In dreams, she’s already met him, but in reality they’re about to meet for the first time. She already has plans only she won’t go. She hates parties, or people in concentrated forms. She’ll dive deeper into the armchair, she’ll stare at the blank screen, until that message pops up, that message she’s too bored to ignore. She’ll answer hi and he’ll say at last. At last what? she’ll ask. At last someone answered back. It won’t be the usual boring stuff. It will mostly be an exchange of wit, that stems out of loneliness and boredom. She’ll feel she knows him when she first sees his face. He’ll stare into her eyes as if she reminds him of something. He’ll touch her hand, turn it upside down, as if searching for something that should have been there, a vague memory of a tattoo, a scar, a sign from gods, but he won’t find it. He’ll pull aside her hair, but that hair will fall again upon her face and she’ll move it behind her ear, for she won’t feel she has to hide. Not anymore. For now she’s safe, like she’s part of that film, like she’s passed through that sliding door, like that door led to a treasure, like she’s achieved some kind of goal.

In dreams, they had met before. They met elsewhere, everywhere. In that alternate timeline they met much earlier, but neither of them knows here and now. They bumped into each other, only he didn’t shy away, only she didn’t excuse herself in a hurry. In that timeline, they went to parties and drunk so much that they fainted into each other’s arms. Once she fainted for good and never woke up. He checked for pulse but there was none, only that crow tattoo left there, on the inside of her wrist, a dead crow, flashing before his eyes, then flying away for good. Not all timelines end up in happily ever after. But they have met in all of them and some of them end sadly, abruptly, like she’s part of that song, like she’s in parties, awkwardly celebrating life, too much, too early, hardly appreciated, for appreciation is a skill she didn’t have time to master.

In dreams, she’s in parties, she tells him. People don’t scare her, in her dreams. Parties don’t scare her. Memories of another timeline wander through the hallway of her mind, uncertain of where to settle, for they don’t fit. Some timelines are shorter than others, but it’s her and him in all of them. It’s them and the crow tattoo, she’ll later change into a butterfly, for it’ll bring back memories of a past unlived, yet intense at the same time, of a past lived elsewhere in time and space, of parties she didn’t attend, of all excuses she will think of to avoid parties, people, life and real memories that hurt the most.