Fubuki's POV
I dream that I'm swimming. But not in a public pool - pools don't have fish of every size and color, with miles of blue in every direction. Pool water doesn't reflect the moonlight like a giant kaleidoscope above my head, sending silver diamonds across my skin. Pool water doesn't fill my senses with the scent of salt.

Pool water doesn't give me the ability to breathe.

That was the first clue that told me I was dreaming. Even though I was clearly miles beneath the water's surface, I could still breathe like I would if I was above. My body felt as buoyant as if I was filled with air. I was clearly dreaming.

But everything else feels so real, I thought to myself, blowing out a steady stream of bubbles and watching as they danced around my outstretched arm. I could swear that I felt them as they landed and bounced off my skin. It's amazing.

My boy...

The words reached my ears, gentle as a whisper and yet loud enough to drown out every other sound within the span of its existence. Curiosity drove me to search for the source of the voice, but I couldn't see any other person in the water with me.

My successor...

It came once more, yet I still couldn't determine where it was coming from. I started to watch the fish as they darted around me, almost expecting to find a moving mouth. At least that would solidify the fact that I was dreaming...

My child...

This time, I was compelled to look directly in front of me at the endless expanse of deep blue. Before my very eyes, a light started to shine from within the blue. The fish around me started to swim faster, all heading towards the light and obscuring it from view for a second. When they finally cleared, the magical breath-allowing water rushed into my mouth as it dropped open.

The light had changed. It now outlined and filled a feminine form, somehow lithe and ethereal at the same time, with wavy hair that seemed to flow around her shoulders as if it was its own current. There seemed to be no beginning or ending to her - the light that shaped her seemed to blur into the blue around her, almost as if she was made out of the water itself.

One with the water.

One with the sea.

It was an explanation that made sense to my mind, but I couldn't remember how I'd come to that conclusion.

My confusion made me immobile as the woman gradually drifted closer, her glowing eyes seeming to take me in as much as I was taking her in. She paused when she was about two feet away from me, then reached a glowing hand towards my face. The slender fingers felt like nothing more than a gentle current as they brushed my cheek. Her eyes stared directly into mine, as if she could stare into my soul and see every part of me. Going off of the warm smile on her watery face, I hoped she liked what she saw.

My child...

This time when the words came, it was clearly her light-lined mouth that had made them. Her fingers slowly tilted my head back until I was gazing directly up at the surface of the water. The white face of the full moon winked down at me through the depths, round and bright.

It quickly became all I could see, as darkness rapidly rose from the corners of my eyes and I got the impression that I was falling. All the while, though, those gentle fingers kept holding my face, assuring me that I was not alone. As the darkness started to swallow the moon as well, the woman's soft voice came once more:

I cannot wait to meet you...

—————

I had waken up in my bed in a cold sweat, though not from fear - from the sheer realness of it all. I had been swimming. I had been breathing. I had seen fish. I had seen the full moon.

I had seen a woman made of water. I had felt her hold my face. I had heard her say "I cannot wait to meet you."

Just what did that mean?

I had been in a daze for the rest of the day. I barely ate my breakfast or lunch, hardly spoke to anyone, and didn't bother paying attention in class. My time was spent on continually doodling the woman's face in the margins of my notebook. It's hard to explain, but I had this kind of desperate need to commit her features to memory, lest the entire dream becomes nothing more than a fantasy.

Yet as I scratched out doodle after doodle of the woman from my dream, I couldn't help but wonder... do I know this woman?

I stayed in this state of numbness for the duration of school. Everything I did during or after was purely mechanical - muscle memory. I probably would have stayed in my little bubble of unawareness until the next time I went to sleep if someone hadn't snapped their fingers dangerously close to my face.

"Yo - are ya with us, Little Man?" Orochi asked, frowning down at me; he'd been the one who'd snapped his fingers. Finally released from my haze, I took in my surroundings for the first time all day. I realized that I was sitting on the Monastery steps, looking out onto the courtyard as some of the larger guys sparred. I was here and I was wearing my training gi, but I couldn't remember ever coming here or putting it on. I must really be out of it, I thought in bewilderment.

Orochi was still staring at me with concern, and his stance was starting to gather the attention of those closest to us, so I had to give him an answer. "Yeah, I'm here."

"You sure?" The musician asked, crouching down. "Because a few seconds ago, you looked like your soul was on a different planet. It was kinda creepy-looking."

"I'm fine," I blurt out, drawing my knees to my chin. His searching gaze was starting to make me uncomfortable, and who knows what else he could hear with those big ears of his? "Just a little tired, that's all."

"Bad dream, or insomnia?"

"Not insomnia," I quickly denied. The last thing I needed was the others thinking I had some kind of disorder. We already had enough on our plate with Jin's narcolepsy making him fall asleep everywhere. "Just... a really weird dream, I guess."

"Weird how?" Quon piped up from where he'd apparently sat close enough to eavesdrop.

"I don't really know," I admitted truthfully. The realness of the dream came back to me and I shuddered as the phantom bubbles bounced against my skin. "It felt... so real."

"Dreams sometimes have meaning," Valt piped up from where he was also eavesdropping. "Like one time, I had a dream that Cuza, Carl, and I were trapped in this really creepy graveyard, and we were being attacked by a vampire!" He pressed his hands to his cheeks as a mask of horror overtook his features. "I found out when I woke up that Cuza had the exact same dream... and then we actually met the vampire!" He finished with a dramatic whisper.

