Before the proper time, he took his child spirit and became born not of a father or a mother but of his own free will. He broke the code, the essential code, written in time before time. This code was not meant to be broken, and this is why he suffered for his breach.

He feared, though fear is not possible in the dreaming. Before his time, in the interminable moment when his time was nascent, he began to feel, and to feel is to begin to be human, and to be human is to fear.

He could not leave what he could never imagine being without, and so he took his hand, and they escaped the dreaming together, before their time.

In the dreaming, all are at once more yet less than lovers and friends and enemies and family, for such relations are human, and so it follows that only humans must endure them. In the dreaming, all are connected, and none are isolated. We who are here cannot imagine the dreaming, for it is only in our dreams we can sense it, and even dreams must fade with the dawn, as our human lives wane with time. But the dreaming is more real than reality. It is the sole reality. The immortal reality. The everlasting.

He knew, now, that what he had borne was the fault of his own actions. Adrian had told him so, and he was beginning to understand, as well, that his role in what they had done was improper and not in accordance with the mandates of the place he'd been before. They must return to that place, though Daniel did not yet fully comprehend it.

He had been painting every day, though he'd been using his hands instead of brushes. He'd begun covering the walls with color the moment he'd walked into that white-walled bedroom. Some concealed force had caused him to know, immediately, that they needed color. Light. Life. Why he knew to convert this place into his largest canvas yet he did not know; he understood only that he must do it, and Adrian, contrary to Daniel's notion that he would grow angry with the idea, conceded. Daniel's previous obsession with color—with mapping the contours of each hue's character—was of supreme value to him, now, for he began at one corner of the room in shades of yellow and, subtly, blended that beginning tone into each color of the rainbow so expertly that neither he nor Adrian could tell where one ended and the next began. The walls and the ceiling and even the floor began to turn into a veritable rainbow of life; the entire place vibrated with vitality; it was alive, this room, and he was a nonentity standing in the middle of it.

He had only a portion of the ceiling to complete, now. For days he'd worked on this room, so meticulously forging this life-size palette, this polychromatic spectrum, so incredible in its synthesis of colors—it was unreal; it did not look as though a human hand had painted it. The place appeared to have been naturally so, as though it could not possibly have been a white-walled, wooden-floored space prior.

The only thing giving away the fact that this was a room in an apartment was the solitary window, which Daniel left alone. "Without light," said he to Adrian, "there is nothing. It is light that draws the shapes of us, and it is dark that wipes them away."

During his work, Daniel again lost himself in time. He knew night and day only because when it grew dark, he must stop and go to bartend, and when it grew light, he returned to the apartment to continue painting. He did not feel hunger or thirst or grow tired—nothing like that. He only knew he had to paint and work: paint because it was unthinkable he do otherwise, and work because he needed the money from tips to send Adrian for paint. This was his life for days, and it entirely consumed him.

Since that moment when Adrian had confronted him in the alleyway, Daniel had been aware of an encroaching dread. For twenty-four hours that had passed like twenty-four days, he had felt sick to his stomach. That woman had spent the hours with him, taken him back to his apartment, where he'd lain on his mattress with the most horrid stomach pains he'd ever experienced. But the moment he'd decided to return to Adrian, the pain had subsided, and the woman had led him back to where he now stayed, in the room that he was painting.

Adrian had been receptive when he'd come back.

"You know, now?" he'd asked.

Daniel had replied, "I know only that I want to remember."

To which Adrian had said, as they sat upon the floor shutting out the rest of the world, this: "You know as I do—we do not belong here. Why have you adapted, when I have not? Why did you forget, when I remembered? I do not know these answers. We should not have come here, Daniel, but we were curious. We sit in this room, and we know as we sit here that something from within feels terribly wrong. This human life is constricted; I feel it pressing me inside myself with every moment that passes, but this is due to our inability to be human. I made the choice of coming here before I was due, and so I came in this form. And I brought you with me, for fear of losing you. Our times were different, yours and mine—we were not set for human birth together, and I was afraid as I began my life, for though this place denies us, we are eternally connected, and I could not leave you to wander this wilderness alone, just as I could not bear the thought of being alone, myself. Perhaps selfishness came into me as I came into this form, too, but I could not lose you. It did not matter, my plan: you forgot yourself, here, and I was left to wander until I could locate you. When I did, you had begun to live this life as if it had always been. Why? I cannot say. Why did I not forget? I cannot say.

