"So you had two dreams last night?" William rested one hand on the helm. He gave only part of his attention to the muddy river ahead, letting most of it wander over the hills along the banks, while keeping the ship firmly in the middle of the channel.
Since returning to the ship and leaving behind his distrust of the earth and stones underfoot, his spirits had improved as the voyage went on. They would have improved even more if not for someone repeatedly waking with a start during the night.
The river was calm, and steering didn't take much effort, so the captain could spare a few moments to chat with his visitor.
"If you count dreaming that I woke up as waking up, then yes—two." No one had probably ever come up with a standard definition, and Kraft wasn't sure whether to distinguish them by continuity or content, so he could only describe them vaguely. "Two nested, connected dreams."
"Dreams within dreams aren't unusual."
"But the content was unusual, so I wanted to know if you've been dreaming about those things lately." In the interest of comparison, you needed a control sample to reveal what was different. After going through all this, who could say whether they'd developed some kind of psychological problem from the shock?
If they were going to compare, the conditions had to be similar. The only two others here who had experienced the Deep Layer were Kup and William.
The former really hadn't been sleeping well, though most of it had to do with his first time in a fight. The Squire had put his training to good use, wielding his weapon properly and delivering the hammerhead to each enemy at the right speed without injuring himself.
Once he was out of the tense