[ CW ] `` I dream about you once in a while . You suppose that means anything ? ''

`` I dream about you once in a while. You suppose that means anything?'' Her eyes were hazy and foggy as she asked me this, her voice little more than a whisper. 
 
 `` Of course it does,'' I eventually responded, choosing my words with care. `` Dreams always have meaning, whether or not we're aware of it.'' 
 
 `` It's nice to finally talk to you in person,'' she said, a smile crawling across her face. `` I never thought I'd get the chance.'' 
 
 I was silent, and the smile fell from her face. `` I'm dreaming again, are n't I?'' she asked. 
 
 ``... Yes.'' 
 
 For the first time, she closely examined her surroundings. She was sitting on a tire swing in an abandoned park, and I was across from her, weighing down an empty teeter-totter. A gloomy blanket of clouds covered the sky, placing a desolate darkness across the playground. Despite this eerie scene, it was comfortably warm and humid. 
 
 `` Of course I'm dreaming,'' she finally says. `` I know this place. I have n't been here since I was six.'' 
 
 I nodded. `` That's right. It was the summer you tried to jump off the swing and broke your arm. You moved to the city shortly after that.'' 
 
 She smiled again, remembering. `` Yeah, and I got everyone from school to sign my cast before I left... but how do you know that?'' 
 
 `` Oh... You could n't see me,'' I explained, `` but I was there. Watching over you.'' 
 
 She mulled over this new information in her head, her eyes distant. `` I suppose you've always been there, then? All the dreams of memories I've had, so much like this one, where you were there... They're all real?'' 
 
 I shrugged. `` They're certainly one version of events. What's real to you may not be what's real to me.'' 
 
 She stood up and marched over to me, looking me straight in the eyes now. `` But why me?'' 
 
 I looked back into her. Her soul was shining through her eyes, a flame waiting to be stoked. 
 
 `` You're more important then you know,'' I told her. `` There's big plans in motion for you.'' 
 
 `` What are they?'' she asked me. `` These plans?'' 
 
 `` You'll find out soon...'' I said. `` But now, it's time to wake up.'' 
 
 `` Wait!'' She cried. `` Tell me! Now! Will I even remember this upon waking?'' 
 
 I simply smiled. She began to disappear, her soul leaving this realm and returning to her own. `` Do n't worry, Emily,'' I whispered. `` Just be patient.'' 
 
 -- - 
 
 Emily woke up in a cold sweat this morning. She had fleeting memories of a dream, and a conversation with a strange man. She blamed it on the bad tacos she ate last night, and quickly dismissed it. Her life awaited, after all. 
 
 But I was there, watching. Watching and waiting.
