The dream didn't feel like a dream.
There was no fade-in, no surreal edges. One moment Astraea was asleep in her human bed, in her human room, in the 21st century. The next, she was standing on a cliff under stars that were wrong.
The constellations were out of place. Not just slightly—centuries out of place. The sky was as it had been four hundred years ago, before precession had shifted the stars in their slow dance.
She knew this cliff. The northern aerie. Home.
But she wasn't seeing it with memory's eyes. She was here. The wind had bite. The stone under her feet (claws—she had claws here) was cold and familiar. The scent was right: ozone-high air, distant glaciers, the particular musk of dragon-roost.
This wasn't a memory. It was too present. Too now.
"You're late, little star."
The voice rumbled through the stone, through her bones. She knew it. Had been hearing echoes of it for weeks.
She turned.
Her father stood on the cliff edge, his form vast against the wrong-starred sky. Not the human-like form from the forge memory. His true form. Silver scales that drank starlight and gave it back changed. Wings that could blanket mountains. Eyes that held galaxies in their depths.
He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. And he was here.
"Father?" Her voice was small. Her dragon-voice, not her human one.
"You've been growing," he said, not moving. His voice was the mountain speaking. "I can feel it across the centuries. The thaw."
"I'm trying," she whispered. The wind tried to steal the words, but he heard.
"Trying?" He made a sound that might have been a laugh, if mountains laughed. "You're doing. Growth isn't something you try. It's something you are." He tilted his great head. "The world has changed around you."
"It has gates now. And sparkles. And Systems that think I'm a child."
"The world always finds new words for old magic." He took a step closer. The cliff trembled. "Do you remember your first flight?"
The memory surfaced, crisp as the night air. "You pushed me off this cliff."
"I gave you the sky," he corrected gently. "You chose to fly."
In the memory, she had been terrified. The drop had been endless. The wind had been a roar. And then, instinct had taken over. Wings had unfolded. Muscles had remembered what they were for.
She had flown.
"Flying after so long grounded will be harder," her father said, as if reading her thoughts. Perhaps he was. This was a dream, after all. Or something like one. "Your wings have been folded for centuries. Your sky-muscles have atrophied."
"I'm practicing," she said. And she was. In secret. In the abandoned playground. Tiny hovers. Short glides.
"It's not the mechanics I'm concerned with." He settled onto the cliff, his tail curling around the peak. "It's the remembering. What it feels like to be what you are." He looked at her, his galaxy-eyes serious. "They see you as a child."
"They see what I show them."
"Do you remember what I told you when you first learned to shift forms? To walk among humans?"
She did. The memory surfaced, clean and clear. "The form is a courtesy. The truth is beneath."
"Beneath," he agreed. "Not hidden. Beneath. Like bedrock under soil. The soil matters—it grows things. But the bedrock is what holds the mountain up." He leaned closer, his breath a warm wind scented with ozone and deep stone. "You've been showing them soil. Showing them what grows there. That's good. Necessary. But don't forget the bedrock, little star. Don't forget you're the mountain."
The dream-cliff shuddered. Not from his movement. From something deeper.
"The famine is ending," her father said, his voice suddenly urgent. "The gates are the first signs. The mana is returning. But what follows mana isn't always gentle."
"Follows?"
"Hunger attracts hunger," he said cryptically. "When the feast returns, so do the guests. Some welcome. Some… less so."
The stars above began to shift. Not the slow precession of centuries. A rapid slide. Time accelerating.
"I can't stay," her father said, his form beginning to fade at the edges. Not like a dream ending. Like a signal losing strength. "This connection… it's thin. The threads of memory can only hold so much."
"Wait," Astraea said, the child in her surfacing. The child who had missed her father for four centuries. "Don't go."
"I never left," he said gently. "I'm in the silver of your scales. In the beat of your heart. In every memory you've been unlocking." He was almost transparent now. A ghost against ghost-stars. "Grow, little star. The sky has missed you."
The last word echoed as he faded completely. Not just his form. The cliff. The stars. The wind.
Astraea woke with a gasp.
Her room was dark. The digital clock glowed 3:17 AM. The moonthread plant on her windowsill was blazing—not just glowing, but emitting actual light that painted silver patterns on the walls.
She was crying. Not sobbing. Quiet tears that tracked down her cheeks and tasted of salt and ozone.
Her father's voice still echoed in her mind. Not as memory. As present. Grow, little star. The sky has missed you.
She got up. Went to the window. The moonthread's light illuminated her hands as she touched its leaves. They were warm. Vibrating with a frequency that matched the hum in her own bones.
Outside, the city slept. Gates hummed their steady songs. Humans dreamed their brief dreams.
And somewhere, in whatever passed for wherever her father was, he was watching. Or had been watching. Or would watch.
