A Mission of Friendship, part 6

Between the realms of waking and sleeping, Danny felt a sense of vertigo pass through him. He had been dreaming, and a shudder rocked his body. He wasn’t the sort of kid to ever have nightmares, and this one tugged at his heart.

It was the sort of bad dream that didn’t make a person scream or jolt awake. It wasn’t about some kind of monster or terrible shock. It was a slow, creeping horror, such as one gets when he dreams about his family hating him, or his work failing miserably — the kind of story that sucks the hope out of you.

The discomfort brought him out of sleep, and he exhaled heavily before he sat up and rubbed his eyes. As soon as he opened them, memories of the dream seemed to slowly lose detail. He knew he had seen his mother, she had been dancing with his father, and then Colby was there, but he looked sick and weak, and then there was someone else — a woman with long, dark hair like Colby’s mother, except human-sized, and she was wearing all white, dressed in something like a flowing, furry robe. She was standing alone in a field, and weeping, and Danny could remember hearing something in the distance, like a wailing, windy sound, and it chilled him.

He stared into the darkness of the cavernous room, the moon and stars outside shining through the window and barely lighting the place at all, and he felt very vulnerable being unable to reach up and turn on a lamp or a light switch. Suddenly, he heard what sounded like a muffled, but still huge, sniffle from the behemoth slumbering in blackness several meters to the side of his bed. He quickly turned his head and strained his eyes to see.

“Colby?” he whispered, and wondered if the giant would even be able to hear that.

“Danny, are you awake?” Colby said. Through the darkness, a titanic hand sailed toward the lamp on the bedside stand, and with a flick, a globe of light swelled high above Danny’s bed.

Now, Danny could see his friend’s face clearly, and his face was wet with tears. Colby’s bright green eyes looked fear-stricken, and he surprised Danny when he asked, “Did you have a bad dream?”

Danny pushed his covers off himself and sat criss-cross. “Yeah, I did. Why do you ask?”

Colby wiped his eyes with the back of his hands and leaned over onto his right elbow, propping himself up. “My dad warned me that something might happen when you slept over. He asked me to tell him if you had any dreams.” He sniffled again, this time without trying to muffle it with his hands, and the noise was disturbing in its loudness.

“Have you been … crying?” Danny asked.

“Yeah, I guess,” Colby said, and chuckled a little. “I think I shared your dream.”

“What?” Danny asked, confusion on his face. “Is that a giant– I mean an Esdreel thing? What do you mean? And why would your dad want to know about my dream?”

Colby sighed and looked at his little friend. Without asking or giving Danny time to know what he was doing, he reached up his left hand and grasped the edge of the human-sized bed. Effortlessly, and very carefully, he picked it up and brought it over to his own bed, setting it down just next to his chest. Now, he was able to get more comfortable, and he lay on his side next to the little piece of furniture, his head now resting on his pillow. Danny was amazed for a moment at his bed being turned into a magic carpet for a moment, and even more amazed again as he was now looking at the great wall of his friend’s torso.

“Not enough humans have come to the TDP for him to be sure, but my dad says every one he’s met has a similar dream on their first night here,” Colby said. “Your dream had a woman in white, she was crying and there were white birds crying and disappearing in the sky.”

Danny didn’t remember any birds, but the rest of the description was close enough. This was creepy.

“What does it mean?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but every human sees almost the same thing,” Colby said, and he couldn’t help one more lone tear trickling down his cheek. He wiped it away quickly. “I saw you in the dream, and you were … you were covered in blood …”

Danny gave Colby an incredulous look, and looked down, running his hands across his head. “I didn’t see myself in the dream. I saw you, though, and you looked really sick.”

The giant’s eyes glistened in the lamplight. “I saw your mom,” he whispered.

At this, Danny felt he couldn’t make eye contact with his friend anymore, and they both stayed still and quiet for a while, pondering what they both had said. Colby shifted his body, curving himself around the little bed, and he noticed again the tiny, glittering something that was on his human friend’s neck.

“What is that you’re wearing? Is it a necklace?” he asked, and leaned his face forward, trying to see.

Danny forced himself not to be startled by the humongous face closing in on him. “Yeah, it’s my crucifix,” he said, and held it out slightly from his chest. Normally he didn’t wear it to bed, but had forgotten to take it off. “I’ve had it for a long time.”

“A crucifix? You mean like a cross?” Colby asked, squinting his eyes to look at the tiny sliver of light. “Do you believe in God?”

Danny felt put on the spot, and he tensed up. He wasn’t used to addressing this question, at least not on terms that resulted in anything but awkwardness, but he still answered. “Yeah, I do. My dad doesn’t … but my mom does.”

