James watched the sun vanishing into the motionless waters of the loch, taking with it the brilliant colours of the late summer day, permitting the indescribable beauty of nature to awaken his painter's spirit for a long while after Siena had put the phone down, before he finally walked back inside.

He smiled as he realised that he was starting to know her well enough to notice how her irresistible Italian accent became more prominent whenever she got flustered, or simply surprised by something he said or did, or better when she imagined something as a result. He knew well what it meant to be blessed by such a vivid imagination; it felt like a curse sometimes. But he was glad that they were the same in this, he enjoyed reading into her reactions, and this was as sure a sign of her not being indifferent to him as her frequent blush, or the hitch in her breathing.

As he let his eyes stroll around the silent, desolate cottage, for the first time ever, James felt lonely at home. He had gotten used to Siena's presence in his life over the last two weeks; he would give anything for her to be there with him...

Forgetting entirely that he had meant to cook, he walked into the only other room the ancient cottage contained apart from the open plan sitting room and kitchen, his bedroom. In two strides he reached the easel standing by the window that offered a view of a different part of the endless lake than the front room, and removed the unfinished oil painting of the surrounding countryside, replacing it with a clean square of canvas. His sketchbook was still in his unpacked luggage, but he didn't need it to refresh his memory, Siena's face was as clear in his mind as if she stood in front of him now. 

Grabbing a pencil from a long, narrow box full of paint tubes and brushes set beneath the mounted canvas, he closed his eyes briefly, summoning his memories of Siena, and in the fast falling night flooding the room gradually he quickly sketched her face-- smiling, natural, caught off guard by something silly he had said just to make her laugh. Having done that, the roughly sketched likeness being finished in a few minutes, he replaced the canvas with a clean one and sketched her again, sleeping this time, her face relaxed and untroubled by thoughts, making her look so young, and beautiful... He would never forget the moment when she asked him to stay the night with her, how it felt holding her in his arms the whole time as she slept... There was something special in sleeping next to another person for the first time; it required complete trust and created a level of intimacy and a connection between two souls like nothing done together consciously could.

He completed his second sketch as quickly as the first, and refusing to allow himself to start painting and losing himself in fantasies about her now, he only permitted himself to set out the colours he would use to paint her later. White, because she was kind, caring and pure like freshly fallen snow, burnt sienna and ochre and yellow cadmium for she was unique and precious and blonde like those golden hues, and the reds and greens and blues to create her beloved ash rose colour, and Monet's waterlies pastels as those were the shades that composed her soul in his mind's eye.

He returned into the sitting room then, switching on the light to disperse his memorised images of her like the shadows of the falling night, and walked to his typewriter where he had placed the piece of the crimson stone Albert had given him. 

He could almost feel its pull; it was as if the gem was calling him, whispering that it could do so much more for him than taking him and Siena into the book worlds... 

But what exactly? 

From the little information Albert had given him, James knew that the stone didn't have a name. It was so rare that apart from the chunk the Society owned and split into pieces for the ring and the pendant for the Book Travellers, and several more parts for study purposes, it apparently didn't exist on Earth. On James' version of Earth, that is... Because if there was a grain of truth in the legend which Alicia had recounted to him and Siena before their first quest, and the mysterious gem really came from the first Book Traveller's dream, then it meant that it was most likely brought from one of the countless parallel worlds. 

Which one?

He shook his head. It wasn't important because they would never find out. It happened too long ago, if it really happened, and as Alicia had said, the Society's records had been poorly kept in the past. What mattered was that the stone's existence suggested that just like the book worlds, there was most probably another parallel world that needed to be explored with the help of this mysterious gem-- the world of dreams. 

Was every dream he had ever had real somewhere beyond this reality? Was everybody's? Or did this apply only to those like him and Siena, people especially sensitive to the existence of parallel universes? James had no idea, but the possibilities were endless. 

He needed to test the stone. 

Even though Albert, who seemed to have taken a liking for him, assured him that he could do whatever he liked with the shard of the red gem he had given him, it took James a long time to decide to touch it, then search his wooden trunk full of gadgets and instruments pushed under the table with the typewriter for something that would help him to split the stone. A part of his mind was telling him that he needed to reduce a part of it into powder to study it better, while the other half was reminding him that the stone was irreplaceable-- what the Society had was all there was and it could not be renewed.

It felt like a sacrilege when he finally carried the fragment of the nameless gem, glittering like a large drop of petrified blood in the weak, warm light filling the cottage to the empty hearth and cut away a fragment neatly, with just one hit of a hammer upon the handle of the sharpest palette knife he had. 

It wasn't as hard as it looked...

Putting both parts of the stone safely in his pocket he walked out again, into the quickly thickening darkness, in search of a rock hard enough to help him reduce the smaller piece of the precious gem into powder from which he expected miracles. 

