“Having a bad day?” Stirleo asked cheerfully as he surfaced from the ground not far from Demoa, as if breaking through the surface of water.

  Once the abbot had fully emerged, only faint distortions around his feet bore witness to his now familiar, though still unusual, way of visiting her.

  “Yes. A fight. I… it was simply too much for me…,” Demoa stammered.

  “That’s not a bad thing. Believe me, conflict between those who are connected to one another is something fertile, especially when they are lucid. It is another opportunity to find oneself… I felt you battle each other. I think it was necessary. You both did not want to hurt each other, I only sensed frustration, not malice,” Stirleo said with a smile, stepping over to one of the plain hoppers that had gathered around Demoa and patting it.

  “I… you think so? It only… feels awful.”

  “That’s good! It means the person you’re arguing with matters to you,” the abbot said with a chuckle while his eyes stayed observant.

  Demoa bit her lip and bent down toward one of the plain hoppers rubbing against her leg.

  “Probably.”

  “Ray, right? How long has it been since you last spoke with her?” Stirleo asked bluntly.

  “Two days. It’s strange that she doesn’t come by in the evenings. We’ve argued a lot over the past Tens, and still… I’d like to talk to her. At the same time, I want to stay away from her. Maybe I should talk to Rad first. Well… I should clear things up with him… It is one of the reasons for our fight,” she mused, mostly to herself.

  “A good idea. Maybe then your calming dances won’t be so steeped in melancholy,” Stirleo said, sitting down on a chair he let grow out of the grass.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? My Lucidity. The only reason you seek me out at all…,”

  “Nah!” He made a dismissive gesture. “It’s more your calm itself, and the fact that you seem to be the only one here who isn’t convinced that the most important thing of all is preparing for fights, or even a war.”

  “Well… aren’t you in favor of fighting the darkness too? After all, you killed all those Nightmares,” Demoa asked, studying him intently.

  Stirleo merely shrugged.

  “Sure, I did. They attacked us, so I destroyed them. This is my place. Still, I don’t feel a strong urge to limit my thoughts so much that I forget everything else. I like to reflect on what I’ve experienced here, on what I’ve learned from all the Sages, Scholars, Pilgrims, and Disciples, on the ideas that took root in my mind… And lately, I can do that best when you use your own Lucidity. Your calm… your ideas that resonate in your dances, your convictions… they are refreshing. Unique. They’re not made of Light, not much at least, and yet they are powerful. You’re fascinating. I actually hope you’re bearing a clue to my great question…,” he said cheerfully and without reservation.

  A shiver ran through Demoa as she looked into his eyes, which radiated an unsettling mix of openness and detachment at the same time. After all their meetings, she still had not grown used to the abbot’s manner, and he seemed distant and otherworldly to her. And yet his friendly smile soothed her again and again, and she never had the sense that he was hiding anything. In his own way, he was like a force of nature that passed by her small place of rest near the lake from time to time in the evenings.

  “What is it like… to be intertwined with this place? How does it feel?” she whispered after taking a deep breath.

  Demoa had never dared to ask Stirleo this question. It felt too personal to her, but now that he had addressed her in such direct terms, it seemed like a good opportunity. She glanced nervously toward the plain hoppers and waited.

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  Stirleo was silent for a while and turned toward the massive buildings lining the hills. “Ah, that’s difficult. I feel everything here, somehow, at the edge of my mind. Every blade of grass, every stone. Every idea embedded in the temples of this monastery. All the people who live and cultivate here, who train and move toward their own goals. When I focus on some of these impressions, things become clearer within me, and I know who is where at that moment. I don’t see images or other sensory impressions, yet I feel people everywhere. And the Dream itself as well. For example, these little fellows here, I sense them. Everything is so close to me in this place…"

  “And when the Nightmares came? How… was that?”

  For the first time, Stirleo’s expression darkened.

