Chương 1: A Blast from the Past

Olivia stepped into the bedroom with a sigh of relief, stretching toward the ceiling. Finally. Finally, the baby was asleep. In under an hour, too. That had to be a new record. Glancing over, she saw that her husband was already lounging on the bed. Jason's burly form lay sprawled atop the covers, his wild chestnut hair and beard making him look for all the world as though he had a grizzly bear somewhere in his lineage. A particularly handsome one. She had married him, after all.

"George and Cash are asleep already?" He glanced up from his phone at her question.

"Yup. Your dad really tuckered them out at the park. Hazel go down easily?" She nodded.

"For once. Maybe she's starting to figure this sleep thing out. Though now that I've said something, I'd give it twenty minutes before she wakes up again…" Her husband chuckled.

"Give it time. The boys were both nearly one before they slept through the night, remember?"

"I know, but they're also boys. It makes sense they'd take after you, Jason. Can't we have one kid who's as good at sleeping as I am?" Jason shook his head with amusement as Olivia made her way to the bathroom and began getting ready for bed. Her dark hair came down from its perennial bun, falling over her shoulders in thick waves. She rolled her neck, feeling the tightness that had become a constant companion over the last seven years, only to see her husband staring at her in the mirror.

A content smile was written plain across his face. She cocked an eyebrow.

"What are you looking at?"

"You," he admitted unrepentantly.

"Oh. Well. Continue on, then." He rose from the bed and came up from behind, wrapping both arms around her waist. He nuzzled softly into her neck as she relaxed, enjoying the embrace.

"I love you." She gasped.

"Really?"

"Yes. Haven't I told you before?"

"I think I would remember something like that."

"Hmmm. I'm not so sure. You forget a lot of things." His smile turned teasing.

"Like grabbing milk at the store. And setting a timer for your cookies…" She playfully swatted at his arm.

"Says the one who almost forgot to take the trash out for the second week in a row."

"I didn't forget. I was just busy working on the dishwasher. The bin wasn't that full, anyway." They exchanged a brief kiss before Olivia slipped out of her husband's arms, her behind receiving a quick squeeze as they parted. She returned to her bedtime routine, rushing through it as best she could. Even if Hazel had gone to sleep easily, she knew better than to believe the baby would stay that way. In the meantime, she'd need to snatch as many precious hours of sleep as possible.

A proposition made even simpler by how effective the constant rocking and lullabies had been on Olivia herself. By the time she slid beneath the covers, Jason was already thoroughly engrossed in a video about how to replace various dishwasher parts, narrated by a potbellied old man who clearly knew far more about appliance repair than videography. Olivia wordlessly cuddled up to her husband, nuzzling beneath one of his hairy arms with a sigh.

Her entire body melted into the familiar position as the day's events and worries fell away. It was a familiar song and dance. Now that Hazel had been born, these small moments of just the two of them alone were once more fleeting and precious occurrences. Once she was a little older, things would settle down again, just like they had with each of the boys. But for now, while the baby slept, she simply appreciated the feeling of his body against hers.

I do miss the times where we could just lie here and cuddle for however long we wanted. It seems like forever ago. But honestly? I'm not complaining. Despite the bags under her eyes, the day-to-day complications of juggling each kid's needs, and the wrist that complained about carrying yet another ever-growing baby, she wouldn't trade her family for the world. Neither of them would. She lifted her chin sleepily.

"Good night, Jason." He bent his neck to meet her lips with his own.

"Good night, Liv." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Smiling, Olivia closed her eyes. The dull murmur of the dishwasher repair video filled her ears like a gentle lullaby, and in minutes, she was asleep.

When Olivia awoke, something felt… odd. Just slightly off in some way she couldn't quite put her finger on. She cracked her eyes open, already rolling over to check on Hazel through the baby monitor on her phone. Yet her phone wasn't there. Nor was her nightstand. In fact, the source of her strange feeling quickly became all too apparent as she saw the entire room around her had changed.

The rising sun sent a few pale rays through half-closed blinds, illuminating pale lavender walls bedecked with shelves and colorful posters. Where her nightstand should have been there was now a cluttered desk and a cheap office chair, its wheels sunk into well-worn divots on the beige carpet below. A dresser and a bookshelf were the only other pieces of furniture that populated the room, aside from a large, plush rug that dominated its center. Olivia blinked and rubbed her eyes.