“Shouldn’t he say ‘did’?” Colby thought, but kept himself from asking out loud. In fact, he had so many questions about Danny’s belief, but held himself back. His human interaction teacher had advised against asking too many questions about political or ontological beliefs. “It takes a long period of getting to know most humans before you can dig deeper into those subjects,” she had said.

But Colby was still emotionally reeling from the bad dream, and he looked at his little friend and felt compassion for him. Even though Danny was only calmly, stoically sitting there, he looked so small and alone, and Colby felt compelled to make him feel better.

In day-to-day life, Colby was not a very touchy-feely guy, and this was a lifestyle he had learned out of necessity. Since he was several times stronger than the average Esdreel, most people outside his family were opposed to being very near him, and even his mother and father — even though they were happy to hug their son and pat him on the back from time to time, he never felt encouraged to return the affection. Part of this was because he had hurt them before — he had accidentally broken his father’s arm when he was only four years old.

But now he had Danny Murray, his toy-sized human friend who seemed to like him no matter what. The little guy was so brave and so tough and seemed to know so much about life, and Colby admired him. Every time he held him, it was thrilling. Every time he did anything with him, he felt assured that he could be gentle, and that his peers’ fear of him was unfounded. Danny was living proof.

Colby started to move his hand over the small human bed, getting ready to pick Danny up, but then the boy held up both of his tiny hands.

“Wait! Colby, I don’t really feel like being picked up right now,” Danny said, watching the massive fingers hover like the claws of a giant arcade claw machine over him. Slowly, they returned back into the darkness at the other side of the giant’s enormous body, and in a huge shift of mass, Danny watched Colby move to lie on his back.

Needless to say, Colby was a little embarrassed at being refused. He realized, in all honesty, that reaction was not unexpected. He’d been handling Danny all day, sometimes not too comfortably for the little human.

But now he had cause to feel even more embarrassed because, beyond his control, tears were now freely flowing down his face. “Why am I such a waterworks?” he thought, berating himself internally. Why did he feel so hurt? What the human said was not unreasonable.

Danny was brooding to himself, still not fully awake, but he thought Colby’s silent reaction to him was a little strange. He turned around and looked at his friend’s giant reclining form, and he couldn’t help noticing the waterfall going down his cheek.

“Colby …” he whispered, and didn’t know what to say. The giant saw him looking and covered his face with his hands.

Danny, probably out of some kind of late night delirium, made a reckless decision. During this whole visit, he had allowed the giant to carry him and lead him around, but now he had a chance to go where he wanted to go.

He slid himself off the human-sized bed and onto the slightly rumpled giant sheets of Colby’s bed. Walking unevenly on the soft surface, he made his way carefully over to Colby’s trembling shoulder. At his huge friend’s present position, it came up to about Danny’s chin. The human took a deep breath and leapt.

Colby gasped and pulled his hands away from his face. The little human was on him! And he was scrambling to climb up his shoulder. With a bit of effort Danny made it up, and walked (with a few stops to regain his balance) onto Colby’s chest. There, he plopped himself down. Colby just stared at him, shock written all over his face.

“I’m sorry for not letting you pick me up,” Danny said, feeling like the apology was a little dumb sounding, and wondering still why his friend had taken it so hard. He sat there with his brow furrowed, absently scratching the tops of his feet.

Colby sighed and watched his breath ruffle through Danny’s wild black hair. “It’s no problem,” he said, and wiped his eyes. “I don’t know why I’m crying so much. I guess the dream just really got to me.”

He used his right hand to keep Danny from falling while he sat himself up a little bit. The human boy reacted by shimmying down onto the giant’s defined, slightly bunched-up abdomen. He found himself jostled a bit as Colby couldn’t help chuckling a little.

“I’m sorry,” Colby said. “My belly’s a little ticklish, I guess.” His eyes twinkled as he took in the image of his little friend sitting sleepily right in front of his navel, and once again he couldn’t help thinking of Danny as really cute. This time, he was too sleepy for the thought to disturb him as it had done before. He was about to lift a finger to stroke the boy’s undershirt-covered back when Danny looked him right in the eyes and spoke.

“I believe my mother’s in heaven,” Danny spoke. His nose burned a little with emotion, but he held back. “I’m glad that in the dream she looked happy. And so did my dad. But I really want to forget that weeping woman.” He scratched his knees through his flannel pajama pants. It was so weird looking at his own body sitting on top of the huge moving mass of Colby’s soft skin. “If it happens to every human who visits here, maybe it’s part of the secret of this place. Maybe whatever lived here before … YAWN! … left it as a message.” Sleepiness was starting to return to the boy full swing, and the radiating warmth of the body beneath him didn’t help. The dream had awakened him, but he was still exhausted from the eventful day.

