I've grown my hair long... because it is so often long in my dreams. This makes me feel closer to who I was.

This isn't happening to anyone else I know. I don't know how I know this, why I'm so certain of it... but I know none of my friends are dreaming the way I'm dreaming.

I know none of my friends are feeling this spark growing to a flame inside them.

There must be people like me. There must. The brown-haired girl - Lara. Keeper of Memory. If I am here again, here now, she must be as well... mustn't she?

Mustn't Teague? Mustn't Katharine?

I can't be the only one who keeps coming back.

In my dreams, bark crumbles under my hands, a string on my lute snaps and stings my wrist. In my waking life, nothing seems as clear.

There is something wrong with this.

I am them, but I must be me as well.

And then, one night... I remember calling the wind.

I wake up early, sneak outside. My backyard has that odd clarity of almost-sunrise, where everything is outlined by impending light. Distinct. Brambles, grass, shed, chain-link fence, looking nearly alive. Everything feels imminent. The closest I myself have felt to being real since all of this began.

I close my eyes.