It wouldn’t be long until their arrival; there was still a bit of a journey ahead, but that was of little consequence to Angeline now. She adjusted her posture in her seat and hugged her knees, then stripped off her boots to air out her toes. There was still a long way ahead, and she wanted to rest her feet when she had the chance. Since this was a passenger stagecoach, it was filled with the chatter of all kinds of people—men and women, young and old, and all other sorts besides. Where are they all headed? she wondered.
Marguerite was in the window seat next to Angeline. A narrow aisle ran down the center of the carriage, dividing them from where Anessa and Miriam sat. Behind them, next to the aisle, Ishmael was chatting with Yakumo across the way about something or other.
“No, that’s not necessarily the case. You have too many dreams because you’re not sleeping deeply enough. Dreams themselves come most certainly with every form of sleep. The crux of the matter is whether you are lucid enough to recognize them or not.”
“Then what? Does that mean everyone dreams every night even if they can’t remember them?”
“Correct. It is said that dreams are a pastiche of images created by the process of organizing memories. However, if one sleeps too deeply, we simply remain unaware of that process. The dreams come to us in times of shallow slumber, and we can only recognize our dreams when our brain is still half-awake.”
“Hmm, interesting...”
“Hence why it’s rare to wake up completely refreshed right after a dream. That’s a sign that you haven’t slept properly.”
“Yes, I usually dream after I’ve woken up once and fallen asleep again... So the reason I have such strange dreams after drinking is because I’m not sleeping well.”
“I’d imagine so. In the end, we can’t actually consciously dream if we’re not partially awake. It is quite the conundrum.”
“That actually sounded halfway clever,” Yakumo said teasingly.
“Ha ha... But it does make me wonder, now and then—are we even awake at this very moment? Maybe all of this is happening within an illusory reality, and perhaps I am only one moment away from awakening. The reality we perceive isn’t nearly as stable as we may think it is. Perhaps it would take only the slightest push to cause it to fall apart.”
“I’ve heard something similar before,” Yakumo said, exhaling a puff of smoke. “It was a tale from my homeland, Keatai. In it, a man dreams of becoming a butterfly, fluttering freely through the world until he comes across a sleeping man—himself. When he awoke, he asked himself if he had become a butterfly in his dream, or if he was himself merely a man within a butterfly’s dream.”
Angeline leaned into the back of her seat and let their conversation go through one ear and out the other. Lately, she hadn’t experienced any nightmares. There were times when she would wake up with the faint awareness that she had been dreaming, but she was unable to recall it afterward. If nothing else, she hadn’t woken up with the anguish and pain that had accompanied the plague of nightmares not so long ago.
Am I just worn out? Angeline wondered. If she was merely exhausted, she would sleep soundly an entire dreamless night and wake up fine the next morning. But, when there was something she was thinking long and hard about, her thoughts would be scattered, and even when her body was asleep, it was like her mind was still racing. Perhaps that was what had led to those strange dreams.
Yet, if that is the process of organizing memories, then surely I could have only seen images that were already in my head. But those nightmares... Angeline didn’t pursue that thought any farther. Even that much gave her a throbbing headache.
Angeline couldn’t recall what the dreams were about, exactly, but she was reasonably sure that she had seen things that hadn’t actually happened to her before. Given that she couldn’t clearly recall them, though, it was possible she was just seeing things she had read in a book once, or her wildest imaginings got muddled up with real memories.
No... What if it’s like what Yakumo said about dreams being a world unto themselves? If, for some reason, images beyond her own memories were flowing into her head, perhaps those were events that really had transpired before in another time or place.
Huh... Angeline folded her arms. She still couldn’t remember anything clearly, but she felt like she had gleaned something just now. She felt subtly off, like having a small bone stuck in the back of her throat.
In any case, there’s no use mulling over it now. Angeline yawned loudly—the early afternoon sun was lulling her into a drowsy state.
The mountains in Turnera will be covered in red leaves by now... Angeline was still picturing those autumnal woodlands she had explored with her father so many times even as she drifted off into a heavy sleep.
○
The piercing blue sky over a forest painted in vivid yellows and reds was evidence that fall was in full swing. It graced these lands earlier than it did anywhere else in the duchy, but that was as expected for the residents of Turnera. The arrival of the season marked the beginning of the harvest of the wheat sown in the spring, as well as potatoes and beans. Fields that had lain fallow through the summer were now tilled again for the winter wheat crop to be planted; the villagers had even finished seeding some of the fields already. The pens where the sheep would spend the winter had been prepared. It was chilly at dawn and dusk now, and it was no longer prudent to go outdoors lightly dressed.
Peddlers were arriving early thanks to the improvements that had been made to the roads. Rumors of a new dungeon near Turnera were already carried on the breeze, and those with ears sharp enough to hear them were coming to stake an early claim on the emerging business opportunities this presented. Belgrieve was hard-pressed to deal with all these visitors, but Seren stepped in to manage such matters with little difficulty. Even against these crafty merchants, who had enough vision to venture to the middle of nowhere in pursuit of opportunity, Seren did not concede a single inch. She more than matched these slick-tongued salesmen—she far surpassed them, in fact—and those who came with dishonorable and ulterior motives were mercilessly brushed off in favor of earnest negotiations with more forthright merchants. Belgrieve’s naturally mild nature suited him poorly for such negotiations, but he could only admire Seren’s talents and welcomed her help. With her around, no one was going to take advantage of Turnera.