Story 7. The return of Liata. Part 2

I slept and had a fantastic dream that I ended up on Jupiter in the company of Muss and my new friends – Rozzea and Kotess. And it turned out that I was well known there too. As if my true homeland was right there, where I could fully apply and use my unique abilities for the common good. Including abilities that I don't even consider abilities now, like swimming. That's why, in due time, I was sent to Earth to perfect my skills under more challenging conditions (the Dense World, after all).
 
You see, the oceans on Jupiter (and it's almost entirely made up of oceans and one rather small continent, where the amazing Jovian cities with their snow-white seashell-skyscrapers, connected by delicate hanging bridges and underground tunnels, are located) are very turbulent and capricious. Moreover, they consist almost entirely of hydrogen, making it quite difficult for the local inhabitants to swim in them. Their bodies are more ethereal than Earthlings', and for them, their oceans represent a very dense, viscous substance. They can glide over it or fly above it, but swimming is difficult. It takes a long time to learn and requires much practice. And they often need to swim. For example, to visit relatives or friends living underwater. So what do you do if you can't swim? Exactly.
 
So they have to call on the Masters of Swimming for help. You grab onto one, and voila! – you can swim wherever you want. But Masters of Swimming are few and far between. They usually plan a route and gather a group of those interested every few days. At several key points along the route (like our bus stops), friends or relatives either come to meet them or send self-propelled underwater carriages. Unfortunately, the carriages have a very limited range and can't be sent to the surface, for example.
 
And that's where the Water Tamers come in. They are the ones who teach the Masters of Swimming, and they can also calm the turbulent nature of the oceans there. No one really knows how they do it. But the fact remains: when the Jovian oceans decide to play or start quarrelling with each other, it's the Water Tamers who come to the rescue, reminding the oceans that they are not alone in this world and that their boisterous games or quarrels could harm the other inhabitants.
 
Just think, who would want, say, to fall asleep at home on the ocean floor in a cosy little house with an underwater garden, only to wake up in the morning on the surface, buffeted by the equally turbulent Jovian winds, just because the oceans had a fight and decided to swap the floor and the surface?
 
Fortunately, the bodies of the local inhabitants are adapted for both surface and underwater life. But each lifestyle has its own specifics, and you have to go through a certain readjustment process, which takes from a few hours to several days, depending on the experience of the person readjusting.
 
So the oceans need to be calmly talked through things – quarrels smoothed over, games guided in the right direction. Oceans are like children – boisterous, yes, but good-natured at heart, and they come to their senses fairly quickly. They limit themselves to calmer games; they have plenty of opportunities for that.
 
And the Water Tamers return to their usual occupations – raising Masters of Swimming or simply teaching anyone who wants to learn how to swim. In any world, there are always enthusiasts who prefer to do things themselves, without resorting to outside help unless absolutely necessary. And that's wonderful, I tell you!
 
I wonder if I'm one of those enthusiasts myself?
 
But in dreams, as we know, you can't ponder things for long; action is key. So I didn't dwell on all this for long but happily took note of all the incoming information and set off after my friends to explore this new (and now everything is new to me here, even if I really am from here) reality.
 
Whether I'm from here or not, what difference does it make? The main thing is, I'm here now, and everything is so interesting that it would be a shame not to explore.
 
---
 
The first thing we wanted to do was see the city. Not just the surface part, but the underwater part too. But our guides, who met us on Jupiter, suggested we first see my dwelling, where I supposedly once lived. They said this would help make our stay on Jupiter more conscious. And only at that moment did I realise that everything I'd learned about the Jovian way of life had actually been told to me by Thea, one of the guides accompanying us. It's really hard in a dream to focus on several things at once. You have to choose – either listen, or look. I chose to look and completely stopped realising that Thea and the other guides had been telling us how things worked here all along. And it was from them that I learned I was well known here. To me, it was just information, a kind of knowledge accessible only in the dream. And yet, somehow, I'd managed to talk to everyone all this time, without really knowing who I was talking to. Hmm… nothing like this had ever happened to me before!
 
'I wonder when I managed to meet all of them?' I mused. 'How do I know that Thea is Thea?'
 