It was almost midnight when he gathered the results of his hours' long work from the gray hearthstone -- a fine, ash rose powder glittering like fairy dust-- into a tiny glass vial, corked it and tied a thin leather thong around its minuscule neck before joining its lose ends together in a safe knot and slipping it around his head to make it rest on his chest. He smiled as he remembered the Sea Witch's seaglass vial with the potion which Siena had brought from the cave for the Little Mermaid-- his was similar in shape and size, but way less fancy and elabourate. 

A frustrated frown chased away that smile when he glanced at the screen of his phone and realised that it was past midnight. He texted Siena quickly, apologising for not having gotten to Frankenstein at all tonight, refraining from mentioning the stone. He wasn't going to tell her anything until he found out whether it did something. 

When she did not reply in the next ten minutes, which it took him to tidy up the room and get ready to take a shower, he decided that she had fallen asleep, most likely reading. Hopefully, she was in her bed and not on a sofa as he wasn't there to carry her this time, he thought as he typed, 'Good night, Siena.' 

He wished the moment when he could tell her that personally again would arrive soon; Christmas seemed aeons away right now. 

Once James had fallen asleep after having read through the first couple of chapters of Frankenstein, he had the most unusual dream. 

Barefooted, dressed in the black, loose cotton pants and the grey t-shirt he had put on before going to bed, he stood in the middle of a strange room. It was poorly lit by yellow lights of street lamps reaching it from somewhere deep below, and wan, white light of the full moon perched in the inky blue sky almost at a level with the room's windows. The colours bleached into each other to create a ghostly glow where they touched objects he had never seen-- a long white curtain covering a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking a river, which he recognised as Arno the moment he glimpsed the artistically illuminated bridge Ponte Vecchio, one of the unmistakable landmarks of Florence, a bright, comfortable looking armchair with a deep blue blanket spread over its seat set very close to the glass, bookshelves and overflown piles of books scattered everywhere... 

He didn't know how he got here, but he knew where he was. This was Siena's flat.

Smiling, he turned around in search of the fair owner of the place. Three doors led from the large room, and he, guided by what James assumed to be the light of a reading lamp, made his way around the leaning towers of books towards her bedroom. 

He wasn't surprised to find her sleeping, the copy of Frankenstein still in her hands, and a large cat whose long fur was almost the same colour as his hair curled upon her legs.

It took him a while to realise that the cat was watching him intently with its huge, bright blue eyes, a visitor in its dream, apparently trying to decide whether it should purr or hiss at James' intrusion into his human's bedroom. 

"Hi, Dante," James whispered. 

The tomcat allowed him to pat his head before he jumped off the bed freeing his place for the unexpected visitor, stretched as his soft paws landed on the ground, and with one, most likely warning look over his back, exited the room, leaving James and Siena alone.

James sat down, accepting Dante's permission, took the book from Siena's hands, and put it on her bedside table, on top of a box that occupied most of the space.

He was just about to switch the reading light off when she stirred and as he looked at her again he found her watching him, her irises the colour of Glenfiddich whiskey in the light of the small lamp. 

"I'm dreaming..." she muttered, her forehead folding into an unsure frown. "It feels... so real," she added, closing her hand in a fist around the fabric of his t-shirt. 

"We're both dreaming," he murmured, burying his hand into her long, honey-coloured hair in a way he had never allowed himself before, his heart soaring when she closed her eyes and leaned into the caress.

"Stay, please," she whispered after a while, moving towards the wall, making space for him on the bed.

He simply nodded, feeling that the language they normally used was lacking words to describe what he was thinking, how he felt in this world... Should he tell her that he believed that this place, this moment in time, was as real as the book worlds they visited?

But he wasn't sure, and even if he was, he couldn't put his thoughts into words; her closeness was too distracting, as intoxicating as the whiskey which her eyes reminded him of. Her scent of jasmine and orange blossom permeated his mind as the rain they both loved the moment she pulled her blankets over both of them, then wrapped her arms around him even as he crushed her to his body. 

"I... " she whispered, her warm irises devouring him in the wan light of the moon streaming in through the curtains after he switched off her reading lamp. "Would you... Oh, just... kiss me, I've been thinking about it for so long..." she finally said what was on her mind.

He knew she would never have asked him in reality, and a part of him whispered that he should tell her that this was most likely real, too... But he wasn't strong enough to ruin the moment he's been wishing to happen ever since he laid his eyes on her for the first time. And he could be wrong anyway; this might just be a vivid dream... 

Banishing all thoughts, James cupped her face and brought his lips to hers, kissing her deeply, then once more, his lips becoming bolder, and again, his hands exploring her warm, soft, perfectly shaped body in the echo of the shy touch of her hands upon his own, until they decided that they reached a limit they did not wish to cross tonight. They settled comfortably in the narrow bed then, rejoicing in each other's closeness as they fell asleep.