It was the first day of school. The pine trees were in full blossom. My jacket was warm, a woolen blend, and the air was cool enough to sting but not enough to hurt. I tightened the strap of my leather satchel and set off from the cabin.
On my sleeve was a patch — a golden Lion, stitched in faded thread. I traced it with my fingertips as I walked. Rosemary was already in class when I arrived, seated near the window. Her jacket bore the Eagle, wings spread in proud flight. Lion and Eagle — two symbols divided, though no one had explained why.
Inside, Professor Kurbrut stood before the chalkboard. His hair was thick, slicked back, his suit pressed sharp enough to cut. He adjusted his glasses and lifted a book with the air of ceremony. Studies on Hysteria, Freud’s work with Breuer.
“We begin here,” Kurbrut said. His voice was rich, commanding. He launched into Freud — hysteria, repression, dreamwork. I jotted notes, though the words seemed to fold over each other.
By mid-lecture, he had shifted seamlessly into The Psychology of Love. His cadence never broke. My attention drifted; Rosemary, seated near me, was scribbling in her notebook, a faint crease between her brows. She glanced my way once, her lips parting as if to speak, but quickly turned back. I couldn’t tell if it was meant for me, or for herself.
Kurbrut’s voice lowered: “Dreams and Telepathy.” He spoke of Freud’s speculations, his doubts, his flirtations with the impossible. He opened a velvet case, revealing a crystalline object, blue and gleaming. A crystage. It pulsed faintly, as if alive.
He lifted it for all to see. A strange heat radiated from it, even across the room. My skin prickled. I blinked. Suddenly, I was outside again, standing on the gravel path from my cabin.
The first day of school. The pine trees were in full blossom. My jacket was woolen and warm.
I tugged at the patch on my sleeve. An Eagle? No — hadn’t it been a Lion?
⸻
I sat in class once more. Kurbrut’s hand moved fluidly across the chalkboard, equations and diagrams forming patterns I didn’t recognize. My pen scratched nonsense into the margins of my notebook.
Then: the crystage again. This time green, shimmering, its glow sharper, harder. Kurbrut held it aloft. I could swear the air vibrated with its presence. My breath caught — the room bent.
Again, I was outside, walking from my cabin, satchel on my shoulder.
The first day of school.
The patch — Lion. No, Eagle. My stomach lurched.
⸻
That night I dreamt in fragments. Brighter and brighter, until the light seemed to break me. A Roman numeral glowed at the center of it: V.
Lucia 5.
The sparkling white heat seared behind my eyelids. I remembered Freud: dream formation does not wait for sleep. The thought echoed as my consciousness slipped.
When I woke — if it was waking — I was standing. A black shroud draped over my head. The air was hot, heavy. My eyes rolled within their sockets, but nothing else would move. In the distance, muffled, Kurbrut’s voice.
“The fundamental issue,” he said, “is not whether one can dream within subconscious awareness, but whether one dreams within consciousness itself.”
Footsteps. His fragrance — forest musk.
I wanted to scream. Nothing came.
Kurbrut’s words pressed closer, slicing into me. “Our reality is manufactured within the mind. It seduces the subconscious, bending it, binding it. Kant was right: we organize impressions into ideas. And those ideas never leave the mind. They cannot.”
A sudden snap — hands clapping. The shroud ripped away. Blinding light.
The stage.
Kurbrut stood beside me, smiling wide, teeth gleaming. Rows of men and women in black suits and dresses filled the audience. They rose, applauding in perfect rhythm, a thunderous, orchestrated roar. Their faces were obscured, shadows pooled where their eyes should be.
“Lucia 5,” Kurbrut announced.
My body was frozen, my head locked in some apparatus. I could only dart my eyes. Was I drugged? Paralyzed?
Kurbrut leaned close, almost tender. He touched my forehead. “Lucia, how are you today?”
“What is going on? Am I dreaming?” My voice cracked.
Laughter trickled from the audience. My stomach clenched.
“You are afraid,” Kurbrut soothed, “and that is natural. But you are in my hands.”
“I just want to go home. I want to wake up.”
The hall silenced instantly. Kurbrut stared into me, his gaze heavy, pinning me down.
“Lucia, dear,” he whispered in my ear. “Tell us your experiences these past two days, and all will return to normal.”
I tried to summon words. The first day of class — but was it yesterday, or before? Yesterday I left my cabin, walked to school and—
Kurbrut cut me off. “Do you recall if you wore the Lion patch, or the Eagle?”
A cold sweat slicked my palms. “A… Lion.”
“No, an Eagle. I wore the Eagle the day before. But—how?”
He loomed in front of me. “How is that possible if yesterday was your first day?”
My chest heaved. “I—I don’t know!”
The words burst from me raw. “I don’t know!”
Rosemary broke. She rushed forward, her face pale, her eyes fierce. “Stop this! Stop this torture now!”
She crouched beside me, her tone softening. “Everything will be okay, Lucia. Just relax.”
Kurbrut ignored me, locking eyes with her. The audience froze in silence, still as mannequins.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we have proof. Whatever the conscious conceives, the subconscious makes real.”
From his suit pocket, Kurbrut drew another crystage. This one burned red, a molten glow. Even across the stage I felt its heat wash over me, sharp and penetrating, like a fever crawling under my skin.
He extended it toward Rosemary. “Shut her down.”
Rosemary’s lips trembled. She glanced at me, hesitation flickering across her face. For a heartbeat, something human passed through her eyes. Then she obeyed.
She touched my forehead, her hand trembling. The crystage opened with a hiss of light. White brilliance engulfed me, searing, flooding. My eyes slammed shut.
The cabin. The solitude. Everything collapsed into fragments.
My world is my thoughts. My memory cannot guide me here. Conscious and subconscious bleed into one, indistinguishable.
Through the burning void, a whisper: Rosemary’s voice.
“Try. Just try to remember. Bethink.”
Her voice ricocheted inside me, echoing at the rim of my mind, then dripping deep into the dark arteries of the subconscious.
Time unraveled. A silence of pure emptiness.
I woke in my bed. The sun broke across the horizon, gilding the sky. Outside my window, tall trees rose, alive with the songs of morning birds.
A great eagle descended onto a branch, its wings spread wide. Golden light clung to its feathers, fierce and purposeful.
The glow from the sun’s background gave it a golden hue, the instinct of a natural, impeded purpose to live.
I remember, Rosemary, I remember.
And if my world is only what I perceive, then perhaps Kurbrut was right — reality is nothing but a dream we agree upon.
The End
