Exile Ballad by M.S. Hund

Author:M.S. Hund [Hund, M.S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jebesyl Press

Caroline’s School

The Dreambetween

Lily had never made friends easily. For one thing, she had rarely had opportunities to interact with other children as a child. Her father had always arranged personal tutors for her rather than sending her to school, and she had spent most of her non-instructional time at the hospital or with her books. Those few children she did play with were never constant companions, merely playmates for an afternoon or two.

Of course, given how things had gone in the year since she’d been freed of those restrictions, she wasn’t sure the problem had been her upbringing entirely. In a full year at school and a full year in the Dreambetween, she had accumulated a number of acquaintances, but none that she could call close friends.

Unless Simon…

Lily shook her head. He was probably closer to her than any of the others, but she hadn’t let him get too close. She didn’t trust him, didn’t trust herself around him.

She didn’t trust anybody, really.

Lily couldn’t help thinking of her father. He didn’t have many close friends either. None, actually. From what her father had told her in those weeks when they’d been open with each other after her mother had died, she’d concluded that her mother might have been his only real friend and the one who forced him to engage with other people outside the lab. If she hadn’t forced him to socialize, he would have been content to be alone.

She nodded.

Then she frowned.

Without knowing how or why, something within her—something that was not Lily—had agreed with her reasoning. She had almost heard the other speak her agreement.

Lily shook her head, trying to dismiss the feeling that somebody else was inside of her thoughts. She glanced around, looking for a distraction. The hedges of the school’s garden had grown impressively since the rebuilding. She wasn’t sure whose idea it had been to incorporate a hedge maze within the garden, but she suspected it had been Caroline’s.

And Caroline was here now.

Lily tilted her head. How was she so certain that Caroline was present in the dream? She closed her eyes, trying to force any thoughts of Caroline out of her head. The Dreambetween worked in strange ways, seeking to provide for the wishes, both conscious and unconscious, of the dreaming blood. Given Lily’s own burgeoning abilities within the dream, she suspected that even thinking about Caroline might bring them together somehow.

The Dreambetween was odd in that way.

But if it could bring her to Caroline, then maybe…

Lily focused her thoughts on Simon, on the closest thing she had to a friend here. Just like at her school in the waking world, she’d made a number of acquaintances at the dreaming school, but none of them would seek her out or deliberately start a conversation with her. She’d had to go to them, asking around about Simon. Nobody had seen him or the crew of admiring boys that usually trailed after him.

Strange.

Part of the school’s mission was to slowly transition new dreamers into

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