The bus was miserable, smelly and overcrowded. Though it stopped in front of the old apartment buildings from Rand's, Ellette got off at about two blocks away on the opposite side of Leeson Park. She stood looking down the main path that ran through it. It was the most well-kept area of the park, and the safest.

Tourists, uptown joggers with their little cans of mace and walkmans, women with children and strollers and probably a little can of mace, and a variety of people with dogs, mace included in a handbag, wandered along the main path and a few of the other more well-patrolled areas through the park. The view from the bus stop, with the bright light of the late afternoon sun, the park looked like a cheery, hospitable place. Once night fell, from her Old Town apartment view, she knew that the scene would be much different. She started along the path.

Gravel crunched beneath the tread of her boots and leaves fluttered in the breeze. The trees seemed to crouch over the path, creating a canopy overhead. A woman with a child in tow nodded to Ellette as she passed by. Ellette watched her go, realizing that the woman was as young as she, with a three-year-old child. Once again she marveled at how quickly time seemed to pass, how much she seemed to miss, as well as how thankful she was that she had what she had.

She wandered on, passing the panhandlers and buskers. The shadows were elongating, curving over the land when the shade of the trees didn't hide their existence. Ellette paused at an intersection in the path to let a biker hum by. A busker with a guitar called to her from the foot of the aging wooden bridge.

The busker was a tiny woman with a wild mess of auburn curls haloing her head. She was barefooted with corduroy bell-bottoms and a halter-top that revealed much of her fair, freckled, and sun-burnt skin. She sat at the foot of the bridge with an acoustic guitar in her lap and the case lying open before her. A couple of coins lay in the case, glinting brightly in the late afternoon light. Ellette paused for the briefest of moments to take her in and then started off again.

"Wait!" she called.

Ellette turned.

The little woman squinted up at Ellette, and nodded her head. "Some dreams you must have."

"Dreams?" Ellette asked, caught off guard. "How would you know?"

"Ah yes. Dreams." The woman gave her guitar a considering strum. "Dreams as real as waking for you."

Ellette considered the smaller woman, wondering if she was insane, high, or perhaps serious. "Who are you?"

"Jessie, folks call me." She leapt to her feet. "Though who I am only I know for sure." The woman held her guitar by the neck and thrust the other hand forward for Ellette to shake.

Ellette took her hand, and for the first time caught a glimpse of Jessie's perfectly sane, startling green eyes. "My name's Ellette."

"Hmmm. Fae woman." Jessie nodded again, her nest of hair bouncing with the movement.

"What are you talking about?"

"You're very fae. If not in blood, in spirit. Even your name says so. You know that, though. You have dreams. Wild, real, frightening dreams." Jessie grinned, flashing a set of perfect, white teeth. "By the way, you should never give your true name," she said grimly. "It holds power, but don't worry, I won't tell anyone."

"How would you know? I mean about the dreams." The woman had definitely caught her attention. She was intrigued, to say the least, though she wished she knew what the word fae meant exactly.

"It's obvious in your aura," Jessie answered with a bob of her head. Childlike energy seemed to radiate from her and yet she had a graveness about her. "Yep. Very fey."

"Can you tell me anything about these dreams, why I have them?"

"Simple. The answer is within yourself."

Ellette had begun to lose her patience. She wasn't so much irritated with her as she was at herself for being drawn in the first place.

"Oh, sure that helps. Well, Jessie, it was nice meeting you. Lucky guess about the dream thing. Here's a dollar for your efforts." Ellette tossed the money into the case and started off again.

"You have dreams where you help people. Many many people," the little woman shouted. "You were once one of the few that remembered, cared, and could help. You have forgotten them. You have betrayed them! Your nightmares are a manifestation of their suffering," the woman rambled, pointing at Ellette's receding back.

Ellette wished she hadn't listened, but she did. She heard every word. The sense they made was frightening, but when turned again, the woman was gone.

***

"I had a strange encounter on my way home today," Ellette said as she plopped down on the worn couch and began unlacing her shoes.

Rand looked up from his book and reached over to the stereo to turn down the music.

"I decided to walk through the park on my way, instead of riding that god awful bus the whole way."

"So that's why you're late." Rand dog-eared the page and closed the book.

"I hate it when you do that, ruins the pages," Ellette muttered. Rand just brushed back a lock of his unruly hair. "You could at least use a bookmark. Anything will do."

"Who'd you meet in the park, someone else from a dream?" he said, pointedly ignoring her comment. Ellette glared at him and tossed one of her boots at him. He deftly blocked it with the book.

"No. I didn't meet someone else from a dream. You're still the only figment of my imagination come to life."

He snorted at that.

"I would have rather had that cute guy from Montana I dreamt about come to life, but I guess you'll do."

Now it was his turn to toss the boot.

She giggled, kicking it away with her other, still booted foot. "Seriously, though," she said, slipping off the other boot. "I had this hippie busker with a guitar stop me and start rambling about me being fae. Whatever that is." She sat back and stretched her long, thin legs. "Then she started on about dreams. That caught my attention until I figured that she was just trying for money. I tossed her a couple of dollars and started to walk off, then she said something about how real my dreams are and how I help people in them, and how I'm like the only help they have. She said that I have betrayed them. Then she said that was why I was having nightmares." Rand's brow was furrowed in thought after she finished.

"Is that all she said?" he asked, leaning forward, the book on his lap, his elbows propped on the book, his chin resting his palms.

"Yeah. I had tried to ignore her, and walk off while she said the last bit. When I turned to ask more, she was gone," Ellette explained.

"Are you sure this wasn't just another dream?" Rand asked, his head cocked to the side.

"Rand!"

