dreamtimeagain - Tumblr blog

[dreamtimeagain]

I stepped through a doorway and found myself in a massive room. The ceiling was so far above me that it's details were faded and partially obscured by a gentle fog. The floor, left wall, and ceiling stretched off into the distance, in infinity, slowly disappearing into the fog.

Each surface had an ancient look. Old stone slabs with intricate designs faded and broken with age. As I stepped forward, a woman walked past directly in front of me, and stepped up to the right side of the room. There was no wall here, just a sheer cliff that fell off into an infinite unknown.

She was dressed in some kind of dark grey and blue full-body suit, like a diving suit or something from a movie, and her hair, shoulder length and blonde, was held in place by a matching blue headband. She stepped to the very edge of the floor, where the stone blocks had started to crumble and disappear into the dark was below.

She stopped, sighed, slowly turned to me, and said 'be careful, the edge is dangerous'. Her face looked so sad and regretful. Then, in a moment as I washed, she faded to a soft blue color, became translucent, her features slightly blurred. Then she floated upwards and disappeared.

I spun back to look in the direction she had come from, and noticed a small blue gem sitting on the ground. It was round and semi-transparent with a dark blue core. Glancing up, I saw dozens more of the strange gems floating in the air. Some were so high above me I could barely see them sparking in the fog, while others were within arms reach all scattered around the room.

I reached towards the nearest one. As soon as I got within a few inches it fell with a loud clack straight to the stone floor and another woman emerged. This one was a little younger, barely past her teens with curly hair in a cloud around her face, but still wearing the bodysuit. She floated before me, somewhere between the solid form of the first woman, and the transparent blue I had expected.

She turned and looked at me, and sighed. She put on a sad, but gentile, smile and told me all she had wanted was to bake. But there's no chance here. She didn't fade away like the first one, but seemed to kind of become wrapped up in her own thoughts, staring into nowhere, her head bowed, as she floated above her gem.

I looked up at the dozen or so orbs above my head, and made an experimental jump, to see which ones I could reach, and found myself soaring high into the air. Further into the fog, the air was damp and little droplets coalesced on my skin.

I held my hands out and, with a burst of energy, spun around in mid-air, my arms and fingers outstretched as a wave of air pressure pushed outwards from my body. Then I landed back down on the ground as dozens of gems fell from the sky, landing all around me with a loud scattering of clatters.

Each one revealed a person as it settled into the stone. Everyone of them different. Different ages, heights, genders, hair styles and colors. All with the body suit, and all of them sad. They began to mutter about their hopes, their voices overlapping and becoming a cluttered hum around me. The ones closes to me actually looked in my direction, but they all had the same longing and defeated expression.

As I looked around them, I noticed the wall beyond was covered in hundreds of vastly different doors. Small or large, colorful and plain, and at all angles set into the stonework. I pushed past the crowd of people, careful not to accidentally nudge a gem, and walked up to the wall of doors.

Then I heard a collective gasp behind me, and turned to see all of the people I had summoned begining to run. They panicked and fled, some crying, and others screaming, and a few yelling 'it has come! It will end us! Run!'

The ground started to shake, slowly repeated rumbles that started off quiet but increased in intensity with each subsequent shake. Then I saw some kind of silhouette deep in the fog. A creature that was as tall as the room, and almost as wide.

I was frozen in place, I couldn't do anything but watch as the thing slowly emerged from the fog with each ground shaking step. It was very broad, a dark burnt orange in color, and seemed to have a thick coat of fur. It had mean eyes and a short stubbed snout above a mouth jutting with dozens of impossibly long teeth.

It almost resembled some kind of rabbit, with the teeth each squared off at the ends, and two long ears dropping down the sides of it's head. But it walked on two stumpy legs, it's forelimbs massively meaty and hanging down from the broad shoulders.

As it got close to the gems, and the people attempting to flee. It slowly looked down and grumbled, the corners of its mouth curling up into a grin. The people were all bunched up, halfway between me and the wall of doors. Some trying desperately to flee, while others huddled in fear, but there seemed to be a limit on how far they could travel from their gems.

Then the creature leaned forward, bringing it's massive front paws to the ground, and it charged. It guffawed loudly as it ran straight into the pile of gems, scattering them wildy. Some people were pulled away from the crowd as their flinging gem forced them to follow.

It charged straight through the remaining crowd, and laughed again. then I realized it couldn't hurt them. It was just playing with them, laughing at their fear. It slowed to a stop just beyond the crowd, and playfully slapped at the floating figures, giggling with their screams and flailing.

Then it looked up at me, standing in front of the wall of doors, and it seemed to realize I was different. It's body tensed, and it glared at me as it slowly turned to reposition it's feet. I couldn't move, my own feet glued to the spot, and I watched with a rising sense of dread as it settled in to charge.

Then it dashed forwards, at an incredible speed despite it's massive size, and it reached me almost instantly. I ducked reflexively, and the who room shook with a massive thud as it slammed into the wall of doors.

