Another moment and the dream will be gone.
The winter sea breeze brushes my hair from my face, a cold caress as light as the layer of fear I wear like my dark hoodie, and as soft as my shallow breathing. In the way of every good thief, I take care that the whispery puff of my breath is the only sound I make.
Though I'm not touching the fleeing dream, it kisses my mind, sticky as a spider's web. I stand still, wide-awake in the hush of the two a.m. darkness, staring at the pulsing silver sliver. The external details are breathtaking: the shivering tendrils of longing; the filaments of hope, quivering like the strings of a harp. They float through the window of the ramshackle beach cottage where Mrs. Hooper sleeps, reaching upward with fog-thin fingers, anchored within her heart, searching for the sky.
Mrs. Hooper's dream is one of love-longing, and I peek inside as it sways above me, though I'm not supposed to. The Dream Buyers pay well for dreams of love-longing, and they pay especially well for dreams untouched by us Stealers.
Even so, I can't stop myself from lingering inside the dream. I spend precious seconds there, warming myself in the heat of Mrs. Hooper's longing for the love of her son, before drawing back into the chill of the night's reality, and my work in that reality. The dream catcher dangles from my belt on a leather cord. I fumble to release it, then grasp the handle of the delicate, tightly-woven net. After the hours of practice runs I went over with Dad, I need only reach out now, and my very first dream-stealing excursion will end in success.
And I will keep my family safe.
I must do this. Yet I hesitate. Dad says Mrs. Hooper will never miss her dream. Could he be wrong? I dream a similar love-longing dream myself, every night, and I know what my dream means to me—the same as this dream must mean to Mrs. Hooper.
If I'm right, I cannot take her dream from her.
I must take it.
I must...
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