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Erin pulled the boiling kettle off the stove, setting it on a free burner before taking the lid off her teapot. After dropping a few crushed dark green leaves in the bottom, she quickly poured in the hot water from the kettle, filling it three-quarters full. When she was finished, she set the kettle to the side and took the teapot over to the table, setting down the teapot next to a cup already waiting for her as she let the leaves mix with the water.

It wasn't her home, especially considering the stove's design. However, despite that, Erin felt comfortable in the mostly white kitchen around her. Two dark tunnels cut on either side of the room led into darkness, but she didn't mind. She was safe where she was.

The sensation of knowing that one was in a dream was odd. It was like being wrapped in a familiar blanket, warm and fuzzy, and that made it hard to think. Erin didn't even question the paper she pulled from her green cloak and unfurled.

Rustle.

However, the writing scrawled across the page gave her pause.

Writing never made sense in a dream. The words would be on the page, but they would be scraggly and blurry. Never in her life had she dreamed that she could read a particular piece of text.

Yet, she could read the words in front of her.

"Nine is the number of our discontent. Seven is the time we take to grieve. Four is the day we call for aid. Five are abandoned, left to find their own way. One is you."

It was simple but made no sense. However, Erin recognized the meaning of the words. She blinked, shaking her head. She folded the paper, her hands shaking for reasons she barely understood.

"But I can't leave," she whispered, stuffing the paper back into her cloak.

Erin understood it then. It was the second letter calling her to a meeting with someone. The haze of fog around her mind from the dream didn't tell her exactly who it was, but she recognized what she should say next.

"Why are you making me choose, Leninski?" She turned her attention to her teapot, pouring the green liquid into her cup before taking the cup into her hand.

It was warm to the touch.

She took comfort in that as she sipped at the tea. It was bitter, but that only enhanced the crisp flavor. They didn't have any sugar on the ship at the moment, so she couldn't sweeten it.

Ship.

The word flowed easily off her mind, but it stuck out to her in the dream. She wasn't in a home. She was on a slipship. It was no wonder the kitchen looked nothing like her own. A protective haze settled around her mind, forcing down the thought. It didn't matter. She was just in a dream, after all.

She focused on drinking the tea, even as tears fell and dropped in the cup. Why was she crying? She didn't know.

She curled up in the chair, drawing her knees close to her chest as she leaned against the backrest. The quiet of the room grew around her, and shadows crawled across the floor between the two entrances. Soon, she was let in a spotlight, surrounded by shadows in her small space.

And still, she understood nothing.

"Erin, you must come quick!" a voice broke her from the shadows, and light flooded back into the room. "Alex is stuck in a crick!"

An armored knight entered the room, stepping out of the shadows with a shield in hand. However, the shadows didn't relinquish his face, leaving it shrouded in shadows. Erin would have run, but her dream self stood up, rushing toward the figure without hesitation.

"What happened?"

She followed him through the shadows, and the world blurred around her. In the next instant, she stepped out from the shadows onto a wide deck. The dark black void of the nightsea opened up around her, only a few faint twinkling lights marking the islands in the sky. Two figures rested on the deck, one lying on his back while the other grasped his free hand. The one lying on the deck was missing his arm.

"You cannot die, brother!" the larger man grabbed the arm of the man lying on the deck.

The larger man's other arm was broken, flopping off to the sides uselessly, but despite that, he held on strong to the lying man's hand. As before, Erin noted he was missing an arm, only a stump at the elbow marking where the limb used to be. Blood pooled around it, but he didn't seem to care. He smiled up at the larger man, shaking his head.

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"Don't worry," he said. "I never thought I'd get to use this one, but 'It's only a flesh wound.'"

Erin released an exasperated sigh as she opened her gate, flowing, growing energy spiraling out from her heart and down her limbs. Her hands glowed green as she knelt next to the man, forcing the power of growth into his body. Erin didn't think she could do much with her curse, at least not with such a grave injury. That was until a well of power erupted from her heart, shocking out from her fingertips and into the man's arm.

Crack. Pop.

Flesh distended, and bones cracked as the second half of the man's arm erupted out from his elbow. Pink flesh darkened in seconds as it took on the rest of his brown skin tone, and in seconds, he had a fully formed right arm.

Erin didn't know her curse could go that far.

It was far from what she used it for in her practice. She used her curse to grow her plants and make sure she had enough remedies for her patients. However, she had just used it to grow out a man's severed arm. That was confirmation. It had to be a dream.

