Thomas

wake

He can count the knots in the pine, all tongue and groove. Knows them the way he knows – what else do you know like that? Familiar as a waking dream except that it slides away, inevitably, invariably, when no longer in focus. Every morning he does this; looks up. Just as he’s crossing the threshold.

There’s no why lodged in his throat.

There just is.

There is no light like morning light, is there. Brilliant as it cuts into the dark sweeping shadows of the front hall. His footsteps disturb the grit and dust that settles everywhere in these high plains, sends them floating like errant diamonds in the slanting light.

Upstairs, a door slams. Footsteps stomp stomp stomp on the floorboards, which only agitates the dust all the more. A boy swings around the corner of the upstairs hall and starts hurtling down the simple, simply-planed stairwell.

He has: blond hair and blue eyes, the boy, and looks angry and sulky all at once.

Thomas Delacroix

Thomas looks over the boy curiously, and tries to understand, even as he studies him what dream-him is thinking. And, if dream-him doesn't respond to the boy, Thomas will follow the boy down the stairs and tell him good morning.

He stays alert for more clues, any pictures or paintings on the walls. Any objects which will give him a better sense of, if not what is happening and why, who it is happening to in the dreams.

wake

Thomas wakes.

Thomas sees the boy and wakes.

Thomas sees the boy and thinks to follow him and wakes.

Thomas sees the boy and thinks to follow him and waits for dream-him to respond and the boy gives him a look -

and Thomas wakes.

--

He can count the knots in the pine, all tongue and groove. Knows them the way he knows – what else do you know like that? Familiar as a waking dream except that it slides away, inevitably, invariably, when no longer in focus. Every morning he does this; looks up. Just as he’s crossing the threshold.

There’s no why lodged in his throat.

There just is.

There is no light like morning light, is there. Brilliant as it cuts into the dark sweeping shadows of the front hall. His footsteps disturb the grit and dust that settles everywhere in these high plains, sends them floating like errant diamonds in the slanting light.

Upstairs, a door slams. Footsteps stomp stomp stomp on the floorboards, which only agitates the dust all the more. A boy swings around the corner of the upstairs hall and starts hurtling down the simple, simply-planed stairwell.

He has: blond hair and blue eyes, the boy, and looks angry and sulky all at once.

Thomas looks over the boy curiously and it is morning and he tries to understand; and what he understands is the moment, the now of it. The immediacy. The walls are plain; they are hand-hewn. They are not decorated, except perhaps with whitewash, which has absorbed though here and there unevenly into the uncured wood. The boy has made it to the bottom of the steps, a hand on the railing as he pivots in the hall and starts off through the house, and then Thomas says "Good Morning" and the boy stops; he turns; he pauses, frowning, giving Thomas a once-over that feels both shrew and speculative.

Finally, a grudging jerk of his head deeper into the house.

"Ma has biscuits in the oven. If you hurry you can eat them all before lazy [Name-Slew] gets up."

Thomas Delacroix

"Ah. Thank you?" And then he waits.

To see if the boy responds.

To see if he just wakes up again.

wake

He wakes up again. Thomas always wakes up again. The dreams come every night and then they go, and each one feels more real than the last. Thomas wakes up and it is another night. The same boy and the same stairs and the same feeling; the same greeting and the same grudging jerk of the boy's head and every time Thomas says "Ah. Thank you?" and waits, and the boy - that once-over - shifts sometimes, becomes something indrawn and withheld.

He doesn't reply after that. Just stomps through a door at the end of the long dark hallways, which gives a brief glance of warm, slicing light. In a single, singular moment, that glimpse suggests all the warmth of a well-loved kitchen.

Thomas Delacroix

And so, the next time, when he wakes and there is that moment, Thomas trails after the boy toward the sight of the kitchen. Curious and a little wary.

wake

The kitchen is a kitchen is the idea of a kitchen, warm and bright as anything. Light slants brilliant in through framing windows lined with hanging herbs. The deep abiding fragrance of drying herbs fills the air, somehow green and quick and dying and dry all at once. There is such implicit warmth, remembered and golden and delicious and there is the boy, already slipping through, past the table set for a hearty breakfast, past the woman removing something from potbellied stove, out through the screen door on the opposite side of the room.

Biscuits, the woman is removing biscuits from the stove.

They smell heavenly; entirely of home.

Thomas opens the door. She doesn't seem to notice him, not at first.

Thomas Delacroix

Thomas waits, watching her take out the biscuits and thinking of Anastasia cooking breakfast.

He and Reese don't really cook. Trying to convince Reese to make biscuits would be a disaster.

Probably best not to startle someone working with a stove like that. Probably best to wait. To see if dream-him does anything. To see how she responds when she does see him.

wake

Thomas chooses to wait. To see what happens; to see what his dream-self does, and there is a choice that he makes, in waiting, a sort of lacuna created in the space between now and then, and never and what was. He says nothing and the woman with the biscuits pulls them out and puts down the hot skillet in which they have been baked on the scarred, much-loved table slab in the middle of the kitchen.

She looks: worn out, far away.

--

Thomas is his dream-self. Thomas is waiting. The door closes behind the boy, who disappears into the yard. The woman pushes back a lank lock of hair and sighs, deeply. Golden seconds tick by and she breathes, more heavily than the task in which she was engaged seems to require.

When she sees him, when she finally sees him, she looks startled.

"Oh." Quietly, this quickened moment of connection, this waking-dream. "I didn't see you there."

It is clear that she does not know his name.