TEN

The next day, we talked, and worked, and watered the new balcony garden, which was getting large enough I was considering hanging some of it around the corner on the fire escape.  Gina spent a lot of the day scribbling what she called maps of her memories - layouts that her pillar had contained, Ray and I assumed.  We spent the day, all three of us, anticipating the night.  Her blood toxicity also came out pretty well, and she wasn't showing any signs of physical withdrawal or other problems over the day.

Ray didn't disappoint, though he did report some trouble at the beginning - he got his focus in the same kind of phantasmal, many-overlapping-scenes environment Gina had found me in the first time.  Minus the sex, I assume, though I didn't ask either.  Gina had chatted with him a bit about her trips, though - about how focusing on memories had taken her towards the more-solid version of dreaming where the pillars were.  Trying the same trick worked for Ray, after which he went looking for an exit.

The road from his place to mine across the outlands was much shorter that night, and he just stepped into my apartment through the entrance and yelled "BEN!", and I came together.

"Hey, man.  You gotta come outside and see this."

"See what?"

"Gina's pillar.  It's incredible."

"All right, I'm coming...."

Mrow?

"...Uh, one second.  I'll be right out."

The cat from the night before was sitting on my kitchen table, looking at me.  I walked over towards it, and it jumped, hit the floor, and sprung directly onto my left shoulder...  from which it promptly walked behind my head, and sat down on my right.

Mrow.

Unsure what else to do, I reached up, scratched the cat, and went out into the outland night, to see Gina's pillar.

Gina had changed things around - where the night before, her pillar had been a strange jumble, that night it had been reshaped into a tall palace-fortress of sandstone.  Fling butresses merged into hieroglyph-panelled walls, with flattened, stern-faced stautes standing above them to form the upper walls.  As I walked out to look at it, I caught up to Ray, who was moving slower, trying to take in the details of it.  Ray and I looked at each other, and he looked at the cat.  I shrugged with my other shoulder, and we walked down my hill, over the valley, and up again to her several-story-tall doors.  The bridge that had solidly connected our pillars the night before was flickering; still present, but no longer solid.

I thumped the door, producing a hollow booming echo, and waited.  Gina answered the door - several of her, in Egyptianate outfits, armed with copper-headed spears, which they leveled at us.

"You're dreaming, Gina.  We're here to meet you.  It's Ben; that's Ray."

They looked puzzled, momentarily; then, with a flicker, a singular Gina was in front of us.

"Hey, that was faster than it happens for me." I noted.

"Yeah, I think I was on the edge of lucidity anyway."

"Nice place, tonight." Was Ray, taking in the entry way beyond the doors - squared clouns up and down the sides of a reflecting pool, with a curtained door at the far end.

"Oh, it worked, then?  Let's see the outside!"  So we stepped out together, and took a look at the outside of her fortress - after which she led us back inside.

"I got the idea from a couple things.  Like, concentrating on memories got me down here.  But also, there's this technique that supposedly helps you remember thing called a Memory Palace.  And after I saw the pillars, I thought, maybe I could arrange mine just by deciding on the arrangement I wanted, right?"

"Looks like it worked." I half-mumbled, looking at the terrible sketches she'd pencilled out sprung to life and shape, restacking place she'd seen and recalled into new shapes.

"Yeah; this is pretty much what I had in mind.  Just...  one thing."

"Hmm?"

"What's with the cat, coz?"

"Dunno.  It was in my apartment when I turned lucid, waiting for me."

"Cree-py."

Again, I shrugged, one-shouldered.

"So, ramblers!  This is truly cool, and Gina should talk us through how she did it when we wake up.  But now that I've got you both, let's get rambling.  I've got someone I want to try and visit." Ray piped up.

"If we do find them, and they remember the dream, couldn't they be a problem?" I asked.

"No, no chance.  I've got that figured."