"What are you idiots doing?" Erin asked as she took her hand away and nodded at the larger man.

The shadows over his face masked his response. Still, he brought up his broken arm, and Erin adjusted it so that it was aligned before flooding it with her curse's energy. Twinning energy flowed into the arm, green tendrils touching the man's skin.

Crack. Pop.

Bones knitted themselves back together, and muscles tore and regrew as growth flooded into the broken limb. While the healing wasn't as quick or as extensive as when she had used it on the other man, the bone still popped back into place in seconds.

"We were sparring and decided to take the strength of our blessings."

Erin's hands froze as the larger man spoke.

"Sayed." The man on the ground groaned.

"When we came to blows, I struck a little too true, and he caught my arm before I could withdraw."

"Thank you for telling the truth, Sayed," Erin whispered.

Slap.

Orange light peeked through her window, forcing Erin's eyes open underneath the several layers of blankets on her bed. Erin forced her eyes closed as a steady haze wrapped around her mind. She needed to get up and water her garden. She also needed to pick up a few herbs she had used yesterday to make another batch of medicine for Eva.

She lay in the blankets for a while longer, savoring the warmth before she had to step out onto the cold stone floor of her cottage. The dream remained in the background of her thoughts, and she pulled her hands out from beneath her blankets to look at them. Her pale fingers were no different than those in the dreams, but the difference in power was evident.

With her curse, she could cause her plants to grow faster and minor injuries to heal faster. However, in her dream, she had helped that man regrow his entire arm and reset the bones of the other almost instantly. That kind of power seemed like a faraway dream when held against the current strength of her curse.

The other problem was how familiar the figures seemed, even though she hadn't seen their faces. They had talked with her so easily and had relied on her without hesitation. In some ways, the dream seemed more like a memory in her mind that wasn't fading away.

"You can't spend all day dreaming," she whispered, sliding out from under the blankets and starting her day.

It didn't take her long to get ready, and she didn't have far to walk to work. It was one of the benefits of sleeping in the same building she worked in. In less than thirty minutes, she locked the door to the half of her world she rested in and stepped into the half of her home she worked in.

She immediately started for the garden. She picked out the plants she needed for the day and used her curse to encourage the growth of the ones she picked to keep up her supply. When she was done, she returned inside and unlocked the front door. It was time to start accepting customers for the day.

After that, the monotony of regular customers took over, filling her mind with the haze of repeated visits for the same medicines, which she realized were prescribed far too often for her patient's consumption. The same people visited her every day, and those same people took medicines from her every day. They came back at the same time with the same complaints and received the same medicines from her every day.

That was wrong.

The more she thought about that, the more her mind dispersed, a mist not unlike the one that surrounded Grim Aegis, interrupting her thoughts. Erin tried to focus on it, but when she did, her door opened, and another customer stepped in.

"Oh, good morning, Erin." Eva, an old woman with a bent figure, walked in, leaning on her cane as she waddled inside.

"Good morning, Eva," Erin said, stepping around the counter to greet the old woman. "Are your bones hurting again?"

"You know these old bones." Eva smiled, her wrinkles creasing. "Without your medicine, I fear I'd never be able to even stand up in the mornings."

They talked for a while, like they always did, every day. Erin's mind eased into the routine's steady comfort as they talked, and for a while, she forgot the questions that had broken through her haze mere moments before. She had a good life in Grim Aegis. Who was she to question how things were? She made enough to live her life and keep herself fed. What more could she ask for?

After their talk, she helped Eva stand and walked her to the door. Soon after, she expected another daily event: a man standing out in the alley, looking over her shop from the shadows. She should have thought it was creepy, but there was a familiarity in the man, not that different from the familiarity with the people in her dream the night before.

Yet, as she waved Eva away, the man wasn't there. Erin stood at her door for a few minutes, looking across the street at the few people crossing the street as she waited for him to appear. However, he didn't come out at all.

It was odd precisely because of the routine nature of life in Grim Aegis. The thoughts of repeating days, repeat customers, and doing the same thing every day roared back inside her mind, cracking through the haze for just a moment and placing themselves front and center in her thoughts.

None of it made sense.

This was the first day she had had a dream as long as she could remember, and it was also the first day where something was different. However, what could she do about it? She watched the alley with a steady gaze for a few more minutes before finally closing the door.

Maybe things would be different tomorrow.

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