Silver Dreams

He watches me, his eyes dark. "Can you walk me through these dreams for me, with as much detail as you can?" he asks, crossing his pleated trousers at the knee and lacing his fingers together. I resent my sister for pushing me into seeing a therapist. Either he'll talk my problems away, or medicate me until the dreams stop showing up. I let out a breath and focus on his face. Behind wide framed glasses, he wears a thoughtful look. Sabine, my sister, is handing over good money so he can sit here and hear about my issues. Somehow, I figure Mr. Mercer will turn out like the four therapists before him. Nobody can tell me why these dreams come every single night without fail. They started when I entered the Undying Realm, and since then I haven't had a single dreamless night. "Well, silver shows up a lot," I tell him. "Silver?" "That's right, the colour. There are men in my dreams who have silver eyes. Haunting silver eyes," I say firmly. Every session with every past therapist turns into the same rhetoric, and they all wear that same crease across the forehead, just like Mr. Mercer. The dreams don't make sense in my head, so I can't see them making sense to anyone else. Mr. Mercer flips open his folder, my information trapped beneath the plastic sleeve. He's trying to work out where my explanation fits against the history I've given him. There's nothing in my pretty uneventful life that points to this fixation on silver. "Do any of the people in your dreams seem familiar? Have you ever met anyone before whose eyes were actually silver?" he asks.