Siena groaned as she switched off the alarm the next morning. She had just had the most wonderful, realistic dream and she didn't want to wake up, she could still almost feel James lying next to her, holding her close, his warm body enveloping her as his heart beat against hers the entire night. And he had kissed her, and...

She closed her hand around the pendant-- strangely, it emitted red light strong enough to penetrate the ash rose silk of her night dress and it felt as warm as it only did when James with his matching ring was close-- and pulled a pillow over her face as the thoughts, or better fantasies about last night brought a quick blush to her cheeks. 

The pillow was redolent of James, she realised, inhaling with pleasure, of spices she couldn't name, and citrus, and nature... But why would her pillow smell like him?

She startled when Dante jumped on her belly, with his roaring, breakfast-demanding miaowing thoroughly dispersing the mystery filling her mind. But he was right, she needed to hurry, she couldn't be late for work.

The moment she had dressed and fixed herself a cup of coffee, sipping the warm, bitter liquid as she finally fed the loudly complaining tomcat, she opened the message she had received sometimes at night. Sitting down for a few moments to finish her coffee before she would dash out of the flat for the whole day again, she smiled when she noticed it was from James.

He didn't really get to reading Frankenstein the previous night, the short line sandwiched between words of excuse informed her, and for some reason the simple apology made her think that he might have had something else to do, something better than reading... Oh, why should it make her think about Claire?! She didn't even know the woman, James only mentioned her once, and he didn't admit to anything serious going on between them... Why should she be jealous? 

She had no claim on James. There was nothing between them; they were colleagues and friends, and he could do whatever he wished in his life away from the Society and their lives of Book Travellers. Those moments that they shared when visiting the book worlds were only as real as the parallel worlds they spent them in; it was easy to believe that they had very little to do with this reality. Siena shook her head. Getting confused by her own thoughts was the last thing she needed right now. 

She carried her empty cup to the sink and rinsed it quickly, then snatched Dante off the black and white tiled floor where he was busy grooming himself after breakfast and squeezed him to her chest in their typical goodbye, to which he replied with a quick lick of her cheek before he demanded to be set down again.

Why did Dante smell like James this morning? Siena mused, her breath hitching as she caught traces of the familiar perfume in Dante's ginger fur. First her pillow, now her cat... She was going crazy. Frowning, she grabbed her handbag and a cardigan off a chair and walked out of the flat, replying to James' text as she descended the gloomy stairway.

'No worries, we have until Christmas to read through it, anyway.' She wanted to simply wish him a nice day, but she couldn't stop herself from adding, 'I hope you had a great night. Have a nice day.'

Siena sent the text and, biting her lip, regretted it immediately. She was so silly... Absorbed as she was in her thoughts of James and the tempest he had caused in her feelings, she didn't notice Alessandro waiting for her outside until she bumped into him.

"Daydreaming, are we?" he teased, his hands landing on her shoulders to steady her.

"Just texting, really," she said on a sigh, even as her phone vibrated with a message that could only be James' reply.

"And may I know with whom?" he asked, his eyes bright and mischievous as they glittered with suppressed laughter. 

"Of course not," she said, letting the phone drop into her handbag as she laced her arm around her friend's before they crossed the road. She would read the text later, preferably without a curious audience. 

Despite the early hour, the road was filled with speeding cars carrying the commuters to work. The town was hectic and noisy, making Siena recall, yet again, her grandma's house sitting empty in the peaceful Tuscan countryside, waiting for Siena to finally take the decision to move... But if she did, it would make her become one of the commuters in the speeding cars if she took the driving licence and bought a car, and it all sounded too complicated. She would better find a new job if she moved, give up teaching, and do something else. Maybe she could work from home like James...

She sighed, allowing Ale's words to pull her from her reverie after a long while filled with silence when they observed the languid river emerging from the thin veil of mist, the last remnant of the night retreating from the ascending sun.

"Don't plan anything for Friday night, by the way. We're all going out," Alessandro said even as they reached the bridge.

"Who is all?" Siena asked carefully. It wouldn't be the first time when Ale tried to make her meet men he thought she might like.

"Me, you, Luca and Enea."

Siena sighed in resignation. There was no way to avoid it if Ale had already decided that she needed to meet this guy. He would bug her until she agreed. "Who's Enea?"

"Goodness gracious me!" he exclaimed, pressing his free hand to his heart theatrically, while he used the other to pull her closer to him and steer her through the groups of tourists crowding the bridge. "The new physical education teacher, of course, I introduced him to you yesterday. He is half English like you, he moved to Florence during the summer and doesn't know many people yet, and he honestly looks so hot..."

Siena stopped paying attention to him then; he found a subject he liked and would rattle on contentedly alone until they reached the school. She didn't care about Enea; the only thing that interested her now was what was in James' text. Her mind burned with curiosity and longing... Goodness she missed him.

James smiled when he read Siena's message, the sound of the incoming text making him smile. He had had a great night indeed; he could still imagine feeling her body encased into his, the warmth and softness of her skin under his fingertips, the smoothness and scent of her hair... 

Bringing his hand to his eyes to banish those too vivid images, he noticed how the stone of his ring pulsated in the early morning's light creeping shyly into his bedroom. He pulled at the leather thong securing the glass vial around his neck, to free it from beneath his t-shirt. The powdered fragment of the gem seemed alive-- petrified droplets of some ancient saint's blood turned liquid by a miracle. He had to shake the vial to convince himself that no such miracle happened and the powder was still as dry as the finest sand, even though it glowed dimly, just like his ring did when Siena was close. 

Jumping from the bed, he paced around the room, his bare feet barely registering the coldness of the stone floor. Was it possible? Had it really happened, had the stone allowed him to meet Siena while they both slept, creating a parallel reality for them to share? And if it had, had he travelled to her physically, just like they travelled into the book worlds, or had it only been their minds that had met in some dream dimension? The dream had felt so real that James was almost sure that he had been transported into Siena's flat, he could remember the place he had never seen before in the tiniest detail, he could remember her cat... Had she felt him, too? Had they had the same dream? Had it been more than a simple dream?

James sat back on the bed, grabbing his phone, thinking of what to reply... Should he tell her about his dream? Should he ask whether she had been dreaming last night? 

'I just had the most wonderful dream. You were in it, and it felt so incredibly real,' he typed, then deleted those words immediately. Even to him, they looked silly and creepy. They would look even more so to her if she hadn't had the same dream. Sighing deeply, he resolved to wait for this curious event to repeat itself before telling her anything. 

'I had a great night, thank you; hope you slept well.' He typed instead. 'I promise I'll do some serious reading today.'

He remained seated on the bed, waiting for her reply, while he plucked strands of ginger fur only a few shades lighter that his hair off his black t-shirt, recalling with a smile how the territorial tomcat lay on him at some point at night like a miniature guardian dragon, ready to reduce him to cinders and ashes should he not prove worthy of his fair human. It couldn't have been just a dream...

When Siena did no reply within the next few minutes, James dropped the phone on the bed and got up again. He changed out of his pyjama into his workout clothes quickly, opened the small window overlooking the mist shrouded loch and cast a glance on the sketch mounted on the easel, letting his fingers caress Siena's pencilled features before he walked out of his bedroom. A busy day lay in front him, he had two articles to finish and email to Claire, and he would also have to call her and invite her out so he could talk to her.

But firstly, he would go for a long run; he needed to think.