Dream senses

Stroking her hair, she had to admit it did. “You don’t sleep?”
“Not like you. Not with dreams. What if I dream?”
“I’ll be nearby.” She relaxed into her pillow, appreciating Ryn’s warmth and the fact she didn’t push for words to define what they shared. Were they still friends? More? Naomi had no clue, but there was a rightness to this moment.
For a stretch, they were silent and she drifted, asking a question that floated through her foggy mind. “What’s your coolest superpower?”
Ryn murmured something that tickled her ear with breath. It sounded like, “…out here, away from concrete… the weather obeys my heart…”
“Clear skies from now on, you think?”
“Probably not.”
Folded into each other, they drifted off, and in their dreams Naomi sprinted through a strange vertical forest of sharp stone and birdsong. It smelled of clean rock, wind, and wet roots. Ryn sprinted beside her. In the wilds of their dreamscape, though, the monster’s unearthly eyes were at home.

~*~

The dream bent distances, distorting Ryn’s knowledge of every stone in the Fortress of Needles, but it was still wonderful—made so by Naomi, who kept up, and together they tasted the same clean air.
Ryn stopped to scent. Something was wrong.
Naomi bolted past her, laughing. The dream defied logic by simply placing the auburn-haired teenager beside Ryn again when she asked, “What’s wrong?”
“You’re in danger.”
“It’s a dream, weirdo. I think it’s safe.”
“It’s not.”
Ryn caught the knife and her eyes snapped open in the tent. Naomi startled awake beside her.
The razor tip of Patrick’s steel pocket knife trembled an inch from Naomi’s throat, held back from her pulsing carotid by Ryn’s hand.

Chapter 21, Page 330-331