(dream o1) they say the devil's water, it ain't so sweet (week 20, day 5)
[ The drumming of the rain outside leaks into this dream, a constant white noise that is somehow never unpleasant. ]
You’re walking along the beach you first came to in Mizusato. The sky overhead is steely gray and the warm rain has soaked through all your clothes. You’ve taken your shoes and socks off and are wiggling your toes in the softened sand. Drag your foot through the sand and you leave trails behind you that wash away when the next wave comes foaming up the shore. For some reason, you feel closer to home than you have in days.
It’s funny, you say aloud, you never used to like rain.
Aquos is out in the bay; you wave to him from the shore. Winged Kuriboh is splashing in a puddle that looks more like its own tide pool. None of your other monsters have come out to play in the rain, but their presence can be felt in the cards at your hip, and they seem content not to get wet. It’s a soothing sort of day; the nervous tension that’s been building since your arrival in Kannagara has dissipated, for the most part.
Yubel is perched in a tree not far ahead, hunched a little, her wings spread above her like an enormous leathery umbrella. You’re going to catch cold if you don’t put your shoes on, she scolds.
You jump through the next three puddles you see, and that earns you an eye-roll. You’re not looking up when she does it; you simply feel the expression as if you are doing it yourself. You laugh. She’s starting to sound like a mom, you say (“a mom,” not “your mom”). She sniffs, and says she would hope not.
A break in the clouds. The both of you look up. The rain has not abated, but the sun is peeking through the cloud layer, dappling the beach with golden spots. It is beautiful, too beautiful. You don’t have a name for how it looks. With the sun, you can see the shapeless mass of island on the horizon much more clearly. In fact, you realize, it is Duel Academy Island.
You laugh. It was there the whole time! All this time, you’ve been maybe a kilometer from the school! But the seas are rough. You can see the waters roiling dark in the channel between islands. Yubel shakes her head. You cannot swim across, she tells you. It’s dangerous.
You pace at the shoreline. The academy is right before your eyes. If only -
But before you can even finish the thought, you see that a rainbow is forming in the sky, from the light and the flowing water. It solidifies, brightens before your eyes. One arc ends on your beach, maybe 50 meters away. You test it with a foot. It holds. It moves. It’s not a rainbow - it’s Rainbow Dragon, his tail on your island and his head on Duel Academy Island, and your heart leaps to see him, because that means -
You run, run up the dragon’s back into the sky, heedless of the meters and meters of air below you, between you and the sea. Because there is only one duelist in the entire world with the Crystal Beast deck, and if Rainbow Dragon is here, then he’s here, and it’s going to be okay. You reach the apex of the rainbow’s arc, and Johan is sitting with a fishing line that stretches all the way down to the ocean, down for what feels like the heights of several skyscrapers stacked on top of one another.
He grins at you as you sit next to him, and his eyes are as clear as the sea. How are they biting? you ask him. Not well, he says, probably the rain. Ruby Carbuncle purrs, wrapped around his shoulders. The sky is gray and flecked with sunlight. Your feet dangle over the edge of Rainbow Dragon’s back, dripping with rain- and saltwater.
When do you think the rain’s going to stop? you ask, although you wouldn't mind it too much if it didn't. It's not bad, as rain goes.
Johan adjusts his line. Not for a while, he says. They haven’t fixed it yet.
Fixed what? you ask, because you’re pretty sure that’s not how rain works, but Johan is standing up, and so you stand up with him. He’s reeling in his fishing line. You’re going to have to stay on your toes, he tells you, because from the looks of things, that place is pretty dangerous.
What is he talking about, you ask, getting frustrated, look, Duel Academy’s right there, let’s just go, why don’t you both just go? Johan shakes his head solemnly, and presses into your hands the thing that was on the end of his hook. It’s a sheathed broadsword, belts attached, almost as long as you are tall and it’s heavy, so much so that you almost lose your balance. You’re gonna need that, he says, you better learn how to use it.
You protest, you don’t even know how to use it, you can’t even lift the damn thing, but Johan’s already turning back to descend down his end of the dragon’s back. You move to pursue him -
your foot slips on the rain-slick scales -
and you’re falling, weighed down by the massive weapon you can’t get rid of, because the swordbelt that the scabbard is strung on is all tangled up in your arms, and you’re falling, and you’re -
You hit water.
[ Juudai snaps awake where he had fallen asleep earlier, resting underneath a hanging jut of rock near the shore. He doesn't seem to notice the Hitomi, just rubs his eyes and looks around until he gets his bearings.
"Well," he says, to no one in particular, "that could have been worse." ]