The Dream That Didn't Belong to Her

Dawn crept through the trees like a thief, and I woke to find my daughter standing.

Not walking—she'd never crawled, never taken those first wobbling steps every mother waits for. She stood upright in the center of our fire circle, perfectly balanced on legs that shouldn't hold her weight. Her eyes were closed, arms raised as if reaching for something only she could see. And from her open mouth came a sound that froze my blood.

It wasn't crying. Wasn't babbling. It was an echo—someone else's scream filtered through infant vocal cords, distant and desperate and absolutely not hers.

"Dorian." My voice came out strangled.

He woke instantly, blade singing from its sheath before his eyes fully opened. But when he saw Ashara, the weapon trembled in his grip.

"She's not dreaming," he breathed. "She's channeling."

I lunged for her, mother's instinct overriding caution. The moment my hands touched her, she collapsed—boneless, limp, still deep in whatever sleep had possessed her to stand. Her weight felt wrong, as if she carried more than her small frame should hold.

"Look." Dorian's voice pulled my attention to the ground.

The fire circle was filled with footprints. Dozens of them, pressed into ash and dirt. Bare feet of different sizes—some child-small, others clawed, a few that looked almost human but wrong in ways I couldn't name. They circled where Ashara had stood, as if invisible visitors had danced around my daughter while she slept.

None of them matched her tiny feet.

"What is this?" I clutched her closer, feeling her heartbeat steady against my chest. Normal. Human. Nothing like the thing that had stood and screamed with borrowed voice.

"I think..." Dorian crouched by the prints, not touching but studying. "I think she's dreaming through other people. And they're leaving marks."

The idea should have been impossible. But we'd long since passed impossible, hadn't we?

That night, I kept Ashara close, whispering the lullaby that had become our anchor. Her breathing evened out, matching mine, and exhaustion pulled me under despite my intention to stay vigilant.

I woke in a world that wasn't mine.

A cathedral of bone and moonstone hung suspended in nothing, its spires reaching toward a moon that looked too close, too aware. At the center, where altar should be, sat a simple wooden crib. Inside lay a girl with Ashara's face—older, maybe ten, wearing robes of shadow and starlight. Her eyes, when they opened, were black as the void between stars.

"Mother." The word came without her lips moving, resonating through the bone walls. "You're early. I wasn't ready to show you yet."

"Show me what?" I moved toward the crib, each step echoing wrong in the vast space.

"What I've been collecting." She sat up with fluid grace no child should possess. "I borrowed a name. It wasn't hers. But I liked how it tasted."

The air shimmered, and suddenly every wall bloomed with images. Not memories I recognized—not mine, not Dorian's, not anyone I'd ever met. Strangers' lives played out in fragments:

A child in what looked like the Ember Wastes, waking to find her brown hair had turned white overnight. Her mother screaming about curses while the girl whispered a name she'd never heard—Ashara.

A young woman in the Glass Marshes, suddenly speaking in tongues during morning prayer. The languages poured from her mouth, ancient and terrible, while her eyes rolled back to show only white.

A priest—god, he looked so young—collapsing in his temple after spending the night carving symbols into his own skin. My daughter's name, written over and over in scripts that predated human memory.

"Stop." My voice came out broken. "You're hurting them."

The dream-child tilted her head, and for a moment I saw my baby there—confused, innocent, trying to understand. "I didn't mean to. I was just curious. Their lives felt soft. Easy to slip inside. Like trying on clothes that almost fit."

"That's not—you can't just—"

"I know." She looked past me, toward something I couldn't see. "But there's something else inside me. Something knocking. Not curious. Not kind. It wants the names I've tasted. Wants the lives I've touched." Her void-eyes found mine. "What if I can't keep it out? What if one day I wake up and I'm not me anymore, but all of them?"

The moon above the cathedral cracked like an egg. Light poured through—not silver but hungry gold, reaching with fingers made of other people's dreams.

The vision shattered.

I jolted awake to find Dorian across our dead fire, and my heart stopped. Bruises mottled his arms—deep purple-black marks that hadn't existed when we'd slept. His left arm showed burns, as if he'd thrust it into flame that existed only in dreams. He muttered in his sleep, words slurred but desperate:

"Don't take her name... it's not yours... she needs it to stay human..."

"Dorian!" I reached for him, but stopped when I saw Ashara.

She slept peacefully between us, but wrong. Her fingers twitched in precise patterns, as if weaving invisible thread. Her lips shaped syllables I recognized from the dream-cathedral, soundless but forceful. And her hair—

Her hair had lightened. Just at the tips, but unmistakably. The same shade as the girl from the Glass Marshes who'd spoken in tongues.

"Oh, little one," I breathed, understanding hitting like a physical blow. "You're collecting again."

Not identities this time. Not trying to be everyone. But experiences. Memories. Pieces of other lives that felt interesting, that caught her attention in the vast web of dreams her mind could apparently access.

She was trying them on like clothes. And some of them were sticking.

I gathered her into my arms, wrapping us both in my cloak as if I could shield her from her own power. Dorian groaned, finally waking, and I saw the moment he registered the damage—confusion, then fear, then weary acceptance.

"She visited me," he said simply. "In dreams. Wanted to know what burning felt like. I tried to show her without—" He gestured to his arm. "I failed."

"This has to stop." But even as I said it, I knew how impossible that was. How did you teach an infant to dream small? How did you contain power that leaked through sleep itself?

I held Ashara close as dawn broke properly, speaking to her in the soft voice I'd used since her birth. But now the words carried weight beyond lullabies:

"We're going to teach you how to dream small. How to live inside your own skin. Because if you don't, one day you'll wake up in someone else's body and forget how to come home."

She stirred at my voice, eyes opening—still silver, still hers, but carrying depths that hadn't been there before. She smiled at me, innocent and terrible, and reached up to touch my face with fingers that had woven dreams I couldn't see.

The wind whispered through leaves, carrying a sound that made my blood chill. Somewhere, far away, another child was crying. Not from pain or fear, but from loss—sobbing a name they'd never heard before yesterday.

"Ashara," the wind brought their voice. "Why is my name Ashara now?"

In my arms, my daughter cooed contentedly, unaware of the children across the realm who'd wake forever changed. Unaware that with each dream, she spread like ripples in still water.

Unaware that some minds, once touched, could never quite remember who they'd been before her curious fingers found them in sleep.