"We are different, here, than we were before. But you do not remember this, do you? Before coming here, we were not so set. I was not so possessed of human feeling; it is detestable, and I do not enjoy the thought of returning here, if such is my lot. I, too, am losing memory of what was before this. As these human days wear on my human body, I begin to lose recollection of what we were, but I do still feel that it was far better than this. I was fooled into believing I could breach the ordinances of the dreaming; for this, I must remedy what was done and take you with me, back where we have come from. If it is so ordained that we return, then we will return as is proper, for we will always have the hidden kernel of wisdom that after this human reality, just as exists before it, is the eternal, of which we will always be."

Daniel had understood little of Adrian's words, but he had been entranced by his voice, by the look in the man's eyes—he'd instinctually known that what Adrian said was true. But Adrian had not had any instructions for Daniel, who had consequently moved on to paint the room. Adrian, sensing this was right, had allowed him to do it.

Daniel did not like going to the Burwin Tap at night to work. He wanted only to remain in his room and paint. As the days passed and his masterpiece neared completion, he'd begun to neglect his appearance so much that his co-workers and employer started to question him. He didn't realize how often paint splattered his face and arms, his clothing and hair. He was sent straight back to the restroom nearly every time he arrived and advised to wash up before serving drinks. Molly, who often made effort to speak with him, had asked him more than once what was going on in his personal life, but he had been unable to answer her correctly. How could he explain? He had instead focused on serving drinks, and he continued to be incredibly quick and efficient behind the bar, which was likely why he was still a welcome sight, even if he was disheveled.

There was a woman that followed him back and forth from Adrian to the bar. He was aware that it was the same woman who had assisted him during his illness, but why she was so intent on being near him he couldn't fathom, nor did he have the capacity to spend time wondering. She sometimes spoke to him, and he felt that he answered her sometimes, while other times ignoring her. She was always there, except when he returned to Adrian and continued to paint.

One of them was always in the room—he or Adrian. Nobody else was ever in it. When Daniel had painted the perimeter of the room, going from yellows to oranges to reds to purples to indigos to blues to greens and back to yellows, he began on the ceiling, where he extended every color from the top of the wall but took it lighter and lighter, painting it in gradation until, at the very center of the ceiling, all merged to a pinpoint of pure white. The ceiling then led him to work on the floor, where he extended each color toward the center of the floor, though instead of going lighter he made each darker and was going to continue that way until the very center of the floor was a hole of pure black. In this manner, the room consisted of every natural color.

It was on a night toward the end of July that he realized his color room was within four feet of completion. He had little space to paint, having left the very center of the room for last. As he worked, his perspiration dripping onto the floor to mingle with the dark colors his hands swirled across the wood, he began to feel the dread from weeks before return. This would be finished tonight. This would all be done within minutes. The anticipation was mounting.

Where was Adrian?

The moment Daniel thought this, the man entered the room. He did not look up from his work, as it was so close to being done. Each motion of his hands brought him closer to the end. The black paint began to be something more—something far more real. It took on life and seemed to move across the floor itself, without waiting for his hands to motivate it. Black lapped over the remaining spaces, ink-dark, layering and layering itself in the center of the room, eclipsing itself with darker and darker coats. Daniel worked furiously; this was his masterpiece; this was the purpose for his being here. What little he understood about this place was of no import if only he could complete this. It would end everything; it would strip him of his clouded memory. Rising, his arms and face and bare chest covered with dark paint so that he looked like some tribal man, he went to the window, opened it, and flung his last emptied paint can down into the alley below. The room was complete. He could not have anything marring its perfection. The room's only source of light was the window, and right then, the sinking sunlight was moving through it, wrapping the room in a glow that brought all of its colors to life, warping the light and dark pinnacles and presenting the mirage of a column of refulgence descending from the prick of light to the point of dark. It was utterly breathtaking, and in fact, Daniel found he could not breathe for a moment.

He knew Adrian was in the room and accepted the thing that the other man slipped into his open palm, and some part of him thrilled with the gift: had it been there all along? The slippery paint on his hand did not keep him from gripping the gun. When he realized Adrian had one, as well, the worlds of ignorance and cloud disintegrated in his brain. It was all so clear, now. So terribly, painfully clear.