"W-What's this about vampires?" Cuza asked from the other end of the steps; his face had instantly turned pale. Unlike the others, he had the good sense not to eavesdrop, though that was about to change.

"Vampires! Squawk!" Cuza added cheerfully.

"First of all, we've established that it wasn't a vampire," Honcho added from next to Valt. "It was just Cuza's old circus friend, Clio."

"You guys talking about Clio?" Daigo asked, walking over to our little group. "He's not a vampire - he's just a guy with a weird hankering for tomato juice!"

"Like that makes it any less terrifying?" Cuza breathed in fear; his pale face had yet to regain its color.

"Wait, what's up with you?" Honcho asked the acrobat. "I thought you two buried the hatchet - you know, let bygones be bygones."

"Some scars don't heal so easily, I guess," Cuza rebutted theatrically, holding his sides as his eyes closed in an expression of mock mourning.

"Okay, calm down, Mr. Childhood Trauma," Orochi told him, waving his hand passively. While Cuza looked appalled at the casual dismissal, the musician turned his attention back to me. "So you had a weird dream of... what, exactly?"

My cheeks inflamed and I pressed myself further against the stairs under the weight of the eyes. Now that I think about it, my dream was weird - borderline crazy, even. It was hard enough for me to believe. How would they react?

"Come on, little man, spill the beans," Honcho goaded me.

"Yeah, it can't be any weirder than two guys sharing a dream about a vampire," Quon added somewhat helpfully.

"THERE WAS NOTHING WEIRD ABOUT IT!" Valt and Cuza screamed in defense.

Some of the guys who were sparring were starting to take notice of the noise, so I decided to just get it over with. "Fine!" I yelled before yet another argument could break out. "I... dreamt of a woman."

Jeez, if those gathered weren't quiet before, they were after that reveal. It was Orochi who decided to break the quiet with a timid "W-well, the fact that you referred to her as a woman instead of just a girl at your age is a little ... out of the ordinary, but other than that..."

"That's not the weird part," I interrupted him. Might as well avoid beating around the bush.

"There's more weird?" Honcho asked, sounding slightly worried.

"Loads of weird," I admitted with a sigh, then started to recount the events of my dream. "I was swimming in the ocean. Lots of fish were around me. I was probably miles beneath the surface, but I could still breathe. Then all of a sudden... she was there. Almost as if she'd come from the water itself."

The others only stared at me. My gut was right before; they were looking at me as if I was possessed. Honcho even grimaced and tilted his head back, clasping his hands together as if in prayer. "Oh please, God, don't let this be a young boy's developing wet dreams."

I tilted my head at him. "But I love water, though. Why wouldn't I want to dream of swimming?" I asked him. Other than the sudden appearance of the woman, the dream had been every child's birthday wish: the ability to breathe underwater.

"He's too innocent," Quon said with an eye roll.

"Not those kinds of dreams, Little Man," Orochi told me, patting the top of my head. "But that's a lesson for another day."

"Why?" Valt asked; he looked just as clueless as I was. "What's wrong with dreaming about swimming?"

"Yeah - swimming's awesome!" Cuza added with vigor.

Quon looked like he was all too happy to explain, but Orochi pinched his fingers together in front of his face. "Let's keep them innocent for at least a few more years," He ordered. The serious look on his face kept Quon's mouth shut.

It bugged me that I was being kept out of the loop, but it was time to drop the topic. "Like I said, it's weird," I grumbled, trying to make myself as small as I could against the wooden steps. "Just forget about it."

"I don't know if I would call it 'weird'," Said a voice new to our little group.

We all whipped around to see PIXAL, who seemed to have spontaneously spawned next to Honcho. Judging from the expressions of those around me, absolutely no one had heard her approach - even Orochi looked stunned. Honcho actually jumped up a foot or two and let out a high pitched scream. When he saw that it was nothing more than our scarily quiet teacher, he seemed to deflate on himself. "For the love of... we need to put a bell on you..." He heaved.

PIXAL smirked at him, though immediately turned her attention to me. "You say that you had a dream about a woman made of water?" She asked politely.

I didn't even try to deny it; chances were she'd heard our entire discussion. "Yeah, I did. But so what - it's just a dream," I told her, keeping my gaze on the ground. "It's just weird, it doesn't mean anything."

"I don't think so," PIXAL gently told me wrong. "The thing is... you're not the first one to tell me that you've had such a dream."

My gaze immediately snapped up to meet hers, my jaw dropping open and my hopes soaring. "Really? So... does that mean that you know what it means?" Does my bizarre dream actually have a meaning?

PIXAL smiled that rage-inducing smile of hers, that I know something that you don't and I'm going to reveal it in as few bits as possible smile. "I do indeed. And it's not so much a dream, as it is a letter of some sort."

"A letter?" Orochi inquired for me. "A letter for what?"

PIXAL's smile somehow got even wider on her shiny face. "From the woman he saw," She revealed. While we were still reeling from that revelation, she delivered the final blow, "It's her way of telling you that she wants to meet you."

—————

2252 words.

Man, it's been a while since I've updated this thing! I've been so caught up with finishing the God AU that I've put off publishing more chapters! Not to mention that the WiFi in my school has more holes than Swiss cheese, so I couldn't update even if I wanted to...

Sorry that this chapter is much much shorter than those that came before it - I'm just trying to get back into the swing of things! I promise that I'll make the coming chapters a bit longer!

And don't worry - I have something special in mind for Fubuki's arc!