'It seems you really have forgotten everything,' Thea replied to my unspoken question. 'I thought Muss was exaggerating a bit when he said you'd forgotten everything, even him.'
 
'So you know Muss too?' I blurted out involuntarily.
 
'Ye-es,' Thea drawled. 'If I'd known you'd forget everything so thoroughly, I wouldn't have sent you to Earth. On the other hand, you've had excellent training in the Dense World,' Thea laughed. 'You've learned brilliantly to act as if you remember and understand everything perfectly while actually remembering and understanding nothing!'
 
Muss, Rozzea, and Kotess began to chuckle softly.
 
All I could do in this situation was open my mouth in amazement and start blinking stupidly, which I did with great pleasure. Because jokes aside, the shock of this information was quite considerable. My only options were either to become completely confused and stop thinking altogether, or to react appropriately – open my mouth, blink, and then what? – right – then start asking questions. That's what training does! In the Dense World, after all…
 
'Right, better not think about that now,' I told myself silently. 'I'll just pull myself together a bit, and I'm sure someone will explain everything. And if they don't, I'll do my best to find out. Otherwise, I might lose my mind like this. Liata helped Hamba, but who will help me?'
 
And I decided to behave as if there was no shock at all, as if everything was perfectly normal.
 
'Accept without accepting, and reject without rejecting,' – this phrase unexpectedly surfaced in my mind. 'Where did I hear that?' I tried hard to remember, then gave up. 'Ah, it doesn't matter. What matters is that this is exactly how one should behave in unfamiliar circumstances. Well, it's a good guide to action. I'll stick with that,' I thought contentedly.
 
First, I took a few slow breaths in and out, then carefully looked around.
 
'There's Muss with Rozzea. Thea is talking to Kotess over there, everything's fine,' I thought. 'So many unusual things have already happened, and nothing terrible! No reason to go into shock. Especially since I remembered so much about me and Muss in the garden, and I didn't go into shock then. So no need now. Who knows what else I don't remember.'
 
After these thoughts, I immediately calmed down.
 
A dream is just a dream, nothing so supernatural. I'd had quite unusual dreams before; I could have gotten used to it by now. And no one, by the way, had stopped me from thinking about the nature of my dreams back then. But no, I preferred to brush them aside and believe it was all nonsense. And the fact that everyone in the Dense World does that is a pretty poor excuse for me. Especially since I always knew on some level that things weren't so simple and that my dreams weren't just dreams. But I did what everyone else did. And now I'm here (whatever 'here' means), and there's no turning back, as they say.
 
'I'm here now,' I said out loud, drawing attention to myself.
 
'Oh, I see you're alright now,' Thea rejoiced. 'Well, are you going to invite us to your place?' she winked at me.
 
'Of course! I invite you all to come over,' I said. 'Just someone show me where I live, please.'
 
At this, everyone laughed and cheered, and Muss jumped high in the air and turned several somersaults with joy.
 
'Well, finally,' he said, landing. 'I thought I'd never see the day!'
 
'Then forward march!' I commanded.
 
And together we all walked towards a small open area, resembling a rounded ledge on a mountain slope, which I had been eyeing with great interest for some time through a strange, irregular oval window next to where we were standing.
 
Of course, it wasn't a mountain at all, but one of the upper floors of a huge, snow-white seashell-skyscraper with delicate, mother-of-pearl shimmering open terraces and semi-circular grottoes. And the view below was so breathtaking that, looking at it, I could only gasp, completely forgetting to exhale. I seemed to have forgotten how to breathe altogether! And how could anyone breathe with a view like that!
 
We stood on the platform, mesmerised, gazing into the distance at the Ocean, which lived its own inscrutable life – now swirling into spiral currents within itself, now scattering into myriad lights glowing in its depths. And we saw all this from an incredible height, from which you could even see the slight curvature of the horizon. And considering Jupiter's size is much greater than Earth's, the height of our seashell-skyscraper was truly incredible. Moreover, in the distance, you could see other similar shells, some elongated vertically like ours, others more rounded and seemingly lying on their sides, and between them shimmered dazzling white, delicate hanging bridges, as if woven from the finest lace and held in the air by some unknown force. And amidst all this splendour, at various heights in the air, floated amazing things – either airships or little planets. In some, there were people, which is why I thought of airships. And on others, resembling little planets, were small shell-houses with lovely gardens and small ponds, the ponds being so transparent and the little planets so small that you could see the other side of the little planet through the water, and there was no bottom at all!
 
