Perchance to Dream

Natsumi’s eyes drooped. She was spent. If the long day into night wasn’t enough that final energy blast really put her up against the wall. Her heavy lids lowered, her vision blurred. The battery was at zero percent and blinking. "So sleepy," she mumbled.

"Hey," Catherine said. "Are you seeing this?"

From the corner of her eye, Natsumi saw Catherine’s hand jut towards the ancient Japanese structure. In front of it was upside-down head with a right-side up face.

Well, good for her!

Right-side up head was renewed. Her mummified flesh no longer taut to her skull like some paper-y dried up looking chicken skin. The vacant holes where her eyes went were now filled with pools of milky white, full pupils, and everything. She had a nose and not a triangular, gross hole. Her hair, Natsumi was certain she didn’t have a split end in sight. It was lush and voluminous for a girl that had just been zapped with the most powerful blow dryer in the history of the universe.

Natsumi literally had a beam that turned her undead and hot all in one go.

Catherine wasn’t pointing at Right-side up head though. No she was pointing a little to the left. Natsumi squinted. So what, it was the Gate of Daitoku-in, that ancient Japanese thing that stood in the park. The thing Natsumi passed on her Magical Girl high heel run every morning. The thing that tourists would ask about. The thing that made her feel insecure for not knowing her own culture and history as well as foreign people assumed she did. Japan was home, but she didn’t know every little bit of it. Like, did she have too?

But Catherine wasn’t pointing at the gate. As if she were rebuking Natsumi’s own lack of cultural knowledge and heritage, Catherine stabbed her index finger in the air again.

Natsumi caught the meaning of it. As Natsumi swayed with unease and tiredness, this shambling motion allowed her brain, through her fuzzy vision, to gather enough information via the subtle parallax to make out the fissure forming in front of the monument. It was free floating and growing in length and split the space in front of Right-side up head. It widened into a portal an from that portal a woman appeared.

Tall.

"Oh hey," Natsumi said.

Dressed in black.

"Uh," Natsumi continued, mustering the last dregs of energy to produce a coherent thought. "Hey, I know her."

The tall woman’s hair was a platinum blonde. The tresses fluttered through the gate and cascaded down the back of her black cloak in thick curls and rolls. She looked as if she came out of a salon, if salons existed on the other side of portals that could be torn through the fabric of spacetime.

"That’s the… The Tall Lady…"

Natsumi yawned.

Her eyes closed. It was over. She was over. It was done. "I need too… speak… with her."

The tall lady’s long fingers — more creepily long than elegantly so — extended out towards Right-side-up head.

"Maybe… after I take a nap, you know…"

The words stumbled from her lips and died in the air. She wasn’t sure who that was directed too, just some personal message to herself that would most likely be forgotten by the time she woke up.

She wobbled backwards, this time too far back and her stilettos gave way causing her to tip backwards. She prayed and hoped…

And fell dead asleep.

To finish her thought for her, she prayed and hoped that someone would catch her. Unbeknownst to Natsumi, Catherine did! (What’re acquaintance for!) She snatched her out of the air, because Catherine was fully aware of what was happening around her.

"Natsumi!" That sounded like Catherine, a mixture of worry and annoyance.

"Natsumi." The voice changed. It was younger and melodic. She followed that voice through the haze of her sleep. Once the mind fog disappeared and she emerged from the other end she saw her.

Hana.

Natsumi blinked.

"Natsumi!" That was certainly Hana’s voice, and as if the mere thought of her conjured her out of thin air, Hana was standing in front of her with a small takoyaki grill placed on a table. She held one of the octopus balls out with a stick. Curly loops of mayonnaise were slathered over top as well as some bonito flakes waving in the gentle breeze. "Here! This one’ll taste better! It’s still warm!"

Her hair was tied in twin tails with a pair of cute ribbons. She wore a thick sweater and extended the takoyaki towards Natsumi with her left hand used to catch any of the sauce that threatened to drip off the bottom of the tasty, battered sphere.

Natsumi couldn’t help herself. She ate the takoyaki from the end of the tiny spear. It was hot and she mouthed the squishy battered ball until it cooled enough to allow her an initial bite. A few chews to break the breading. The warmth of it filled her mouth and in the center of all that was a nugget of octopus that was chewy yet tender, perfectly cooked. She swallowed the treat.

While this was nice, this wasn’t exactly helping! It was distracting Natsumi from the real issue and she needed to ask the right question to sum up the array of issues that were swirling in her mind: Why was Hana here? How was she here? And Natsumi even added, what was Hana? A dream? A ghost? She hadn’t seen those twin tails in… an eternity.

"Hana?" Natsumi managed to sputter. What it lacked in nuance of thought, it made up for with brevity and directness.

"Yes?" Hana’s eyes were closed, her slips curled into a smile (a bit smug, but she always was). Her response failed to answer any of Natsumi’s questions.

Natsumi looked down at her own hands and combed through the shortness of her own hair. "WHAT!?" she said, her outburst was filled with disappointment.

"I’m a kid again!" This was why Hana wore twin-tails. She was six. Then that meant Natsumi had to be twelve. No way! She was a lot older than that. At least like ten years older. A tidal wave of thoughts slammed up against Natsumi’s mind and she spoke with starts and stops trying to express all of these thoughts, but failing to do so with a series of stammered starts and stops. "Hana… but you’re… I mean, I’m…"

"Gone." Hana could have dropped a mic, or maybe the whole takoyaki grill and walked away. The word was the period that slapped Natsumi the face.

And then when Natsumi saw her next, Hana’s whole expression floored her. Her eyes were wide open, tears spilling from those beautiful brown eyes and sliding down her cheeks. She meant it when she said it. It wasn’t her that was gone. It was Natsumi herself.

"No, I’m not gone, I’m still here! Forget it, let’s play." That’s what Natsumi wanted to say, but the shock of seeing her little sister, of thinking about her once again, the trance broke. She realized what it was — a dream. And once the realization was formed in her conscious mind, that meant it was taking over. With a spasm, she awoke summing up all of her feelings for Hana with a single exclamation.

"GEH!" She said.

To her surprise, she was resting in a bed. A bed she had never seen before and above her an unfamiliar ceiling. Also, to her right was a broken window.