He held his hands up, a grin painting his face. "Sorry, couldn't help it," he apologized quickly before she found something new to hurl in his direction. "All these strange dreams and your strange encounters are just a little too weird not to make fun of. Really though, I believe you, and I'm very happy it's not me having to deal with it."

Ellette sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. She tried to look irritated but came out looking more like a stubborn, gangly, street kid.

Rand got up to put up his book, ruffling her hair. As he put the novel on the shelf, he pulled down another, thicker, older looking book. "The word fae has to do with magic and fairies," he mused. "Here," he said, handing her the book, "this book talks a little about that type of thing."

"She said I had fae blood, or at least fae spirit," Ellette said, running her fingers over the inlaid cover of the book.

"Weird." Rand sat back down in his chair. "You sure she wasn't just high as a kite and you heard what you wanted to hear?"

"I know she wasn't stoned. I know it sounds silly, but her eyes were perfectly sane."

Rand rolled his eyes.

Ellette failed to catch the gesture, already thumbing through the book thoughtfully.

"Tomorrow's your day off, right?" Rand asked.

Ellette nodded.

"Mine too. I think maybe we need to take a nice long walk in the park tomorrow."

***

The scene in the park was much like it had been the evening before, only the light had reversed. They walked the same path, the shadows of early morning crisscrossing the path. Her head down, hands thrust deep into her pockets, Ellette walked a couple of steps ahead of Rand. Her sleep had once again been interrupted by horrifically real dreams, and she was ready for some answers. Though he realized her urgency, Rand couldn't help but enjoy the morning, flute in hand, ready for whenever Ellette found her answers.

"Where's the damn bridge!" A yuppie sitting on the grass reading looked up at Ellette, startled. She scowled at him, daring him to pull out that mace he was reaching for. Rand, catching the exchange, upped his pace and steered Ellette ahead by the elbow.

"If I had known you were going to act like this, I would have never let you out of your cage," Rand whispered to her.

She jerked out of his grasp. "Unlike you, I am not a morning person. Also, unlike you, I haven't been able to sleep for the past week!"

"You could at least try to be civil. You're not the only one with problems," he snapped back.

"You think I don't know that? I deal with people's problems every night. I can't have a dreamless sleep or even a pleasant dream without ending up on some kind of crusade for the needy. These are my dreams! Dreams are the one complete escape, and I can't dream." She flung her hands in the air and began walking down the path again, Rand trailing after.

She knew people were staring, but she didn't care. They lived in the same city she did, they had surely seen a raving lunatic before. "Now I have nightmares. I just wanted to forget everyone else's problems and enjoy my life since I actually have one." She stopped and sat down on the still faintly dewy grass.

"It used to be a comfort to go out and save people in my dreams like a superhero or something. It was a comfort to know people were worse off than myself and to know that I was needed somehow, even if I thought the people I saved were imaginary. It was nice to be able to think that if I ever was in that situation that I could be useful." She put her head in her hands and Rand knelt beside her. "Now I just want to be normal."

"There is no such thing as normal." Rand and Ellette both looked up to find a tiny woman looking down at them, her curly locks ablaze in the sunlight. "Heroes often don't have a choice. You did, and you can't back out now."

Ellette looked up at Jessie, squinting at the sun. "What do you mean I had a choice? I didn't choose to be insane." Ellette said, brushing a few strands of hair from her forehead.

"Not to be insane, to help people. Let me put it this way. You tore down a barrier in your mind willingly to escape your own life. That wall can't be rebuilt. The lives of others will forever touch your own."

"Who are you?" Rand asked.

Jessie smiled down at him.

"You may call me Jessie, though that is not the name the fair folk know me by."

Rand only blinked, not knowing how to respond.

"I know what's going on," Ellette said, glaring at the woman. "You're a schizo, the voices who talk to you told you come harass me, right? Why me? I don't need this." To Ellette's surprise, Jessie laughed.

"You're not so far from wrong. Only if I'm schizophrenic, what's your problem? Normal people can tell the difference between dreams and reality."

"I don't know," Ellette whispered, her voice cracking slightly.

"If this conversation doesn't turn constructive very soon, I suggest you leave." Rand rumbled. Ellette couldn't help but feel heartened by his protectiveness.

"I only want to help, but as you well know, it hurts to heal," Jessie said.

"What then," Ellette asked, "what do you want me to do? What is it you want to tell me?"

"You must stop denying who you are. You must accept that your dreams are not dreams."

"I know they aren't..."

"Then stop fighting them! You are a hero of the night. What are dreams to you is reality to others. You cannot be hurt or killed, but you must help."

"I'm no hero. I would be living on the streets if it wasn't for Rand," Ellette protested.

"You were a hero for Rand," Jessie said. The words hit home. She began to turn away, having said what she'd needed to.

"Wait." Ellette got to her feet. The little wild-haired woman stopped. "Even heroes get a chance to rest, even if only for a night. Do I ever get a rest? All I really wanted was a respite. I can't work for a living..."

"Or stay halfway sane," Rand put in. Ellette smiled at him, knowing that he was implying that he'd support her if she couldn't support herself.

"If I can't sleep properly once in a while," she continued.

"No one can live on thanks alone," Jessie said, her attention once again focused on Ellette. "Respite will come with acceptance. Before you began to deny and fight your dreams, did they come every night and disrupt your life?"

Ellette couldn't answer, she couldn't remember.

"Only when you wanted to be someone else did they begin to disturb you."

Ellette sighed and looked down. There was never an easy way out. Rand put his hand on her shoulder.

"She's gone," he said.

"She made it sound so simple. But it's not," she said with a long sigh. "I don't know if I know how to go back..."

"At least you have something to aim for, something to try," he said.

She nodded. He was right, as she was beginning to find usually was. They stood in silence for a while, watching the world come to life as the morning progressed.