I gazed at all this for a while, and then my head suddenly spun, and a flood of memories rushed into my consciousness.
 
It lasted no more than a second, but for me, an eternity passed, and I still feel it wasn't just one. I recognised this place!
 
I recognised these little planets. I myself, it turned out, had lived on one like them. It's very convenient, because such little planets (they're not really planets, of course, but actual dwellings that we locals call 'marshmallows') can transform. If you need to move somewhere, they shrink and become round, like tiny planets; a small shell-house appears on their surface, and they can fly wherever they need to. Moreover, although the house on such a 'marshmallow' looks small from the outside, it completely retains the interior of the dwelling (often much more spacious than you'd think) as it is in its stationary phase. In the stationary phase, the 'marshmallows' completely fill those semi-circular grottoes I'd been looking at from the platform of our tower-shell not long ago. Actually, that's why they're called 'marshmallows' – when they fill the grottoes, it looks very much like a box of chocolates, with each compartment containing its own 'marshmallow'. And the platforms are like parking spaces for the flying trams (that's the real name for those elongated, rounded formations I'd mistaken for airships).
 
In fact, we would now take one of them to my dwelling-grotto.
 
And then I understood why I'd always liked rounded shapes in dwellings and furnishings. And why I'd always found it strange and uncomfortable to live in rectangular houses with rectangular tables, chairs, and other furniture, and to walk along straight streets set at right angles to each other! Whoever thought of such a thing!
 
Hmm, I wonder if this has anything to do with the 'density' of the Earthly world or not?
 
But I didn't have time to get an answer, because that 'flying tram' we'd seen floated up to us. At first, it seemed quite small. I even doubted we'd all fit inside. But it turned out I was worrying for nothing, because as it approached, the tram's size began to change until it was large enough to accommodate us all.
 
We piled into the tram, a cheerful, jostling crowd. For a second, our surroundings vanished, and the next second, we saw before us a huge, snow-white cliff (yes, yes, it was a cliff, not a shell-tower), overgrown with fantastical trees with bluish leaves and small white flowers. Muss, Rozzea, and I exchanged bewildered glances. Kotess and our guides chuckled softly.
 
'What do you think of our technological marvel?' Thea asked, still smiling. 'Did you think we'd just fly around?'
 
We nodded in agreement.
 
'Yes, I was hoping to see the city from above,' I said wistfully. 'So, what actually happened?'
 
'This is a flying tram; it can fly, or it can work as a portal. Right now, we needed to get to our destination quickly, because the Evening Glow is about to begin. And it's more convenient to watch it from your dwelling,' Thea explained. 'You'll see for yourself.'
 
Meanwhile, our flying tram docked at the platform in front of the entrance to a wide grotto, so overgrown with glowing, light-purple climbing plants that I didn't notice the entrance at first. And when I did notice it, I couldn't help but smile.
 
Of course, it was my home. I'd dreamt of it so often while I was living there, on Earth, in my Dense World, that I remembered every detail. Now we would see the steps paved with gemstones. And the colourful lanterns hanging from the tree branches. And there, the round, massive, carved door. And behind it… Behind it would be the entrance hall with a huge, almost wall-sized aquarium full of exotic fish, and a starry sky instead of a ceiling. And each of the windows in my house would open onto its own separate world, like Punia's Palace. Only from his Palace can you enter all conceivable and inconceivable worlds of our Universe, while from my windows you can only see a dozen or two worlds. But that's still wonderful!
 
'Finally, I'm home!' I sighed happily.
 
Thea handed me a small key made of a bluish metal.
 
'Here you are,' she smiled. 'Go on!'
 
I took the slightly warm key from her hand. And as soon as I held it, it began to vibrate, then shone with a soft blue light and emitted a melodic whistle. In response to this whistle, the front door and windows began to glow blue. A gentle chime rippled through the entire house, and the front door swung open.
 
'Welcome to my den!' I said joyfully, ushering my new (or were they new?) friends inside.