Is This Real?

“It’s you,” I said breathlessly, staring at the woman that started all of this.

By now the tent had taken form around me, all of it exactly how I left it when I started off this whole mess. The fabric and the furniture and all the little knick knacks on the shelves. She smiled and shrugged at me, gesturing to the chair across the table.

And without much else to do I slid into it, feeling the fabric of the dress I was wearing settle wispy and uncertain around me.

I stared down at it. I looked at the way it wrapped around my arms and saw the way it draped over my wrists and it was clearly still smoke and beyond it, below it, my body was flickering with life and almost glowing from it. The sight of me was the certain indication that whatever was happening here was beyond my ken and understanding. Beyond anything I could focus on, with only a single question echoing in my mind over and over again.

“Is this real or just a dream?”

The woman across from me shifted, her head tilting to one side as her eyes narrowed while she looked at me. A slight wry smile played across her lips and she considered the words, pursing those same lips a moment later as the creases and wrinkles around them flashed and then smoothed and then dug in again.

She leaned forward and as she did my eyes were caught in her eyes and I watched as the color of them shifted between hazel and blue and green and grey and milky white, before setting on an unsettlingly deep darkness that seemed to have no color at all.

“If it was,” she said, “Would you believe it?”

And it wasn’t an answer, obviously, but it didn’t even come close to one. If it was real? If it was a dream? Yet at the same time I knew that wasn’t the point at all.

“I don’t know,” I told her, “I don’t think so.”

She leaned back quick, relaxing in her chair with a speed that a woman her age shouldn’t be able to move at without injury but now she was younger, younger maybe even than me and when she laughed her voice had a tinkle of youthful zeal.

“Think of it this way. If it is a dream then it doesn’t matter and if it isn’t then maybe you gain something. But whatever you learn you won’t necessarily be able to trust implicitly all the same so ask and look and listen and learn, but question once more when you have your wits about you again.”

She smiled so broad I thought her face might split open. So wide that it defied reality.

“That’s an important lesson to learn. When all senses fail you and all certainty is eroded away there is only one truth that you can truly believe and understand and that is the one that lives inside of your heart and the one that you hold closest. The truth of innate understanding.”

No. No. Bullshit.

“Why not?” she asked, hearing my words without me speaking them.

“Because there is innate truth,” I told her, putting volume to my thoughts, “Because facts exist. Because one plus one equals two. Because there are universal constants.”

“And all of them have to do with the truth of the world around you and very few of them are unique to you. You are subject to the laws of gravity but when it comes to the world inside your mind even science cannot conclusively say how that works. When it comes to the truth of you, others can help guide and help you see but you are the only one who can determine the authenticity of your revelations.”

“But we’re talking about whether or not this is a dream,” I insisted, “Not about any innate personal truths or anything that is in my mind.”

But if this is a dream, and I heard the words without her lips moving, then would it not be in your mind as well?

I opened my mouth to speak. I had nothing to say. I shut it again.

What is the point of speaking if I don’t know the first thing to ask?

“That might just be the smartest thing you’ve said,” she replied, “So we’ll begin from there. Tea?”

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