The gentle rocking back and forth roused her from the depths of sleep into the vivid land of dreams. In the real world Sira might have thought it odd to suddenly find herself naked and stowed away beneath a bed on what she could only assume was a pirate ship. In her dream, however, this seemed as normal as anything, and her mind instantly knew the plot, even if it didn’t bother fully explaining all the events that led to the moment she currently found herself in. She was hiding in a cabin aboard a large ship somewhere out at sea. Her absence of clothes didn’t really matter, she was a kelvic afterall, but the important part was she was hiding beneath a bed and nobody knew she was down there. Wherever she was trying to go, or why she was hiding.. that wasn’t important either.
Though she did not know it, Sira’s chavi and the chavi of another soul touched that night and their dreams became one. It wasn’t the first time this had happened to Sira, but again she didn’t actually know it had ever happened, but dreams such as these were always more intense. The characters made up by her own imagination could not be as vivid or complete as that of a real person’s chavi, and just as in the last dream, when she saw the her dream-mate for the first time her mind was instantly drawn to him.
When Ricky walked into the room Sira found she couldn’t take her eyes off of him. He was quite attractive, and that combine with her mind’s natural inclination to pay more attention to a real person than one it made up for itself, Sira found herself quite enthralled. But instead of rolling out from under the bed and leaping on top of him, Sira hunkered down and tried to remain silent. Their story wasn’t ready for that yet, and Sira’s mind was telling her that this man was the captain of his ship. He would likely be cross if he found a stowaway aboard, and Sira couldn’t imagine what unsavory things he might do to her if she were discovered. So he tried to remain as still and silent as possible while he walked about his cabin, doing whatever it was captains did while they were alone.
Sira was only able to get a good look at him when he first walked through the door, but once he was inside he was too close for her to see anything but his boots and the lower half of his legs. There were a few times when he came dangerously close to the bed, and Sira feared discovery, but then he would walk away. It seemed her hiding place was going to work out, and Sira wouldn’t be discovered after all.. but that was boring, and Sira didn’t have boring dreams.
At just the right moment Sira breathed in, and a whiff of dust went up her nose. The sudden tickling sensation made her eyes widen with fear, and Sira put her finger to her nose in an attempt to keep herself from sneezing. She took a few sudden, deep breaths, and then a long slow one, and she thought that she had managed to stop the sneeze. And then, as soon as she thought she would be okay, she sneezed.
”Aaachoo!” The sneeze was followed immediately by a whispered, ”Petch,” And then another silent, mental petch for having whispered out loud.
Sira froze, her eyes locked on the pair of boots attached to the legs attached to the rest of the man that she could not see, mere inches away from the bed under which she hid. Even if he had not heard her whispered exclamation, there was no way the man had missed her sneeze. It wasn’t like there were any other sounds on the boat, save for his own footsteps and the sound of waves gently sloshing against the outside of the ship. Oh, he heard her, and Sira laid there naked and frozen in place beneath the bed, waiting to be discovered.