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This was a dream Dola San had had for the past three months. Were they a side effect of connecting with the veil, or her own experiments on herself? Possibly. Maybe. Maybe, it was that once she was connected, she could never really leave.
There were tiny things. Barely noticeable details to her dream self that always shifted and changed. Those haunted her the most.
The dream always started with her at the gate to the infinite forest. Often, it was in the heart of Nessus. Sometimes it was elsewhere, places where it didn't make sense to be: an old dusty ice cave on mars, an abandoned ship crawling with egregore, the back alley of some busy corner in the last city.
She would walk through it. The sensation always the same. And once inside, all of time unfolded before her.
Most often, she would see moments of her own life. Of her friend's. She would see herself grieving-she forced herself to look away. She would see her outbursts. She would see the trials matches. Hear the kind words of Saint-14. And further still, she could see a time before everything happened. Laughing with fireteam members she barely remembered the names of. The first time she set foot on the tower. Navigating from the ruins of her grave, Mora guiding her carefully and gently forward.
Sometimes, she would see other things. Moments in history she read about but hadn't experienced. She didn't know if these were pieces of reality, or if they were things her mind built for her. They felt real to her.
She saw a titan holding his ghost with tears of joy and relief inside the monolith in the traveler. She saw Eramis reach out to a pyramid in the distance as stasis consumed her. She saw Crow on his back, Zavala with an outstretched hand. She saw Riven cry out in death as a team of guardians wielded light in a furious blade.
Deeper. She always went deeper.
Past the Red War. Past Oryx's death. Past the great hunt and the Iron Lords.
She didn't know why.
She kept going backward.
She would stop at a different point every time. And then she would look out at the space around her. At the pixelated walls and computational hallucinations of the Vex's creation.
Dola had realized on the 15th dream that she had been looking for pockets: pieces of time that didn't matter to her. To anyone. Maybe not even to time itself.
She never could remember when these moments happened. They were always there. Something was always a signal, a flag, a waypoint that caught her eye. And she would always stop. And she would always look. And if she looked far enough, if she looked deep enough, she would see reflections of herself in the holographic sheen of memories.
She would see herself screaming in agony. She would see herself with a determined face, running through portal after portal. She would see herself exhausted, collapsed, unsure if she was sleeping or just unconscious. She would see the conductor looking back at her. An image of herself. An image of the conductor. An outstretched palm.
No. She always rejected the thought. No. She couldn't. She wouldn't go down the same spiral of grief as Maya had. She was better than that. The conductor was chasing a false reality. Dola was chasing something tangible. Someone who was out there. She just had to find him.
Faintly, she would hear a voice. Hear his voice. An echo. A distant sound. She would turn, and follow it. It never got louder. She could never find the source. She kept running. Faster. She kept searching through the pockets of time. Deeper. Where were you. Where were you. Why can't I find you. Why can I hear you.
Dola opened her eyes. Tonight, she was curled up in her bed. Her hands wrapped tightly around Vance's journal. She sat up slowly, prying the book from her hands to rest it on her lap instead.
"Good morning," her ghost quietly spoke.
Dola looked at a blank point in front of her. Her mind was still falling through time. Reality was breaking the illusion. She felt the plushness of her mattress. She felt the fading warmth of her blanket. She felt the stickiness of sleep on her eyelashes.
Mora nudged Dola's arm. She finally turned to her.
Dola whispered, "I had the dream again."