Time felt fluid. The dream had been more than a dream. A connection. Thin, as he'd said. But real.
She checked her height against the wall marks, not because she expected growth, but because the ritual grounded her. 152.8 cm. Minimal.
But something else had grown. She could feel it. Not physical. The integration. The memories settling. The past becoming part of her present rather than a separate country.
The dream hadn't been a memory. It had been a conversation. Across centuries. Through whatever strange magic the thaw was unlocking.
[System Notification]
[Unusual Sleep Activity Detected]
[Brainwave patterns consistent with intense REM + anomalous gamma activity]
[Experience logged as: 'Vivid Dream - Family Reunion']
[Emotional Content: Very High]
[Analysis: Dream content reflects integration of recent memory material]
[Reward: +10 to 'Emotional Resilience' stat]
[Note: Dreaming about family is normal! It means you're thinking about your connections!]
The System was trying so hard. It saw a cross-century dragon conversation and called it "Dream - Family Reunion." It saw cosmic-scale emotional processing and called it "Emotional Resilience."
But for once, Astraea didn't mind the misclassification. The System was doing its best with the tools it had. It was like a child describing a supernova as "a really bright sparkle."
She went back to bed but didn't sleep. She lay watching the moonthread's light patterns on the ceiling. They shifted slowly, forming shapes that almost made sense. Constellations, but not human ones. Dragon constellations. The ones her father had taught her.
The Sky-Wyrm. The Star-Hoard. The Void's Heart.
She remembered them now. Not just as names. As maps. As stories written in stars.
The dream faded slowly, but the feeling remained. The certainty. Her father was with her. In memory. In blood. In the silver of her scales beneath glamour.
And he believed in her. Had always believed.
When dawn finally lightened the window, the moonthread's glow faded to its usual soft luminescence. The dream-feeling settled into something solid. Not loss. Not longing. Foundation.
Bedrock under soil.
She got up, dressed for CYAP. The ordinary routine—brush teeth, put on clothes, pack backpack—felt different. Not mundane. Sacred. The soil that grew things. The everyday that mattered precisely because it was everyday.
Mrs. Evans made pancakes. The scent of baking filled the apartment. Another memory surfaced—Elara making hearth-cakes—but this time it didn't overlay. It harmonized. Two moments of care, centuries apart, singing the same note.
At CYAP, Leo took one look at her and said, "Your bioluminescence is 15% brighter today. And your pupils are contracting differently—reacting to wavelengths outside human visual spectrum."
"I had a dream," Astraea said.
"About your father," Mia said, not a question. Her water orbs pulsed in soft rhythm. "The plants dreamed it too. The moonthread glowed all night. My glow-ferns at home were doing synchronized pulsing."
They knew. Of course they knew.
Teacher Milly began the day with "Morning Sparkle Circle." The children made their lights dance. Astraea made her three silver sparkles orbit in a pattern her father had taught her—the orbital dance of a binary star system.
No one noticed it was anything but a pretty pattern. Except Leo, who recognized the orbital mechanics. And Mia, whose water orbs tried to mimic the dance.
The day passed. Memories surfaced—a lesson here, a moment there—but they didn't overwhelm. They integrated. Became part of her now.
Her father's voice echoed in her mind, not as memory but as ongoing conversation: The sky has missed you.
She looked at the CYAP ceiling, painted with cheerful sparkle-clouds. Beyond it was sky. Real sky. The same sky she'd flown in four centuries ago. The same stars, slightly shifted.
She would fly there again. Not yet. But soon.
The dream had been a promise. From her father. From herself. From whatever forces moved behind the thaw.
[System Notification]
[Quest Updated: 'The Long Wait - Muscles Remember']
[Progress: Emotional/psychological foundation solidified. Memory integration: 41% complete.]
[Next Phase: Physical reconnection with dragon abilities.]
[Note: Remembering who we are helps us become who we're meant to be!]
For once, the System's note wasn't wrong. Just limited.
She was remembering who she was. Not just the dragon. The daughter. The student. The keeper of memories. The bridge between centuries.
And she was becoming who she was meant to be: Astraea. Not just a Luminous Child. Not just a Void Dragon. Both. And more.
That night, she didn't dream of her father. She dreamed of flying. Not memory-flying. Future-flying. Over a city that knew about dragons. Under stars that were both old and new.
And when she woke, the moonthread plant had bloomed. A single crystalline flower that held within it a tiny, perfect replica of the night sky—constellations as they had been four hundred years ago.
Her father's final gift. A piece of the past, blooming in the present.
The dreams weren't escapes from reality. They were conversations with it. Across time. Across form. Across the vast, patient space between a dragon's last goodbye and a daughter's continued growth.