The dream came faster than usual, there was a boy sitting alone in a room. He looked unfamiliar to me, but then again, it’s not like I could remember anyone from my past anymore. He had what would best be described as a kind face with brown medium length hair. I couldn’t see his eyes as they were closed, so I moved on from his face. Glancing at his outfit, I found he was wearing a dark blue blazer with a white shirt underneath. He wore pants that matched the blazer and had on gloves matching his shirt. If I had to venture a guess, I would say it was a uniform of some kind. I racked my brain trying to remember if I had seen that uniform before, but eventually decided that even if I had seen the uniform before, I would never be able to remember where.

I tried to take in his surroundings, but I couldn’t see anything clearly aside from him, so I focused in on what he was doing. From my perspective he was sitting in front of me with his hands raised so that his palms were facing me. He was chanting a spell of some kind, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. While I was focusing on him the strangest thing happened. A grain of sand fell into my eye, frustrated that my dream was interrupted I brought my hand up and rubbed the sand out of my eye. And then the realization hit me, my eyes were wide open. I quickly shot my gaze back in front of me, and sure enough, the boy was still there sitting cross legged, continuing to chant his spell.

‘Great’ I thought to myself, ‘now I’ve really gone and lost my mind. I’m sitting here hallucinating people.’ All the same though, I stood up and made my way closer to the kid. As I approached, I noticed a weird looking shimmer in between the boy and I, almost as though I was looking at him through a mirror or a portal. Upon closer observation of the portal, I realized that it was two dimensional, walking to the left or right of the shimmer it became a flat line, and walking behind it revealed nothing but darkness where the portal should be. Walking back to the ‘front’ of the portal I once again observed the image that was projected of the boy sitting in front of me.

Deciding that this portal was nothing more than a trick of my power I channeled my mana towards my core, looking for any gaps in my suppression that could be letting my power leak out. However, finding no leak within myself I glanced back at the portal just as a stream of sand fell from the collapsing space above me into the projection. The sand appeared to shoot out of the projection hitting the boy square in his face. Stifling a chuckle, I watched as his eyes sprung open in bewilderment at the sand that had suddenly found its way into his mouth. ‘Hm, so he’s got blue eyes’ I thought to myself. After bending over and spitting up some sand, the boy stood up unsteadily, and cautiously approached the shimmering portal. Standing on the opposite side of the portal directly in front of me, I couldn’t help but wonder what the boy saw as he looked through his side.  

“u-Um, hello?” the boy asked while his eyes darted around the portal, as if he was looking into a dark room, which, I supposed he likely was. “i-i-Is there anything there?” he asked hopefully into the void. I could tell from the tone of his voice that he seemed anxious. We both stood in silence on opposite sides of the portal, me in curious wonderment, trying to figure out exactly what kind of trick of the mind was before me, and the boy, anxiously awaiting an answer he seemed uncertain would ever come. Finally, after a few moments of silence the boys face dropped into a gloomy expression as he turned his back on the portal. “Another failure” he mumbled to himself as he moved back towards his bed where he had been sitting.

As he sat back on his bed, he pulled out a book from under his pillow with strange lettering on the cover. Flipping through the pages he stopped when he found whatever it was, he was looking for. Raising his left hand so that his palm was facing the portal, he cleared his throat and prepared to say something. However, his eyes wandered from the pages of the book and ended up resting for a moment on the pile of sand he had spat up earlier. A spark of determination appeared in his eyes as he looked up from the sand and into the portal. “Please,” he said while standing back up from his bed and taking a step towards the portal, “if there is anything in there, I don’t have enough mana to summon another portal tonight so please…” his voice trailed off for a moment as he slumped down onto his knees. “I don’t want to spend another day alone here” he was practically yelling as he finished his statement directed at the portal between us.

I felt something break as I looked at this boy, yelling at a portal with tears starting to form in his eyes. And as my mind was processing what he had just called out, the portal shifted in my vision, and for a brief moment, it wasn’t the boy crying out into the void, it was me, screaming out in frustration, begging for anything, anyone, to appear and reveal themselves to me. Suddenly I found myself standing with my hand pressed up against the portal, looking down on the boy who was now staring at the ground with tears falling from his eyes. ‘Who cares if this is a trick, or a hallucination’ I thought, ‘it can’t be worse than reality’. With that thought at the forefront of my mind I took a step forward and pushed my hand, and myself, through the portal to the other side.