Shadows clung to Traeyr as he hunted the densely populated human settlement. He passed a house with lights still on inside. The human dwelling there cast a shadow that attempted to flee its owner in favor of his dark presence, but he moved on too quickly for it to take hold.
Traeyr has hunted the globe from axis to axis for centuries, marveling at the way things changed. Species died, overtaken by the rise of a new kind, and technologies eliminated the memory of the old; while the earth persevered and fabricated new ways to thrive in the wake of the latest tyrannical genus.
In all his marvelous travels, never had there been a population so ripe for his influence as this land. The humans were packed into high-rising towers of glass that housed farms of sleepers prime for midday meals, a luxury he’d never experienced so frequently until the turn of recent centuries. Farmers and field workers of the past didn’t sleep during the day, while now there was an abundance of anxious humans dressed in uptight clothes poring over wasteful resources at any time of day just waiting to be harvested. Their nightmares were easily concocted and nutritiously filling and kept him coming back every few decades despite its unappealing landscape.
People dreamed of witless things. Traeyr used to be a curious pup and lapped up the ambitious dreams, the silly, wacky, ridiculous things, using them to divine what was happening in thereal world. One trip around the globe proved how insignificant each dream and its dreamer truly were. The revelation turned his curiosity to the beauty of nature instead, a much more rewarding pastime and a largely more deserving object of his interest.
Traeyr’s mere existence was a wonder, a phenomenon that should have never been possible to create and a painful reminder of what he lost. Humans, on the other hand, were simply farms. Each and every one held its own yield of crops, some tastier than others and some that didn’t cultivate any dreams on their own and required a green thumb to coax the terror lurking inside to the surface for Traeyr’s consumption.
An unsuspecting sleeper whimpered incoherently under his weight. Hungry but bored, Traeyr leaned his elbows on his knees and plucked the bitter taste of the sleeper’s nightmare absently. Shadows from under the bed reached for him and he flicked them away with irritation, eager to feed and retreat far from the human inhabitance.
A tantalizing smell wafted to his senses from a crack in the window seal. He dragged in a long breath that made his spine straighten and caused him to lose connection with the sleeper under his legs. A bizarre emotion rippled through him, an excitement he couldn’t remember the name of.
His power condensed on his command and he rushed through the tight space of the keyhole, the pleasure of fitting through the small opening heightening his uncommon exhilaration. He must taste the savory treat that could perfume the air from so far away, determined to claim the delicious nightmare for his own and mark the home of the sleeper capable of such a delicacy. Perhaps he would see what they would produce if he truly lost himself, crushing them to release every last drop of their delectable notes. Snapping the bones of a sleeper with his weight while they were possessed by a naturally formed and fully developed nightmare released an undiluted essence that surpassed what he gleaned by manipulating dreams himself or by leaving sleepers unscathed. By the smell of this one, he would be well sated if he left only a corpse behind.
His hunt for the sleeper took peculiarly long and he found himself doubting his prowess. How could he have possibly smelled a dream from so far away? Yet, the strength of its tempting fragrance did not fade. It grew nearer and nearer until he finally reached a little blue house in a neighborhood miles away.
The keyhole was unclogged, which was the norm; humans had long ago forgotten the existence of his kind. It used to be that mahrs and others of his dark persuasion would search for an opening, sometimes traveling over oceans and deserts just to get inside for a meal. Going without a decent meal for so long meant spending less time semi-corporeal and more as a depleted, slow-moving butterfly of shade.
Traeyr felt every hard bump and ridge of the aperture as he slunk through the compact space, the most comparable sensation to mortal pleasure he was capable of experiencing.
Hair the color of a maple leaf at the end of autumn cascaded in rivulets over her neck and desk. Her voluptuous body was curled over itself where she cradled her head in the crook of her arm, and Traeyr was struck by the thought that she was a picture of beauty. A nonsensical thought, as he had no idea what the human standard of beauty was these days. Nor ever for that fact, having never subscribed to them himself; but the combination of her sleeping form and her ability to conjure such an enticing dream made her worthy of the wordbeautifulin his mind.
