THE SIXTH REALM: INDIGO — Imagined water

One afternoon she felt like a swim. She remembered the waterfalls of the Turquoise Realm: water running down her back, coolness between her scales, undines playing in the current.

She heard the water before she saw it. The stream was so close that one of her paws sank into it. Skyblue looked around: where there had been dry ground a moment before were the very waterfalls she had just remembered.

She entered slowly. The cool water flowed between her paws, as real as any river could be. She went under, surfaced, and laughed in wonder.

She wanted to see flowers on the bank. They appeared. She thought how pleasant it would be to rest on a smooth stone warmed by the sun. There was one within reach.

Her attention wandered to the flowers, and the stone lost its solidity beneath her. Skyblue fell into the water with a splash.

“I see,” she said, shaking herself. “I have to learn to be still inside too.”

The forms responded to her attention. Some held; others barely had time to appear before dissolving. Skyblue spent a while making and losing small things, so absorbed that she forgot to be careful.