He knows he is dreaming because things make sense.

He knows he is dreaming because… no. He does not know if he is dreaming or not.

What? Where? The being that is scattered across landscapes and breathes at the same pace as the winds across the satin-flavored grasses—is that him? As much as anything is these days, perhaps.

He is a former Element, promoted out of that field to spread virtual wings of a Guardian over the Contact. He is a calm doctor whose speech is always precise, lacking the harsher, lacksidasical nature of his Solarian cant. He was a father, he was a husband. He is a cluster of sakura petals. He is a flock of butterflies. He is a young girl with a look of lethal warning in her mismatched, faintly silvered eyes and with dangers cupped in her lightly webbed hands. He is an albino rabbit.

He is the Nightmare King.

All these things come with so many names that they have lost their rights to be proper nouns, becoming only terms that may describe by default. Such are what names –are- and always have been—words, as dispensable and changeable as any other term. He is a she is an it is a thing. Hyuga is a job and Citan is a lie. The teenager Khiea is that which is—a part of the Dream which the child kept in Nightmare, which is his world now. The doctor Citan is that which is not. Not here. There, somewhere which has distracted Yui and should be forgotten about. It only existed to cause greater harm. It never should have been allowed to live at all.

How cruel you were, my Emperor… but how cruel I was to believe in it too.

It stirs.

When is it?

He only knows he is dreaming when he is here in this mismatched land of screams and tearooms, underneath which hide plains of meadow flowers and delight.

I know that I am dreaming because I am searching for the minds of angels and of beasts.

Does he need to return yet? To what? To a world which is only full of tears and regret, with those just a moment’s breath from condemning him lining the walls? To a life where he must continue to smile distantly and wait for the moment to strike?

Such ideas trouble her, and she forces herself to wake. These dreams come less and less often as time goes on. For why-ever should it matter to her what she is when asleep? Her younger half is content to play and smile, oh so lightly in chiming phrase, and she’s been such better company for that part of herself recently. It’s something to be proud of… Isn’t it? Khiea pulls herself upright and slides her thin legs off the bed, shivering instinctively as her bare feet touch the metal floor.

Mister Cerencia will always have a cookie ready for her if she smiles cheerfully enough.

And she’s become so very, very good at –that- at late.