Colby yawned, too, the sound of it echoing through the room. As his lungs filled with air, it caused Danny to rise up and slowly descend in his spot on the boy’s stomach.

“My dad thinks that’s probably true,” Colby said.  “But he gets frustrated with not really finding any artifacts to back it up. Or any artifacts at all, really. Not like the other TDPs …” This time he let himself move his hand up, and with incredible gentleness, he used his index finger to pet his human friend from the top of his head to the small of his back.

Danny sighed contentedly, so dazed that he didn’t fully realize what the giant had done. Finding it difficult to keep his eyes open, he moved himself around to lie down on his back. Putting his arms behind his head, he closed his eyes and yawned again.

“Maybe that should be my next mission,” Danny said, his speech starting to slur. The warmth and vibrations of Colby’s torso were lulling him to sleep quickly. “We should go searching … for the woman in white …”

“And the birds,” Colby answered in a whisper. His eyes were wide open. He was tired, but watching the little human drift off was too interesting.

“I don’t remember any birds,” Danny thought vaguely as sleep overtook him.

Colby, watching very closely, could tell that his friend was now asleep. He started to blanket his hand over the little guy, but stopped himself. What should he do now? He knew it was very dangerous for a human to be around a sleeping giant, but he really didn’t want to pick Danny up. He loved the feeling of him lying there on his belly, but he knew that if he even put a finger on top of him, uncontrolled and limp, it could be heavy enough to crush all the air out of his tiny lungs.

In the back of his mind, a voice was saying, “You shared his dream. That means you have a connection. You care so deeply for him, there’s no way you could hurt him in your sleep.”

But even in his night-addled state, Colby knew leaving his friend there would not be the mature decision to make. With the uncanny delicacy he had trained into himself, he used two fingers to lift the sleeping human back onto his bed, and then lift the bed back onto the bedside table. He was proud of himself for being able to do this without waking Danny up, and softly covered his friend with the tiny blanket.

Smiling, he lay back and gradually went back to sleep.

~~~~~

The morning seemed to go by quickly. So quickly, in fact, that even though Colby and Danny enjoyed every moment they had together, they couldn’t help feeling a sort of despair. After waking up, Danny dressed for the day with melancholy in his heart. During breakfast, Colby ate his pudding with mournful glances down at his friend.

But they both knew it was unavoidable as Colby carried Danny through the doors of the monorail station. Hundreds of feet from the entrance, Danny could see his father waiting for him on the elevated platform, and his spirits lifted a bit. He turned his face up to the towering visage of his friend.

“How often do you think I can come visit you?” he asked.

Colby was surprised at first by the question, but then smiled brightly. This was exactly how he wanted things to turn out! “You can visit me as often as you want!” he said.

Danny smiled back as they approached the platform’s railing. “We’ll keep in touch online, I guess, and see what we can work out,” he said. “I promise I’ll only tell my dad good things about the day.”

Colby’s smile fell a bit as he whispered, “You should be honest. You should tell about the scary things, too.” Very gently, he set the human down on the platform, and Ed, Danny’s dad, walked over to them.

“But I’m not scared of you, dude,” Danny said, and moved the straps of his backpack onto both shoulders. Tied to its top by another improvised strap was the Captain America shield that Colby had sculpted. Ed admired it as he waved at the giant boy.

“Thanks for bringing my son back in one piece, Colby,” he said. “Did you guys have a good time?”

“It was fantastic,” Colby said, and, forgetting himself, leaned onto the platform’s railing a bit, bending a large kink into the metal. “Oops!”

Mr. Murray laughed. “I’ll just pretend I didn’t see that,” he said, and started to usher his son toward the train. “See you later, bud!”

“See you, Colby! See you real soon!” Danny said, allowing his 13-year-old coolness to really slip and give in to childish excitement as he boarded the monorail with his father and waved wildly.

The joy was evident on Colby’s face as he answered back, “See you later!” He had neglected to soften his voice for this, and saw a couple grimaces of other unknown humans on the train, but he paid them little attention. “I hope I can visit your place someday soon,” he thought as he watched the train pull away and leave the shelter of the building.

Little did he know Danny was thinking about exactly the same concept. Would he ever get the chance to compare his friend’s height with the height of his apartment building side by side? Would he ever see him thunder down the boulevards of Colorado Springs?

“No one I tell about this is really going to understand,” Danny thought as he watched the green hills of the TDP silently transition back into the bushy, brown fields of southern Colorado.

THE END