The dreamer clenched her fist against the table and tilted her face toward him. Her lip quivered and her forehead creased, all signs of a powerful and substantial nightmare that could sustain him enough for his trip to the mountains; yet he found himself rooted in place with an ache where his soul would be if he still owned one.
A glimmer of sweat dotted the line where her hair met her scalp. The moisture caught Traeyr’s eye and pulled at a primal place in his core.
Just a taste.
One luxurious lick of her widow’s peak sent shivers through him, a thrill that raced through the wisps of his shadow form. The potency of her liquid exploded his condensed power from within, sending a surge of energy from the tips of his horns to the points of his claws until he was nearly at full mass.
As quickly as his full form materialized, it shrank back down like the snap of a rubber band until he regained control and settled somewhere in between. He stared in astonishment at the creature whose dreams smelled like a bushel of wild berries and whose fluid alone could do what typically required weeks of feeding. Whatwasshe?
What else could she do?
The sleeper moaned restlessly in the throes of her formidable nightmare, which released another wave of flourishing scents through his senses. He poised to slurp down the dream and then paused. If he ate the fully formed, naturally occurring nightmare, he stood to gain a brawny chunk of power; however, it would inevitably make the nightmare plunge deeper into the depths of horror tailor-made for its dreamer.
He could relieve the human from the nightmare that plagued her. He could even transform it into a dream of good fortune, a fantasy filled with all of her mortal desires.
Last time he’d given in to his pity, a greedy farmer who blamed him for torturing his wife trapped him—although Traeyr suspected the man had been jealous that he was riding her chest in the night. Unfortunately, the farmer had known the man who had cursed Traeyr into a nightmare-eating demon and easily hunted down Traeyr’s name and his mother’s address. Armed with this knowledge and full of rapacity, he trapped Traeyr and compelled him to perform the ritual that bound him to their bedroom. He had spent many years in that room, forced to construct dreams that were better than their humdrum reality. It was agonizing and irritating beyond belief for Traeyr, who was meant to wander with the breeze.
The human sniffled. Her forehead wrinkled so deeply it looked abrasive. Unable to watch her worry over such a menial thing as a nightmare a moment longer, he reached for the dream and eased it away from the personal hell it signified for the dreamer. He would not risk being held captive again, but he could ease her suffering in this minuscule fashion.
The modification of her dream meant imbibing a sliver of its power. The slight nibble of her nightmare coursed through him much like her sweat, but this time he braced for it and was able to enjoy the honeyed taste of her saccharine nectar. He licked his lips as it passed through his awareness and mourned the sacrifice of a full feast of such palatable taste.
This shall not be my only taste,he vowed in an effort to appease his growing hunger.
Stirred from sleep by the sudden change in her dream, the sleeper woke under his touch. Traeyr minimized himself into the trusty butterfly and stuck to the shadows as she shed a layer of clothing and sleepily stumbled to the bed. She lay with one leg out of the blanket crooked at the knee, face-down on the pillow, a position that would not allow Traeyr to ride her properly. He would have to convince her to roll onto her back, which he considered attempting for a moment but decided against. He wouldn’t risk crushing her right after doing her suchkindness as foregoing a delicious evening meal in place of her simple comfort.
He watched ruefully as she twitched in her sleep. The soft pants of her breath steeled his determination and he pledged to taste her; more than her sweat and hair, he would taste what wonders lay in her mind. He imagined the flavorful mix of spices and textures of emotions he would savor from each bite of her.
With the envisaged dessert sending need through every fiber of his being, his thoughts wandered to her flesh. The soft pink hues of her cheeks and the raised bumps on her arms. He skittered his shadow across her exposed leg and watched the reaction of her flesh to his touch with rapturous enthusiasm.
Oh, yes, he would devour her.
Nightmares and all.
Chapter 3
