Free Dream Magic: Awakenings by Dawn Harshaw

don't get it," Eric said.
    Maeve sighed. "'Getting it', as you say, is optional. Understanding will let you down, especially if you wield it as a hammer to which everything is a nail. You have to be prepared to cast it aside. Trust yourself, your feelings, your subconscious, the parts of yourself you don't even realize are parts of you."
    Eric looked at Lucy, hoping she had some more sensible information, but she just shrugged.
    "Go into the lake, feel the waves, and let go. Whenever you're ready. This box of cookies and I are waiting for you."
     
    * * *
     
    Eric was swimming in the lake. He didn't know what he was supposed to do,
or not do
, so he just splashed around. He found that diving was easier with lungs full of water, but there wasn't anything worth diving for.
Like a big pool,
the lake had no flora or fauna, just water and the sandy bottom.
    Eric went back to the shallows. He liked to play a little game: he would fall to the bottom while breathing out completely, hug the ground, propel himself out of the water, breathe in, and slowly let it out again. It was fun.
    He experimented with breathing air and water in the same breath, but it was a yucky feeling; not pleasant at all.
    Another game he liked to play was to see how long he could hold his breath. He crossed his legs and dropped to the bottom. Since he didn't have to rise for air, the game was simpler, but also less exciting.
    Eric's mind wandered, and the tension in his muscles relaxed. It felt good to be in an environment that opened its own world of magic. Eric fished for a word to describe this state to himself, and the word 'meditation' turned up in his mental net. He was slightly revulsed with the word his subconscious presented - after all, meditation is something boring for old people with crunchy bones.
Well, they must be doing it wrong!
Eric overcame the revulsion and accepted the word as his own.
    Hmmmmm... breathe in... breathe out...
    Time passed, without hurry.
    A voice came muffled from above.
Why do you interrupt my meditation?
Yet, he could hear the voice clearly in his mind, and it swirled in his awareness until the sound crystallized into words he could understand.
    "The uninterrupted surface of the lake is clear and at balance. When you enter the water, you disrupt that balance. Listen to the waves and align yourself so that the lake is clear again."
    Now you tell me...
The words 'listen', 'clear' and 'balance' made sense to Eric, but the sentences on the whole did not. He resumed his meditation and focused on listening.
What do I hear? Nothing...
    A while later it occurred to Eric that the 'nothing' he was hearing was actually a static-like background noise:
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
    Where did that noise come from? Eric noticed the sound of his heartbeat. It pumped not only the blood in his veins, but it also caused small vibrations in his body that went out and came back to him as tiny waves of water. He heard the sound of his underwater breath - water whooshing in and whooshing out.
    The more he listened, the less he heard. The sounds became feelings on his skin; gentle touches of waves and vibrations.
    He recalled the image of his will from the fire attunement ritual: the vision of a great, burning flame. The water around him threatened to extinguish that flame, wave by wave, touch by touch. For a moment he was tempted to lash out, let the flame loose and burn away the whole lake and evaporate all the water in it. He wasn't sure he could do it, but he wasn't sure he wanted to, either. He let the temptation wash away.
    The fire became enclosed by a bubble, and the bubble turned into a wave. This strange fire threaded upon itself, and became a texture of waves Eric could touch with his awareness. The fabric felt smooth, sometimes a bit rough with a loose thread here and there. He still felt he could torch the fabric if he wanted to. As he traced the surface with the touch of his awareness, the threads and waves extended up from