  “I was meditating and didn’t notice it. I was probably too deep in my Light, and the darkness didn’t make it into my journey inward. I only know that at some point I felt a faint sting, a dark premonition that finally pulled me back up from my inner depths. I sensed them immediately once I resurfaced. Disgusting stains in my thoughts, driven by base emotions, wandering through my monastery. I destroyed them at once, all of them. I also erected a protective dome around this place, a boundary the darkness cannot cross, at least not without me noticing. So you are safe here, just like everyone else, if that was worrying you. You can fully devote yourself to what matters to you. Ah, speaking of which, you’re about to have a visitor. We’ll see each other, Demoa,” he said, then suddenly let himself fall forward and vanished with a hiss into the grass.

  Confused, Demoa stared at the spot until she heard the rustling of bushes. Soon, Rad burst out of the undergrowth near the nearby trees. He carried two clay amphorae, letting them swing casually at his sides.

  “Hey, how are you today? A little better, I hope?” he asked, giving her a concerned look.

  “I’m all right. What did you bring?” Demoa asked, studying the amphorae.

  “That, my dear, is Queder wine. They just finished firing it. A lot has changed in the village, and we now have some lovely houses where people pursue their particular ideas. A bakery, a weaving room, a garden… Sars helped cork this one,” Rad said with a grin.

  Demoa pulled him into an embrace.

  “How about… we find a cozy spot and enjoy this. And… us?” Rad asked.

  He seemed exceedingly cautious, almost like a shy plain hopper.

  “Maybe we should. Rad, I simply don’t know… I would so like to… feel… more of you…,” Demoa stammered, looking down.

  She felt his hand brush her cheek, his fingers trembling.

  “Yes, me too. It’s been so long since we met, since I saved you after you saved your friends. Since we arrived here, and I’ve been sneaking around, always afraid the Nightmares might attack again…,” he admitted.

  She looked up and met his gaze, admiring his expressive eyes as they searched hers.

  “We should leave, Rad. Just leave and settle somewhere, please…,” she finally said. “I know you want to fight, want to make sure with Sars and Olver and the others that nothing else happens to this realm, that the darkness that washed over to us can’t break through again. Still… what if it’s not our battle? I… you know I don’t want to fight. Have you found the Nightmare you suspected near your village? You haven’t said much about your hunts lately…”

  “It turned out to be a false alarm. Again. Only a feral wolfer that had ventured too far out of the forest… I am also... getting tired of it. You know… I… maybe you’re right, and it isn’t our fight.”

  His words made her flinch.

  “Rad… do you really mean that?”

  She grew cold, and fear crept over her, the fear that she had misunderstood him.

  Yet he only kept looking at her steadily, nodded, and smiled.

  “Yes. It is strange, it drove me for so long, but we never found a Nightmare. Perhaps they were a one time occurence? I... yes, Demoa, I am done. No more Nightmares. Only the two of us. Let’s focus entirely on deepening our bond… or building one. You really still don’t feel anything?” he asked then, a faint pain in his voice.

  “No,” Demoa said, looking down again.

  They were silent for a while, and Rad shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.

  “Demoa, my love… what if… we tried something more intimate, if you want? I didn’t want to bring it up because it seemed very brash to me, yet maybe that way I could… encourage the connection on your side?”

  She flinched again and felt heat rush to her face, goosebumps rising on her arms.

  Demoa had always imagined that the two of them would give themselves to one another only once they both felt the link, when they would be drawn together by an invisible tie and finally end up entwined at the same place. Like with Ray, with Ormir, even the abbot...

  And yet… maybe she needed intimacy to truly open herself to him. Maybe she had seen it wrong and should never have closed herself off to that possibility. What if that had been her mistake?

  “I… that would be nice. I… yes, that would be very nice. Just the two of us, as close together as possible…,” she whispered, stroking his angular chin.

  He was still trembling, though now he smiled broadly. She let her hand glide over his arms, feeling his muscles beneath the fabric of his shirt.