Chapter 19 (dreamwalker)

                                    

                                          
 Step one: breathe mist.
	Step two: fall into a trance, slip your consciousness into the mist.
	Step three: control the mist like your own body.
	Step four: fly the mist across a six days' journey by foot, much less time by air.
	Step five: slip into the body of your sleeping target.
	Step six: plant your carefully envisioned dreams in their head.
	Step seven: repeat, until your target acts out the dream for you. This could take two repetitions, could take ten, depending on factors like how the person sleeps (for example, someone who sleepwalks on their own would respond to a dreamwalking more readily), and how closely to their real life desires the dream is (for example, making someone go eat a cake would take fewer repetitions than making someone murder a child. Nomsa's example, not Kael's).
	I can't even do step one.
	Not on my own, anyway. Unless I'm about to get shot at by deadly crossbow bolts.
	But Kael, reading from three open books on the ground, tells me to lie down on their blankets and breathe mist like I already know how, then do my best to sleep and stick my consciousness into the mist.
	The books say something about smelling herbs to help you relax and slumber, but we skip that step. I suggest they just muffle me with a blanket instead, but neither of them offer to do it.
	So I lie on my back, light of mist expanding, fading, and expanding again behind my eyelids. I do my best to fall asleep, or let my awareness drift away and cling to the mist, or however it works--but Kael's breath, their mere existence just a handspan away, keeps me firmly tethered to my body. And Nomsa's just staring, I think; the side of my face tingles where I imagine her gaze meets my skin.
	I lie on my back, light expanding and fading with my breaths, but instead of sleeping, my heartbeat picks up, and my knee itches, and I think I want to eat something. But I'm doing my best.
	Nomsa's boots rasp over the stone and I snap my eyes open, squinting in the light. "It's not working."
	"What do you mean?" Kael asks. "You've been lying there barely longer than a minute. I only counted to fifty-two."
	"We were counting?" Nomsa says. "I was just watching."
	I turn my head. Nomsa's still watching me, actually, cross-legged on her side of the sleeping corner.
	"I can't focus with both of you just sitting there." I try to make my mist breath stop. It actually does, and the room goes dark. Night dark--the sunlight through the translucent library roof faded at least an hour ago.
	A puffing breath lights up Nomsa's face. "Hey Michael, did you learn telepathy? Or did Troy just do that on their own?"
	"I didn't do anything." Kael also releases light with their breath.
	"Wow," Nomsa says.
	I slowly sit up, and scratch my knee. Then try to make the mist breath happen. Light puffs out.
	"Wow," Kael says. "What did you do?"
	I make it stop. "I don't know." I make it start again, lips twitching. "Wait it's literally as easy as blinking."
	"Yeah, it took you this long to figure that out?" Nomsa says.
	I make the mist stop. My cheeks grin. I make it start again, and light tendrils lace up my features.
	"Nomsa," Kael says, "they've been hiding it their whole life and they had to unblock their mind." Their face glows in and out with their exhales. "It's like...if you had never blinked before in your life, but suddenly needed to learn which muscles you had to use to consciously do it."