June reached up, her hand cutting through the thick mist to grab an old tome of a book off the shelf. Hoisting it into her arms, she opened it, peering inside. Blank, yellowed pages stared back at her. Then, slowly, words formed, as if being written by an invisible quill and hand. An illustration formed on the page along with the words—of a familiar woman, though no one that June could recall ever seeing in real life.

The woman was tall, smiling, with long dark hair pulled back into an intricately braided bun, her dark green eyes sparkling with mischief, and dressed in clothing right out of a Jane Austen novel. June tilted her head, squinting at the caption on the page describing the image. As she tried to read it, forcing her eyes to focus on the blurry words, the more out of focus they became. Eventually, she sighed, giving up and placing the book back on the shelf. Whoever this woman was that frequented the books in this library, she was clearly meant to remain a mystery to June.

June sighed, looking around, before glancing up at the starry ceiling. The stars moved, constellations that had no grounding in reality, not within this dream, nor when she ever was awake and looked up real constellations. She sighed again and made a face. She wanted to wake up soon.

She turned around, heading down one of the aisles of endless bookcases, her fingers trailing across the spines of the books as she went. Which volume should she try to look at next?

At times, these books held memories, thoughts, things she had to remember upon waking, or other things of both importance and of no importance at all. The woman in the book she had just looked at was just one figment of this library—but seemingly an important one, for she appeared often on the pages of the books.

June knew neither her name nor where she came from. Perhaps she was a character from a story that June had read as a child, or an extra in a historical movie she had watched once. Or, perhaps, she was just a manifestation of her own dreams and wishes.

She turned a corner, still looking for a book to try to read next, when she almost jumped out of her skin in surprise.

She had come to a staircase.

A spiraling staircase that descended downwards almost indefinitely, or at least, seemed not to reach to any floor below. It merely disappeared into the mist. She stared, peering down, before her fear of heights got the better of her and she quickly took a few hasty steps backwards.

This was unusual. 

In the eight years since she had become an adult, June had only ever seen bookcases and books, the odd table and chair for writing, and the mist and starry sky in this library that had started to come to her in her dreams. Never any staircases, for sure.

She looked around, as if there would be a person to give her an explanation. She was, as usual, the only person in the library. Her and the books, of course.

“Hello?” she called out, her voice echoing down and back to her. She half expected to hear a response, but only the echo of her own greeting returned to her.

She blinked a few times. She looked around again, this time looking for nonverbal permission to go down the steps. Was it safe? This was unprecedented. Swallowing away her fear, she decided it couldn’t harm her. Wasn’t this a dream? Sure, it was the only dream she ever had in which she was aware she was dreaming—and remained consistent and a mystery, but a dream, nonetheless.

She decided it couldn’t hurt to investigate. After all, what if she woke up and when the next time she returned to the library in her dreams, her mind decided not to show her what was at the bottom of these steps? 

She stepped onto the first step, and paused, as if expecting the steps to suddenly fall away from under her and send her falling downwards. When the steps held firm, despite looking somewhat see-through, she slowly started to descend them.

Halfway down, she peered over the side of the railing, trying to discern where she was headed on this strange, unusual staircase. A grey-blue mist and an upside-down starry sky gazed back at her.

By the time she reached the bottom steps, she was in a corridor, a large door obscuring her way at the end. Just like with the staircase, June paused at the door. What was on the other side of this door? Would she even like what she found there? What if it wasn’t safe?

A strange thought came to her then. What if she never came back from this door? What if it trapped her in her dreams forever?

She shivered slightly in the darkness at this uncomfortable thought, before reaching out slowly for the handle, grasping it. It felt sturdy and real enough. She turned it, pushing at the door.

The door creaked open slowly, and June found herself staring out into a strange room.

It was a bedroom. And it looked, to her, like something out of a novel or movie. Old-fashioned with nothing modern in it at all. She poked her head into the room, looking around, and saw that there was no one in the room.

“This is…different,” she murmured quietly. 

She stepped out, walking into the center of the room. The bed was large with a canopy, the dressers and wardrobes and chests, when she investigated, held beautiful dresses of silk and lace and linens. The rug was one of those fancy Persian rugs, and there was a fire crackling in the large fireplace opposite the bed.

Outside, June could see an expanse of an estate’s ground, a man-made pond with a large fountain, beyond that a lake, and beyond even that, woods. Like everything in this room, it felt like something out of a Jane Austen novel or a historical movie.

She heard something click and turned around. The door she had come through had closed, leaving behind merely a large painting on the wall. Perhaps an oil-painting. But the mastery and skill and medium of the painter was not something that June pondered on for a moment longer. For the painting was featured a very specific person that June knew very well.

Herself.

She looked around again, puzzled and a little unnerved. Why was there a painting of her in this room? Not only that, but there was a woman sitting next to her on the swing hanging from a beautiful tree. The woman was laughing, her arm around June’s waist as if in a gentle embrace. The June in the painting was laughing as well. June nearly jumped when she realized she also recognized this woman. 

She was the woman from the books in the dream library.

June blinked a few times, too surprised to speak or move, before remembering this was, in fact, a dream itself. Just a dream. She had dreamed of the woman in the books so often that now she was dreaming of them together on a swing. No big deal. 

She swallowed again, deciding it was time to go back to the library. She walked over to the painting and reached out with slightly shaky hands. The painting was solid enough, and felt real enough, for a dream. But when she tried to pull at it, to reveal the passageway that led to the staircase that would bring her back to the library, she found that the painting was no longer a door.

She peered behind it. 

Just a painting on a wall.

There was no longer any door behind it.

She gulped, hoping she would wake up soon.

“What are you doing in here?” a sharp voice asked from behind June. “How did you get past my barrier?”

June spun around, standing in a sudden light. A woman stood in the now open doorframe leading into a hallway. 

She wore a fancy, elegant dressing gown, a shawl around her shoulders, a candlestick in her hand that was the source of the light that now shone in the room other than the fireplace. Her dark hair hung in a long braid over her shoulder, the light of the candle on the candlestick flickering in her dark green eyes. She had a long, angular nose with sharp features, and full, red lips, and her ears… June had never paid much attention to the woman’s ears in the images in the books, but now in person, June could see that the woman’s ears were pointed, like an elf or fairy in a story might have.

But her natural beauty was not the only thing that took June by so much surprise. 

She knew this woman.

This was the woman in the painting alongside June.

The woman from the books in the library.

June opened her mouth, about to splutter some kind of shocked explanation, when the woman’s furious expression melted into something unrecognizably different. The woman stared at June, as if unable to believe her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” June said, stepping away from the painting quickly. “That used to be a door, I think, and—”

“June?” the woman whispered, her voice soft and full of disbelief.