It’s hard to focus in school. I didn't sleep well. I kept dreaming about people I do not know and faces I cannot recognise. I heard that every face we see in our dreams, we saw in real life at some point, and that our brain isn’t able to produce a new face from scratch. I should look it up, probably.

One of them was a girl with washed out pink hair. I’m not sure how the part of the dream with her started, but soon enough all I could hear was her scream. I knew she was badly hurt, but I couldn’t help her. It’s this weird thing in dreams, where you don’t know why or how you know something, and yet you’re confident in it as if you have lived your entire life and gained the knowledge by experience alone.

By that I just mean I knew I couldn’t help her. Whatever was happening to her, I had no control over. At some point her scream turned into fire, or maybe water, drowning me in it. I can’t remember what exactly happened next but I know there was more people I couldn’t really place in my memories. A boy… with blue, blue eyes. They were brilliant blue, but looked a lot like frozen water. Dead, barren on the outside, but with life brimming underneath. As if outside world was so cruel it froze over the outer shell, but the boys core was too hot to be cooled down, killed.

Where the girl screamed, literally, pain and aggression, this boy radiated melancholy. A dull silence that goes with looking at a barren winter wasteland. I don’t remember getting close to him. I don’t remember touching him. And yet I knew, maybe because of the heat behind his eyes, that he would burn to touch.

There were so many more faces - some of them were only glimpses, lost to history. Some, I could feel, were waiting for me. A tall, blonde boy with sharp smile, laughter in his eyes, and a secret. Even taller blond boy, who carried so much sadness and pain in him it felt like he’s drowning, and taking everything around with him. A girl, smiling, making me swear I will never tell.

The most time, however, I’ve spend with a… teen? with white, buzzed hair and empty eyes. She… He? They. They just stared at me in the darkness. Their eyes were milky white, clouded with cataracts. And yet I knew they, in some way, can track my every movement. Maybe even every thought. We were suspended in darkness, nothing around us. I think I tried to run, but wherever I looked, they were there, waiting for me. In the end, I just sat down, and stared. Their clothes seemed to be shifting from moment to moment, sometimes dark, sometimes light, never too noticeable. Like they were trying to blend into the environment, disappear

And yet, they were there, in front of me, impossible to overlook.

We looked at each other - well, I was looking at them - for what felt like an eternity. Just before I woke up, I heard them whisper, even though I couldn’t see their mouth moving. The words escape me, I cannot remember what they told me. All I recall is a sudden feeling of cold - whatever they told me shook me enough to startle me awake.

I was not able to fall back asleep after that.

In school, I stay late, for student council meeting. When I get home, Oliver’s cage has already been cleaned and he has been fed.