Saffiya jumped up from her seat, momentarily forgetting that she was pregnant, which resulted in her dream-self losing that particular affliction.

“No. Absolutely not,” she glared. Behind her, the fiery scene flared to life once more. Then… “Wait.” Saffiya, who looked like she was about to call it a day (well, night) and hop into the lava to wake herself up, paused and turned to Anand.

“Is this your nightmare?”

For a moment, Anand didn’t respond. He was too busy using his uniform overshirt to put out the flames on his wicker chair, victim of Saffiya’s flare-up. When they were smothered at last, he shook out his shirt and furrowed his brows at Saffiya in confusion. “Nightmare? Why would it be a nightmare?”

Saffiya gestured wildly to Brennan, then to Anand, and then to herself.

“In what twisted reality is this not a nightmare?” she demanded, giving Dream-Brennan a somewhat unfriendly poke.

Dream-Brennan rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to hang around and field insults from someone who sent themselves to hell.”

Then her eyes landed on Anand, and he felt like a rabbit unable to look away from a slaughterous stoat. “And you can stop using my image to voice your subconscious insecurities. It just makes you look unstable.”

And in the blink of an eye, she was gone again.

Anand contemplated his shirt briefly, wadding the singed garment up in his hands. Then he laughed. “Like I said, why would it be a nightmare?”

“Because… because… “ Saffiya paused as realization dawned. “Wow. Your taste in women is miserable.”

“I thought you two were friends?” Anand watched Saffiya’s face as he sat back down on his slightly blackened chair, wishing so hard for another mojito that half a dozen appeared on the low table. He reached for one immediately.

“Never claimed my taste in women to be any better,” she huffed in response, and returned to her chair. There was a long pause until Saffiya eventually spoke again.

“It’s odd.”

“It certainly is.” Anand nodded vigorously in agreement. “But you’ll have to be more specific, given the circumstances.”

She turned to him. “When we were invited to attend the ceremony, I found it… interesting. Not necessarily significant. Didn’t even listen when Quence monologued about it for the duration of the shuttle ride. I found the stick-thing ridiculous, and I’m pretty sure I drank the tea too late.”

Anand perked up. “I’m pretty sure that the strings we wrapped around the logs were threaded incense,” he said, eager to get a figurative good grade in Anthropology Cred as a Starfleet captain.

Except he suspected by the look on Saffiya’s face that she was having none of it at the moment. He motioned for her to continue. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, but now I am camping out in hell, and much as the drinks have upgraded the scenery, clearly this isn’t what ‘good sleep’ looks like.”

Anand reached for a mojito, and held it carefully in both hands.

“No, it most definitely is not. Maybe you should follow Lieutenant Ixabi’s lead and sleep on your ship instead,” he said, recalling his Betazoid lieutenant who’d returned to the Babylon from the planet looking rather worse for wear. “I could go with you to the Olympic,” he added quickly, “And we could have a non-alcoholic nightcap.”

He clinked the ice around in his glass, and put the drink back on the table, finding that he wasn’t really in the mood anymore.

“The question is… how do we wake up?” Saffiya sighed. “Hop into the lava?” She very much did not look forward to doing that.

A nervous chuckle escaped Anand’s lips. “I’d like to try a few other things first. It’s like lucid dreaming, right? So let’s just tell ourselves to wake up.”

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, feeling around for any wisp of consciousness. A sudden, cool breeze hit his back. Was it working? Anand shifted, and still felt the wicker underneath him instead of his bedroll. Apparently not, then.