“Teaching Dreaming is like teaching art,” Professor Davin Pure said to the class as he took off his coat and rolled up his long sleeves to reveal a menagerie of creatures inked into his caramel skin.

  A dark serpent slithered through the legs of a wrathful crab that had a giant, jeweled right claw. What looked to be a flat headed rodent sat atop a ball of fur with a gaping spike filled mouth. Three claws peeked out from beneath the sleeve of his left arm while the wing of some bird spread out from his right. It was something I had never seen before. Of course I’d seen tattoos before, old soldiers, religious symbols, and even a few Bronze Islanders, but Professor Pure looked to have them all over his body, there were even little black ants crawling on the back of his hand.

  Of course compared to the professor with firearms being openly carried, or the professor wearing work out attire in a professional setting it was rather tame. Perhaps it was a quirk of being a Dreamer.

  I sat in the front row of the classroom, pencil ready to take notes. It was not where I preferred to sit when I attended my primary school. However if sitting up front provided even slightly more benefit than sitting in the back then I would take it.

  “I can give you the tools, show you how to hold them, but I cannot give you my skill or my style. Those will come to you as you discover your Dream and craft your abilities.”

  Craft our abilities? Like in a workshop?

  “In the mornings you will come here to practice visualization techniques, and in the afternoons you will be taught by one of us four professors for your year. Each of us specializes in something crucial to being a successful Dreamer, and while some of you may have no interest in politics or combat, that does not mean they will have no interest in you. Dreamers are more precious than diamonds and more useful than Sun Stones. Society does not just allow you to do as you please if it brings civilization no benefit.”

  Walking up to the blackboard Professor Pure wrote the word Dreamer.

  “Today we will learn what a Dreamer actually is and why you all were chosen out of every other fourteen year old in the country. Cystella,” he said suddenly, brandishing his piece of chalk at the Skulker who sat in the back of the class. “What makes you a Dreamer?”

  “My Dreamscape,” Cystella said.

  Her voice was low and quiet, but with a rough edge like cracked bones. As though she had screamed her vocal cords to shreds as a child.

  “Correct. Every Dreamer has one, it is a metaphysical plane that exists within our minds. From there all of our power is derived. Technically every person in the world has the potential to open a Dreamscape, but that is like saying every person has the potential to be a master painter. What makes you all different is that at some point in your life you already opened your Dreamscape,” Professor Pure told the class, writing the word Dreamscape underneath Dreamer.

  I didn’t have a reason to doubt the professor but I thought I would remember opening a magical world in my mind. Had there been some mistake? Was I going to be sent home?

  “I can see the disbelief, but that is hardly surprising. It likely would have happened in exceptional circumstances when your minds were still nubile. However, now is the best time to attempt to permanently open your Dreamscapes.”

  Professor Pure threw up the chalk and caught it absentmindedly, scanning his bright blue eyes over the students sitting in front of him.

  “Let me ask you all this, do you think you have become smarter in the past year? More intelligent? Well how many of you have come to understand more about the world in the past year? You may have realized it's better to wash your dishes as you cook so the food is easier to clean off. It could have been that the center pleat of a shirt allows for a greater range of movement. When you are young the world is simpler, and the little things in life are in reality your entire life. It makes your mind flexible, but weak. When you are old it is the opposite, you have become so set in your ways that anything that risks altering those ways is rejected. Your teenage years however, are when you begin your journey to find yourself. So it is the perfect time for you to fully open your Dreamscapes and become Dreamers. Yes, miss?” He said suddenly.

  “Audrey Plune, sir. Is making our Dreams a reality really what we will learn to do? Or is it just another way to say we get magic powers?” the girl who raised her hand asked.

  “It’s both. If your Dream is to be a queen, and you open your Dreamscape, does that mean you are then a queen? No. You don’t even need Dreamer abilities to do that. Dreaming is a tool to make Dreams a reality.”

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  “But why Dreaming and not magic?” the same girl asked.

  “Magic is just another word for something so unexplainable that it defies comprehension,” the professor said.

