The people he is in his dreams — the people he used to be — tend to come from wildly disparate backgrounds. There are certain trends, like they tend to be young — very young, six or eight or ten years old — and they tend to be girls, but that's not a solid rule; there have been boys, there have been adult women, there have been people who don't fall on either side of the binary. They've been wealthy and poor, from families both functional and dysfunctional. They've come from every part of the planet.

The one thing they have in common is this: they die.

Fear and running, that's familiar. Feeling as if he's being chased by something, because he usually is. He waits for it, the gunshot, the knife in the back, the too-sharp teeth in his neck. It never comes. He's being lifted instead, which is easier than it should be, he's so small. He sits up, using her proffered hands, his knees pulled back up like he doesn't want to disturb anything around him by existing.

He looks confused. Rescue is not part of the narrative.

The foreignness of it is not enough to rock him into lucidity, but it comes close. This feels like being complimented in a language he doesn't speak, like accepting an award with someone else's name on it. Or like showing up late to your surprise birthday party. He doesn't know what to do with these feelings, but the severity of them is frightening. "Where is this?" It's in Hebrew, but understood nonetheless.