It wasn't the room she'd expected, clearly. Yet it also wasn't entirely unfamiliar. This was her childhood bedroom, complete with posters of various game characters and a modest collection of figurines adorning the shelves. Peeling off the floral-patterned comforter and sheets, Olivia stood and crossed the room. She picked up one of the figurines—a humanoid mech wielding a ray gun and a laser sword. Its plastic armor hid joints that turned the little collectible model into a fully functional action figure.

She smiled. It was from an old tv show, not one that she'd ever seen, but one that was practically made with the sole purpose of selling figurines and model kits like this one. She'd always meant to go back and watch it, just to see the models in action and see where they'd come from. But ironically, the series itself had never quite kept her attention. Seeing it now made her wish that she'd kept at least a few of the things. Her boys would have loved playing with them.

Then again, given the rather inexpert work she'd done in sanding down the rougher edges of each piece… Perhaps it was better that she hadn't. She turned the figurine over, admiring the sheer detail of the thing. She'd heard of lucid dreams, of course, but this was her first time actually having one. The realism was honestly astounding. The feeling of the plastic beneath her fingers rivaled what she would expect in the waking world.

Her subconscious even managed to unearth details that she never would have recalled herself, like the slightly off-center sticker on its shoulder and the slight scratches where she'd cut a piece just a little too close to the base. Setting it back down, she perused the shelves as her old knickknacks and belongings took her on a walk down memory lane. Plush representations of various game characters, pencils and pens that she vaguely recalled owning at some point, a folder full of loose sheets of flute music…

The impossible level of detail persisted throughout the entire room as she noticed little lavender paint splotches on the white trim and the fully legible names of each and every book on her shelf. There was even an old sketchbook on the desk, hiding beneath a pile of loose papers and a few trading cards. Olivia dug it out and flipped through the pages, chuckling at the amateur scribbles. She'd never been the best at drawing, but it had been enjoyable.

One more of those things she'd let fall by the wayside later in life. But as time passed, the sense of nostalgia slowly turned to confusion. This dream sure was lasting a long time. It also felt oddly calm and sedate in its pacing. Usually, they felt like mad rushes from one nonsensical event to the next, as though throwing more at her would keep her from questioning things too deeply. Maybe this is normal for lucid dreams? I never looked into them too deeply, so it is possible…

Her brow furrowed as she landed on a particular drawing of an elven woman—one that she didn't immediately recall making, but was undoubtedly hers. Did she really have this all in her subconscious? Her memory was pretty good, regardless of what her husband said, but not this good. Not to mention it had been, what, twenty years since she'd lived here? Her dad had moved shortly after she went off to college, so high school was the last she'd ever seen of the house. A growing sense of unease nagged at her.

It seemed wrong. Well, not wrong, exactly. Everything seemed too accurate, too real— which ironically made everything feel even more strange. It would have felt more in line with her expectations if her figurines had been inexplicably floating or the papers turned to glitter as soon as she touched them. Shutting the sketchbook, she set it back on the desk and headed for the door. Maybe exploring would reveal something sufficiently atypical and break this strange sense of immersion.

If nothing else, she was curious to see what the rest of the house looked like. And how long this dream would last. Reaching for the door handle filled her once more aggravated the feeling of wrongness that seemed to pervade everything. Olivia half expected a vast field of glittering stars or a tropical jungle to greet her on the other side of the door. But to her continued surprise, it was just a hallway—the same one she remembered.

Her feet silently padded along the carpeted floors as she swept over it with her gaze. Curiously, she pushed open the bathroom door across the hall and flicked on the light. White luminescence bathed the small space as she froze. A few basic toiletries populated the counter, gathered around the sink like office workers around a water cooler. Toothpaste, deodorant, a wide hairbrush that sported a tangled mess of stray hairs despite all attempts to remove them.

A simple shower curtain hung open just far enough to reveal the same within—two bottles, one of body wash and another of combination shampoo and conditioner. But none of that was what caught her attention. No, what really stopped her was the large mirror hanging above the sink—and the figure reflected in it. The scrawny figure of a teenage girl stared back at her with wide brown eyes. Skin that was a few shades too pale was speckled with traces of acne whose scars wouldn't fade for a decade at least.

Dark hair lay flat against her head before turning into a frizzy mess as it tumbled past narrow shoulders, indicating she hadn't showered last night. She knew all this, of course, because she was looking at herself. Not her current self, though. This was the face she'd had as a teenager, more than twenty years ago.