Two in the morning, on a cool, cloudy autumn night. The city was asleep. But it's when the city sleeps, when all those minds are quiet, that I can find the people who don't sleep quite so deeply. Or maybe it's more deeply. Differently. Differently in a way that I can reach out to. They are rare sorts, but in a city of hundreds of thousands, someone who is one in a ten thousand will be practically around every corner. Or at least within walking distance.

It's not everyone who dreams like them, all the time, but I think that most people do some of the time. Once in a while, a dream that is particularly special, that activates whatever latent psychic power we have as humans, crosses everyone's mind, and I could feel them. And it was easiest to feel them when that low hum of city activity was at its minimum. At two in the morning.

I went for a walk, and almost as soon as my feet crossed the threshold I heard a nearby whisper of someone having such a dream. I followed the whisper. I couldn't tell what direction it was coming from, but I could tell whether I was getting closer or further away, and so was able to play a game of telepathic hot-and-cold to zero in on the location.

An apartment building, a few blocks away. I started moving in that direction, trying to see more of the dream, and maybe of the dreamer.

A young woman, this time. Early twenties, the impression I got. Fit, at least in the dream. Jogging. As I walked down the street, I was jogging down a forest path with her in my mind, and in hers. I could tell that I wasn't familiar to her, but it was a dream, and strange things happen in dreams. Strange things especially happen in dreams that insomniac telepaths mess with. I jogged up next to her, took her hand. She seemed intrigued. I led her off the path and into the forest, deeper into the forest. The leaves were changing, but it was a dream, and so were changing to all manner of colours, yellows and blues and purples, reds and browns and even strange greens that seemed almost radioactive.

I may have had a hand in that, trying to paint the trees the colour of fantasy.

She and I stopped our jogging to kiss, and kiss, and kiss again. And who hasn't had a dream involving nudity? Certainly I've had a few, and now she was having one.

She seemed quite enthused by the dream.

A telepath doesn't have to stop with a dream, you understand. A telepath can slip little suggestions through a dream, that will impact the waking mind.

I returned home, returned to my bed, indulged in the fantasy of that dream a while before sleeping. And when I woke, I thought it might be nice to take a jog.

A cool, cloudy autumn morning. The weather had been too hot lately, so it was nice to breathe in the chill.

I jogged past her apartment just as she was walking out. Perhaps a coincidence, but I had been circling the block for ten minutes. She was dressed in a simple sweatsuit, her long hair in a ponytail, ready for a morning's exercise. I waved as I went by. She looked at me oddly.

"Hey."

I stopped. "Can I help you?"

"Do I... I swear I know you..."

"I don't believe we've met." I smiled. "Would you like a jogging partner?"

And when I said, "The leaves make a beautiful rainbow," I knew that she couldn't refuse.