It was going to happen again. There was just a way the dreams felt, like they were somehow more solid and less malleable. Not that Hari would have known what malleable was if anyone had spoken the word to her, but she did know the difference between her usual dreams and the not-usual ones. It wasn't quite like when she saw things which weren't there. That happened while she was awake, and sometimes she could make it happen on purpose, but when she was asleep she had no control over whether she saw things or not. They also tended to last longer when she was asleep.Some might have considered it unusual that such a young cub would already be so resigned to seeing things which weren't there, but which might be there, somewhere. However, in Harimau'tapi's few excursions outside the den she had met a number of people who had not only spoken freely to her of experiencing visions, explaining them as the mists' way of speaking to lions, and so she was beginning to get the feeling that a large percentage of lions experienced the same visions, and that those who didn't, simply didn't wish to.
Hari had never tried not to have a vision before. They didn't frighten her, since she had been having them for as long as her memory stretched, though her memory didn't stretch very far back, given her youth. They didn't hurt her or frighten her, and so she saw no reason to avoid them. Of course, none had so far interrupted her while she was trying to do something important. Even if they were in danger of interrupting, she got enough warning that she could excuse herself and sit down somewhere. They weren't sudden, violent things.
In any event, because she was asleep and dreaming, there was nothing Hari could do about this vision except to accept it and see what it showed her. She would miss the dream she'd been having. It was very exciting. In it she had been winged and flying so high that she couldn't see anyone through the mists below, and then she'd flown over the mountains and into the sun, which she saw so rarely that she couldn't really even imagine it properly in her dreams. It was much paler in her dreams than it was in reality, since she had never experienced it in anything but its mist-diffused form. For her, that was the sun's reality, except in her visions.
A forest grew out of the mists, and a mountain, and the mists receded until they had vanished completely. Harimau'tapi watched with interest, as she had never seen such a thing in her life. Ngoma had said that being a Ghost was a good way to meet people from other places, which was a little like going out and having adventures, but Hari could do that without even moving because of her visions. And best of all, she was completely safe, because the lions she saw couldn't see her, and even if they could, she wasn't really there.
Her view became more specific and she could see what appeared to be a pride, spread out with all manner of creatures toward the well-forested lower portions of the mountains. Higher up, where her gaze was forcibly drawn, the lions all tended to be the same colors, more or less, with lots of vibrant purple on their coats. It was pretty, she thought, but she didn't have too long to reflect on it as her attention was directed toward one lioness in particular.
The lioness was largely purple with a white underside and green eyes. She didn't look well, Hari thought, and the way she blinked into the sun made Hari think she hadn't seen it in some time. Poor thing. Hari had never been ill, but she'd heard it was awful. She hoped she wouldn't see anything bad happen to the poor lioness. She looked like she was about the same age as Ngoma, maybe a little older. Hari watched her, too young to realize that a person's surroundings could be as interesting as the person themselves.
Once Hari had seen a little boy lion with stripes a little like hers. He had such a miserable time of it, she thought. He had been in such obvious pain, and his entire body had shaken and twitched, as though some unseen force was abusing him horribly. He had bitten his own foreleg, and she thought it might have been to keep from crying out. At the time Hari had been with her siblings and she had started crying after her vision released her, she felt so bad for the young male. He had looked like he was in so much pain! It had taken her mother explaining to her that she couldn't help him because he was far away to calm Hari down, but the memory had stayed with her. She hoped he wasn't seeing anything unpleasant, at least.
She shuddered, the purple lioness, as if she was either very cold or trying not to be sick, and then she went very still, her green eyes open but unseeing. Hari was used to seeing that, and was beginning to figure out that what she was actually seeing was other people who saw things like she did. Some of them had a hard time of it, but the purple lioness didn't seem too badly off. She just stood very still, her tail twitching and her body shivering a little.
When it was over and Hari could feel a her proper, regular dreams returning to her, Hari saw the lioness shake her head in what looked like confusion and return to the den from which she'd emerged, placing her feet very carefully. She must not have been feeling very well at all, the dreaming cub supposed. She wondered, briefly, what it was that the purple lioness had seen, and if maybe she was used to getting these visions, since her reaction was so minimal. Her own dreams came back then, and she went back to participating in them, forgetting what she had seen for the time being.