  “We call it Dreaming because each Dreamscape is personalized to a person's Dream. Dream in this case is the core desire of a person often formed in childhood, though it usually matures with the person. We also call it Dreaming because the best way to train someone to open their Dreamscape is through learning to lucid dream and other mental exercises. Then there is the fact that Nightmares are born from the fears of people. Some even think that when a person has a bad dream a Nightmare is born. That’s why it's traditional in many cultures to leave a light source on when one sleeps, believing it keeps the nightmares away. Many people have died in house fires because of that,” Professor Pure said, adding the last part as an afterthought.

  A deep desire since our childhood…

  A chill poured down my spine and I looked down at the long white scar that went from the pad of my thumb to the base of my palm. I traced the scar with a finger, relishing in the texture of the mark.

  Professor Pure turned back to the black board, writing Lucid Dreaming and Visualization underneath Dreamscape.

  “As it happens you have brought me to what the first step is in attempting to open a Dreamscape. Lucid dreaming, defined as achieving conscious thought while dreaming. The first thing you will all start to do is keep a dream journal. By writing it down you force yourself to remember that which usually slips away after waking. Next is to observe yourself in the waking reality. Constantly ask yourself if you are dreaming, check your hands to make sure they are distinct, check the clock to make sure time is passing normally. By doing this your brain is learning to be aware of itself and no longer take the reality you live in for granted. Also when you go to sleep you want to do so with the intention of remembering what you dream about. People often view dreams as something outside of our control, but at the end of the day our mind is ours, and it is most free when unburdened by wakefulness.”

  Mind over matter, in a literal sense.

  “What we will also work on in this classroom is visualization training. More tedious than learning to lucid dream, but also easier with a bit of effort. These lessons will be from simply imagining an object to sculpting with clay to learning the importance of shape language.”

  Professor Pure held up his stick of chalk like a fencer saluting his opponent.

  “The senses are the gateway between our mind and the world around us. Sight is a human's most powerful sense. Hearing, touch, smell, taste, all of these are also crucial not only to surviving, but to be thriving people as well. But if I were to ask each of you to think about this piece of chalk most of you would focus only on the image of chalk. Some of you may not even be able to do that, instead thinking in impressions and words. I myself am incapable of thinking in words.”

  One of the kids next to me nodded their head as if agreeing with the professor. How did they get anything done? I tried to imagine ordering my thoughts with no words, but it was like trying to imagine a spider crawling on me without the phantom tingles dancing across my skin.

  “Those that can think in images and words, and those that cannot, I want you to stretch your mind further. What does the weight feel like, the texture, the feeling of chalk residue sticking to your fingers? How do you hold it? What feeling does it bring to you? Does writing with it bring a sense of rhythm like stroking the keys of a piano? Do you feel as though the words you write with it should flow like water or strike straight as an arrow?” He said, finishing with a backwards swing of his arm leaving a perfectly straight line across the black board like a hunter slitting a deer’s throat.

  In the silence that followed the professor put down the piece of chalk and took out a stack of books from his podium, having the students pass them back.

  Visualizing Reality - L. J. Rork

  How To Control Dreams - Adam Meker

  “These books go more in depth into visualization and lucid dreaming. Feel free to write in them as you wish.”

  I dismissed the book from my mind for the moment and raised my hand.

  “Yes Mister…?”

  “Monty Gao sir. You said earlier that Dreamers derive their power from their Dreamscape, how is that?”

  The professor looked around the room to the students no longer paying attention to the books before them, giving us a small smile.

  “Intent. It is the material and fuel for all things related to Dreaming,” Professor Pure said, raising his hand.

  Then suddenly a steam-like haze flowed out of the professor's body. It reminded me of the steam Sun Stones emit, only instead of it being prismatic the professor’s was a light blue.

  “We pull Intent from our Dreamscape to use our abilities called Wits, but we also use the ambient Intent in our Dreamscapes to create those same Wits.”

  He raised a single finger from his hand and a pink flame floated above it. Then he raised his other hand and a thread of lightning appeared, flickering from fingertip to fingertip.

  “Our Wits are how we make our Dreams a reality. They could be as simple as fire, or something more reality warping such as creating buildings from nothing.”

  I stared at the blue Intent coming off of Professor Pure. I wondered if like Sun Stone steam it had its own fragrance. Was it physically palpable? Was the steam like shape because it created condensation? And why was the fire in his hand pink?

  Then my mind caught up to the last part of his sentence. Whole buildings? Why did we have construction workers then?

  “Okay, everyone open Visualizing Reality to page nine and we’ll start on the first exercise.”