Noah breathed in, and the whole cavern slowed!
An instant was stretched across infinity!
It was a small thing to do. A breath. The kind he had taken a million times without thinking, in a school garden and on a frozen plain and in the dirt between bean rows. But the dreams of everyone under him were still pouring into him, uncountable, and when he breathed in, he breathed them in too.
And then he could see them.
His own, and everyone else's!
They spilled out of everyone in the cavern like light out of cracked lanterns, drifting up into the falling snow, and every one of them was open to him.
His own came first, blue and gold and vast, full of a farm and a family and a table where everyone he loved sat together.
Ruination's came next, crimson and silver and sharp, a dream of a crown that had once been only a voice in a man's head and now had hands. She dreamed of keeping up. She dreamed of being needed for something no one else could do.
