Oh hey, it’s a flash fiction Friday post! It’s been a while, or at least it feels like it. This piece is inspired by my partner sleep-talking, and me being in a mood for the (perhaps) unexpected. Hope you enjoy!
Dreams and Rebels
“How’sa rebellion?”
Jac and I shot each other a look over Cal’s snoozing, sleep-talking form. He mumbled something else, inaudible, and shifted in his sleep. I shoved a knuckle into my mouth to keep from laughing and saw Jac shaking his head and mouthing “what the fuck?”. I shrugged, and we both went back to our reading. We always did this, reading with our night-lights while our third dozed off between us.
The next morning, we asked Cal about the rebellion and burst out laughing at how confused he looked. He wasn’t too surprised when we explained it – apparently he’d talked in his sleep a lot as a kid. Still, none of us expected that he’d continue on the same topic the next night, and the next, and the next. It turned into a running joke, Jac and I grinning at each other in amused silence at each new update, and then sharing whatever bits had been comprehensible with Cal the next morning. It was always a rebels, fighter planes and futuristic weapons, casualties and alliances, rations and supplies. Military sci-fi, but occasionally a bit of drama would slip in there too – people hurting, loving, leaving, fighting, making up. No-one ever had names, but we’d give them names the next morning, build back-stories for them. We joked that we’d turn it into a proper story one day, pitch it to one of the streaming giants and make a fortune.
And then the ships came…