retention was just some freak statistical anomaly that ran its course. I wouldn’t tell her that, though. 

 

    “I suppose it’s possible, but I’m not sure,” I said, doing my best not to dismiss what clearly came from a place of sympathy.

 

She took out her little sharpie for labeling cups with names and wrote in my timecard, saying “As far as my boss is concerned, you did your full shift tonight. I’ll cover the rest. Besides, it’s dead tonight.”

 

    “Thank you so much, Astra.” I said, closer to the verge of tears than I was expecting to be. She noticed. What she did next caught me by surprise.

“Give me your left hand.” She said, holding out her own to receive. With some hesitation, I complied. I stifled a tear by pretending to rub my face with my sleeve.

She took my hand, uncapped her labeling sharpie again, and drew a strange symbol on the back of my palm. It looked like a road, or perhaps a tree. Two of the branches ended in triangles, each containing some smaller symbol. Some of the lines branched into strange looking fork-like ends with a seemingly random number of protrusions. Finally, the bottom went deep down from the rest as a three pronged fork, rooted deep below the rest. 

 

It was weird and busy looking, but somehow the design was burned into my retinas. I’d never seen anything like it, and she’d shown me a lot of this stuff on her phone. Part of me wanted to recoil, but out of respect for her I kept still. I didn’t believe in magic, but this was her own way of caring, and I wouldn’t let my skepticism devalue that. 

 

    “This… is the sanctuary sigil,” She said, speaking softly now. “With this around, you will always find a safe and healing place just off the beaten path.”

 

I blinked and stared at the lines she scribbled. In the low light of the breakroom, there was something mesmerizing about how it absorbed the parking lights coming from out the window, like the black ink had pulled those spots on my hand out of existence.
   
    “Um-… Thank you, Astra. That’s a sweet gesture. I hope it works.” I said.

 

We headed out of the break room, and into the moody lighting of our sleepy little coffee shop. Yep, dead tonight I remarked as I made my way around the counter. I didn’t have to say a word, and Astra was already making the usual for my end of shift: One double mocha frappuccino with oat milk, and a triple shot espresso with lavender hazelnut and extra whipped cream for Drew. I wasn’t exactly buying his attention, but if I stopped bringing coffee out of the blue, it would have been weird. 

 

Before she handed it over, she started drawing that strange symbol on Drew’s cup. I sighed wistfully, and she said, “This one is to help them navigate finals. You told me they’d been cooped up studying the last two weeks, so I think they could use the guidance, too.”

 

I accepted it graciously and waved her goodbye. My dorm was only a short fifteen minute walk from work, and it was more than enough time for me to finish my creamy little beverage. As for Drew’s coffee, all I could do was stare at the symbol on the side. The one on my left hand and the one on the cup were exactly the same, and I still couldn’t make heads or tales of it. Something about it seemed familiar, like I’d seen it on a poster or an album cover before. 

 

When I got home, Drew was sitting at his desk in a slump over three different text books. Noticing he still had his headphones on, I wordlessly passed the cup of barely hot coffee to him. He looked up and nodded, then I made my way to the bathroom to shower and dress down for bed. The shot of caffeine was just enough to keep me awake through a hot shower and shave.

 

 When I stepped out in my pajamas,  I noticed Drew was still busy at his main room desk. He didn’t like to study in his room, said it made him less focused, so he got a desk just for studying out here. I watched him take his headphones off and address me, without turning.

    “I hope you know I really appreciate the coffee. Every time you do it, but especially tonight.” Those words lingered a moment, and all I could bear to do was wait for the rest with bated breath.
    “But Noah… you know you don’t have to, right?” He said, with some unease towards the end.

    There it was again, my name. I almost stammered. Doing my best to avoid that hurtle, I put on a wide grin and shot back,“If it makes you happy, why wouldn’t I?”

Drew didn’t seem to know how to answer that. For a moment, his music was hanging in the air, having never bothered to pause it. Something classical. Before I could guess, he reached for the headphones and slid them back on, taking a sip from his coffee while he adjusted the headband. 

 

When I got to my room and climbed into bed, I half expected to hear his music through the walls faintly, like I usually do. I’d guessed after a short while that he must have turned it down to let me get some rest. As usual, I had no trouble getting to sleep, but the entire time leading up to it I worried that I would. Between the scare of not remembering my nightmare and the nagging feeling that I needed to know what Drew was listening to, it should have been enough to keep me awake tonight. It didn’t. Thank god, it didn’t.

 

That night, I had the dream. The streets, the rain, the darkness. Then the hotel, the keeper, the dance, our dresses- the kiss. That kiss. No kiss in my waking days felt more real or passionate than that. At least, up until then. I still had some searching to do before I would find that kiss again. Someday soon, waiting for me after I awoke.