redheadedstepson Terra Firma

[huggingcompetition]

Getting shot through space would be traumatic if you weren't asleep and/or being beamed through it at the speed of life itself. It only felt like he'd had a long, restless sleep when Emil's eyes opened to focus blearily not on the smooth metal ceiling of his tiny apartment, or, more often than not, someone else's, but on the generically spackled ceiling of a hotel room in Malay. He was sure he was dreaming at first; he'd had dreams like this before, where he was back on earth and preparing to go about his day, at least until someone new happened out of the bathroom, or turned over beside him in the bed, but a quick glance around told him the one thing that made his heart sink straight into his stomach.

"Reno?"

Silence. just wind and surf and birds outside the cracked open window, and his own pulse plodding along strangely placidly.

He checked his phone to confirm what the date was, finding himself only a little bit alarmed to find out that time had passed here. Not much, but some. Enough to have taken up his vacation before he had to head home and begin arranging for the next winter sports season.

It would go like that for months after arriving back home and settling back into his routines. Wake up, work out, practice, visit with friends and family, with the underlying feeling that something was just off. It almost felt wrong just going back to his life now.

Sometimes, he'd try to talk to a concerned friend asking questions. Explain that he wasn't sleeping well. Making an effort to rationalize that he wasn't unjustified in feeling like something was missing or wrong. He had so much on his phone that confirmed what he already knew: this "dream" of his, about all of these people he'd met, couldn't be fake. He had photos taken of the park, of ladies he'd made friends with, of interesting people he'd met in the observatory or at the rink, of Koller and Reno and Mo Guanshan and Sam. He still had messages from some of them.

He reread those a lot as time went on. He couldn't possibly have fabricated those, surely. He'd start doubting every so often, wondering if it was all an elaborate, staged thing, like he'd been brainwashed. He joked that he'd been abducted by aliens, which did throw off some concern with the humor of it, but feeling so left of center never really stopped.

Even when the world started turning into the sort of low-key hell that had always been predicted by the sci-fi writers of the last century, Emil kept going. He went to the finals another few times, even making it to the Four Continents, with a piece that he'd choreographed on his own, to a remixed piece that he'd once worked on when he was still in his "dreamstate". That year he dressed in red with a yakuza-style phoenix emblazoned on his costume's back.

The summer after, he opted to take time off from his normal busy schedule to spend time close to home with his family, to reflect on what he wanted to do with the few years he had left in his skating career. He only had a few years left in him after all, as his body filled out and matured. He'd kept his hair short and feathery, but let his beard grow fuller and make his face much more mature. He walked the streets of Prague like anyone would the streets of home, having moved here the year prior after leaving his parents' home. It had been a move advised by his coach and some well-meaning publicists after some suspicious occurrences, including redirected phone calls and some increasingly freaky "fan-mail" that had apparently never had a name or return address attached. He'd been curious, but followed the advice nonetheless, if only to keep his actual fans from going on some kind of witch hunt.

Pulling out of his distraction for a moment, he stops in his meandering path through a small city park to sit and take a moment to zone out, a tablet in his lap for his fingers to flick across mindlessly. It's become home to a massive photo gallery, transferred from his phone when it was finally on the verge of death. The background of it is, predictably, a starfield, though if anyone looked closely enough at it they would realize that it isn't the view from anywhere on earth. In one corner of the image is a figure standing without paying attention, a shock of red hair tied and twisted into a haphazard bun over a simple tshirt, hint of tattoo peeking from the collar. Emil finds himself glancing back at it as he scrolls through an article linked from his Twitter feed, barely absorbing a word as his mind wanders.