I shuffle around on my mattress, searching for something to say, anything to continue the conversation. Small talk has never appealed to me and I can tell it doesn’t appeal to her either.
Finally, I decide on something.
“Do you want to hear about my dreams?”
“Yes.”
Her answer comes quickly and without pause, as if she were expecting me to tell her.
I stop and consider. I don’t like telling people about my dreams.
“I haven’t told anyone about this except Kiddu. Not even my roommates at the Temple know. A lot of people, when they hear about my dreams, they think I’m … cursed.”
“Perhaps you are cursed.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I am. I’ve thought about it. I don’t feel cursed, though.”
She doesn’t say anything. Kiddu mumbles something unintelligible in her sleep and continues snoring.
“Alright.”
And I tell her, about the bizarre black grass, the horrifying storms, the upside-down sky and the black hole at the bottom. I tell her everything.
“How often do you have these dreams?”
“Not often. It seems like I have them more when I’m stressed, or when I can’t sleep. And sometimes I don’t see a storm. But they’re all basically the same.”
“The black grass. Is it possible that it is made of the hazaram?”
“Maybe,” I say. “I’ve never heard of hazaram moving around like that, but who knows.”
“It is forbidden to even look upon the hazaram,” she says. “It is forsaken, it is the greatest of all taboos—”
“I know,” I say. “Why do you think I don’t like telling people about these dreams?”
She considers this for a while.
“Tell me, do you know of the Occulted Sun?”
“Of course,” I say. “I know what you’re getting at. That my dreams are about the Underworld.”
“Surely you must realize that the world in your dream resembles the world of Apsuka Mayaka, and this hole in the sky the Occulted Sun—though in a manner I would never have imagined.”
“Yeah. Except it’s bright. The Underworld is supposed to be dark.”
“So it is said. But perhaps it would be bright in Apsuka Mayaka while you are sleeping, yes? For it is also said that Asham goes into the Underworld at night.”
“I know. That’s one interpretation, at least.”
“You have heard other dream interpretations?”
“Just from Kiddu. She says a lot of people have dreams about falling off of cliffs or buildings or whatever.”
“I believe the Gods are trying to tell you something.”
“If they are, they’re not doing a very good job—”
“It is not your place to judge the Gods.”
She says this with venom in her voice.
I can’t wrap my mind around how seriously the natives take their religion. Even the priestesses told us that these legends about the Ancients and the Cataclysm were mostly just symbolic.
“Alright. Sorry. But how do you even know the Gods are sending me these dreams? I mean, that’s a pretty big assumption.”
No answer.
I shift in my bed. She gives no indication that she heard me.
I knock lightly on the wall. “You there?”
“Perhaps it is best if we do not speak to each other after all, Akkadian.”
I sigh as loudly as I can and turn over on my side.
Now I regret saying anything to her. Why couldn’t she just make up her damn mind about whether or not she detests me? I remember all the bad things I’ve heard about the natives—their intolerance, their refusal to make peace, their hatred of all things from other civilizations, their backwardness.
But she’s been through much more than I ever have.
And who is she, anyway? I suppose I’ll have time to figure that out, assuming she decides to talk to me again.