"...Hm?"
He looks at her, barely registering the question. His head is only filled with thoughts of one thing right now.
"Stop worrying about the test, will you? What'll happen if you fail it anyways?"
"An undesirable future, how about that?"
"Ugh." She really needs to keep an eye on him.
Annoyed, Shaula makes a jerk-off gesture with her right hand and spits on the sidewalk at his uptightness. Ajax laughs, mulling over her original question, and looks down while continuing to walk.
"Rita, huh… well, I had a dream last night. It was really… it's a bit hard to tell nightmares apart, sure, but this one felt really disturbing." Ajax’s face darkens.
"Oh, you too?" Shaula looks at him with slight surprise, and he stares at her.
"What, you had a nightmare last night too?"
"Yeah, yeah I did. It was shitty. Like, I've had a lot of nightmares over the past few years but this one… For a brief moment, I might as well have been in hell. I think… I was walking down a dark street lined with flowers, and I heard a voice talking to me so I turned my head and saw someone walking beside me.”
Shaula looks at the swaying flowers on the lawn next to the sidewalk. She sees Petunias hanging and a couple Hydrangea bushes. But the dream flowers looked more like her own favorite, the Dahlia. But, they didn’t have the same color as Dahlias and she doesn’t remember what the color of the flowers in her dream were.
“I looked at the person’s face, and then… all I remember is, I started bawling in the dream and woke up crying."
"Flowers? Huh…"
“All you heard is flowers? Fucking hell…” Shaula scoffs.
Shaula’s eyes shake slightly while recalling the dream. She remembers more clear bits of her dream than Ajax does; she met someone, who she would one day know is the Divine Limit. Certain moments remain in her mind from the dream, and try as she would like, she cannot forget them.
Ajax whistles in surprise as he realizes something.
"I think I saw some flowers too. I remember waiting beside one that was really familiar, a-and watching it for a minute or two, while someone talked to me. I think? That’s trippy, what are the chances you and I have similar dreams?"
Shaula frowns.
"Forget about it, fuck that dream. So, what then? I'm guessing you told Rita, or…?"
"No, no, I wouldn’t tell her that I woke up in fear like that… I just had, like, a flashback of that dream. It hit me out of nowhere while I was in the kitchen with her, about to make her breakfast… So rude. She probably saw my face."
"Ah, well she hasn't seen a lot of adults scared, huh. Little kids can be creeped out by things like that. Violence, fear, pain and shit."
"I mean, she's seen some of the cutscenes from my videogames–"
"Fine, fine, so she picked something up about how you’re feeling, ‘kids having more understanding than we think’, that whole thing."
"Yeah, I guess."
They continue to walk in silence for a few seconds. Ajax places his hands behind his head as he continues to ponder his morning. He laughs at himself silently, putting on a bitter smile. His dream was just a dream, it wasn’t a vision of the future.
He probably ate something that gave him that nightmare, maybe too much food before bed last night. Shaula looks up towards the sky with slightly more on her mind about that dream. It’s not a vision to her. It’s not a premonition either. But there is something wrong.
Something that she shouldn’t have felt was felt during that dream. At most, she can see that her mind is trying to tell her something. Something she has forgotten about that she should keep in mind, maybe? She has experienced enough pain already, but this dream was on another level.
Ajax laughs a little as he looks over at Shaula while continuing to walk.
"You know, I've never felt the fear of death before. There's never been anything so powerful. That fear in the dream, I can't imagine the fear of death being worse than that. What an… experience."
That word choice made Shaula pause for a moment. Furthermore, she can see a slight smile on his face.
"Huh, I never thought you were the kind of guy who loves roller coasters."
"No, no no, I hate roller coasters. At least I think I would, I've never been on one. Does it actually feel like you're about to die when you’re on one?"
"I'm guessing at least the first time feels that way. You're not used to it, you're thinking that anything could theoretically happen, even if roller coasters are as safe as taking an elevator up and down a few times."
"Are they really that safe?"
"...Look it up on your phone, I’m not really sure."
Shaula laughs slightly. She looks back at him again, and asks cautiously.
"You look like you wanted to have that dream."
"What? Come on now, that's not what it is."
"What what is?"
"Ah… haha, wait–"
"So you don't feel all bad about your nightmare?" She sneers at him talking so cavalierly about his horror. Perhaps they didn’t have such a similar dream after all, since all she feels from her dream is terror.
"Ok, alright, it's just that… the nightmare had power."
"Power?"
"There are people who receive a dream and change their whole lives. That's how all the old prophets came up, you know?"
"..." Shaula doesn't like where this is going.
"It made me reexamine something."
"Yeah? What?"
That last word was spoken with irritation. Ajax picks up on that and speeds up.
"I mean, I was just thinking about my future. Am I really all in on this whole chemical engineering track? What if it's wrong? It’s just so much effort and I don’t know if I’m one of those kinds of people. I just started thinking to myself, what should I really be prioritizing? That's what I was… thinking…"
"Huh. That's… How did you get here from that dream you had?"
“Well, in that dream, I died. I died over and over again. I might as well have seen the face of death. It just puts into perspective my current life, my current future. Is it really that important to follow this plan? Maybe I’m rethinking everything because of how nervous I am about this test. It just doesn’t… I don’t know…”
Dreams cannot be underestimated.
