Dual Dreaming

Swirling, dizzying bursts of snow eddied and danced about her, driving her in shuffling circles until she fell over an unexpectedly solid drift. Eleanor sat up slowly, too tired to even swear as she felt the snow work in the top of her boots and start soaking her socks. She tipped her head back and squinted her eyes against the gusting storm.

"A dream! It's a goddamn dream!" she yelled, but the wind carried the words away from her. "What's the point of knowing you're dreaming if you can't control it, or even shut it down? I wanted a dream vacation in Bermuda. Damn, this feels real." She pulled the hood of her parka closer around her face, picked her staff back up and cautiously stood next to the drift.

"What are you, then?" she muttered, and poked the drift with the staff. She couldn't hear anything over the wind, but she felt a solid, metallic contact. Bracing against the wind, she poked and kicked at it until she cleared most of the snow from an oddly rounded lump about the size of her head. She jammed the staff into the snow, braced into the wind and reached to pick it up. Lucid dreaming hadn't turned out nearly as satisfying that magazine article made it sound, but she let out a sigh of satisfaction when the little golden Buddha lit at her touch, glowing like a small sun.

"That's a bit more like it." The figure gently steamed where falling snow landed on it, and cast an eerie glow through the featureless dark. Eleanor kicked gently at it again, then picked it up to cradle against her chest. It was surprisingly light, and she closed her eyes to enjoy the soothing heat against her face. If she ignored her layers of clothing, she could almost think she was in Bermuda after all. In fact, the wind seemed to have died down…

"Eleanor. Eleanor! Are you there?"

"Becky? Are you in my dream?" The little Buddha was getting uncomfortably hot through her gloves and she shifted so the heavy sleeves of the parka protected her hands. The steady light and heat against her eyelids slowly grew, and she thought again of basking in the sun on a tropical island. The wind wasn't quite gone, but it had certainly changed. She could almost hear her twin sister whispering to her, like they used to do when they were kids at the boring grown up parties. She and Becky knew better than to complain when it was time to be the Loving Family at any of her father's political rallies, but as long as they were quiet and smiling in their matching outfits, no one cared that they whispered. They had always been each other's best friend in the middle of the politics as they grew up, and that never really changed. Becky's love of science and stars got her into NASA and then into the first mission to Mars while Eleanor grew more fascinated with painting all the things she saw, and imagined she saw, in her telescope, but when Becky called to breathlessly tell her she'd been accepted for the Mars mission Eleanor congratulated her, then wistfully said it would be the first time they'd really be parted. She almost thought that if she opened her eyes now she would see her twin sitting by her in another of those awful party dresses they'd outgrown years ago.

"Eleanor? You're in my dream!" That was definitely Becky's voice!

Eleanor fought her eyes open against her lassitude. Her sister stood with one hand resting comfortably on the Buddha's head, at her ease in a light cotton jumpsuit as the snow ignored her, and grinning devilishly. "Becky! I – what? No, this is my dream! I read in a magazine about lucid dreaming and how inspirational it can be… I'm dreaming! I'm definitely dreaming! Look!" She hit her fist against her leg and it passed through. "See? I'm dreaming, this is my dream and you're in it!"

"Goof!" her sister laughed. "We're both dreaming! I hoped it would work! Listen!" In the new silence Eleanor faintly heard a ticking metronome. "I wanted to try a science experiment of my own, so I put together a metronome and made a tape before I left. I've always been easy to hypnotize." Eleanor nodded, remembering how Betsy had used self-hypnosis to break her smoking habit back in high school when she realized it would keep her out of the space program. "So I hoped if I hypnotized myself I might be able to reach you through dreams. Twins are traditionally supposed to be able to do this stuff, after all – why not? I had no idea you were learning lucid dreaming, but it probably helped."

Her devilish look became wistful. "I sure miss you, sister. I know it's a dumb cliché, but it's BIG out here, and we're an awful long way from home."

Eleanor's throat felt thick, and she caught her sister in a one armed hug with the glowing Buddha between them. "I love you too, Beck. Don't you get lost in all that space and forget to come home, ok? I'd have to come get you, and Mom and Dad would never let you live it down. That team's the best, and you're all coming home."

"Just as soon as we can," Becky agreed. "But it's a hell of a lot less lonely now, if we can share dreams. I have to go, but I'll try again tomorrow night. Love you, little sis! Sweet dreams!" She squeezed Eleanor once more and stepped back, fading into the storm.

"You're not even five minutes older than me, it hardly counts." Eleanor bit her lip against tears as the Buddha dimmed and cooled, and the snow drifted away into the dawn, and a golden beach in Bermuda.

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