Then, when I didn't feel the pain or ended I had dreaded, I cautiously looked around, and saw that the creature had slammed straight into the largest double door on the wall. And had managed to get its face and part of it's upper torso wedged into the hole.

It's lower limbs flailed, and I could hear a faint frustrated yelling, but it remained stuck in the wall. I watched in amused fascination for a moment before a voice tisking in my ear startled me. I turned to face a man I hadn't noticed before standing at my shoulder and watching the creature with a look of annoyance.

He was tall, with a sharp grey face and matching grey hair pulled back and tucked into an elaborate headdress. His stance and flowing bule and grey robes gave him a regal look. And most importantly, unlike the others, he was solid like me.

He muttered something about the creature being so stupid it couldn't mash a potato, then turned to look at me. For a moment he just stared, then his face hardened and he glared at me.

"you're not supposed to be here" he declared with a sharp tone, then held his hand up to my face.

...Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

...I walked into a lobby. The carpet was thin underfoot and the room felt gloomy with the subpar lighting and dingy walls. There were two large hallways that led off to the left and right and a single large desk in the middle. I could hear voices in the distance, the low murmur of countless conversations, as I approached the desk.

Standing in front of the desk was a woman, an older lady with hair pulled up into a tight, gray streaked bun. She looked up as I approached and asked if I was here to volunteer. I nodded and she rushed me off down the hallway. I realized that this was a school as we passed by several classrooms, each one filled with shelves upon shelves of things, which I could see through the open doorways.

We made our way to the cafeteria, which was also filled to the brim with shelves of all kinds of things, and pushed past a dozen other volunteers running back and forth through the aisles. Each one was carrying a half dozen various backpacks ad other bags, frantically pulling items off the shelves. The bags were being filled with various tools, like pencils and rulers, and utensils, like water bottles and forks. Once the bags were full they were carried over to a large cart in the middle of the room where the woman led me.

She reached in and grabbed a large backpack, a smaller backpack, a lunch box, and a single water bottle and a small stuffed toy. She pushed them into my arms and told me they needed to be handed out at the charity, and that I could come back for more once I was one. I barely had a chance to look at the things in my hands before she was directing me to follow her down a flight of stairs in the far corner of the room.

The stairway was just as old as the rest of the building, with a plain metal pipe as the railing and the steps barely covered in a ragged, thin carpet. They were steep and I had to concentrate on not slipping as we rushed down the three sets before reaching the basement level. As we moved further and further down, the lighting became dimmer and the walls started to show signs of neglect; mold, stains, and cracks from an unknown number of years without maintenance or repair.

At the bottom we emerged into a large, mostly empty, basement with plain brick walls and a rough concrete floor. The stale smell of dampness filled my nose as I followed the woman across the uneven ground towards an opening in the far wall. I glanced up and noticed that the ceiling was way lower than I expected, and reached up to touch it with my fingertips and was shocked to find it moist and squishy, like soggy cardboard.

I asked her if the building was really safe to be in, my stomach dropping with the thought of all that building material, people, and things that hovered precariously over my head, but the woman just ignored me and gestured towards the opening. It was a concrete ramp, like an old truck delivery point, that led upwards ad into the yard of the school. I quickly moved up, happy to be away from the decrepit basement, and found myself at the edge of a large lawn edged with chain link fences, and filled with thousands of people.

They were milling around, some huddled together, while others wandered aimlessly, or purposefully across the grass. There was barely any room to move around them, and they all had long faces of boredom or exhaustion. At least half of the crowd was children of all ages, who were doing their best to keep themselves entertained, while the adults stood in groups that vaguely resembled lines in a queue.

As soon as I stepped out, several of the people closest to me looked over and started to mutter and point me out to the others nearby. Soon I had a small crowd around me, all with their hands outstretched, reaching for the things I was carrying from inside. I gave the backpack to a teenager nearby, who just gave me a slight nod before disappearing into the crowd. The smaller backpack was given to another teen, and the lunchbox to their younger sibling. Then the water bottle was handed to a child, maybe 7-8 years old, and the rest of the people nearby groaned in annoyance before wandering away again.

The boy who received the water bottle stepped aside, and a tiny tearful girl behind him looked up at me without a word, but her eyes were filled with longing. I didn't have anything else, except the small toy, which, upon closer inspection, turned out to be a plushie dinosaur, one of those somewhat realistic ones with the correct proportions and green mottled fabric with mock scales. I smiled and handed it to her, and she hugged it tightly, but her face didn't change. It sent a shiver down my spine.

I turned to head back into the building and had to push my way through the press of bodies again. Instead of the ramp I was expecting, I came up to a solid brick wall, and had to follow along it for a while before reaching the entrance again. As I moved along the crowds, I caught a word here and there about the situation that brought all these people here to this old school yard. They were all here, seeking the charity goods held in the building, which was indeed an old school building. A lot of people were surprised it was being used, since the structure had been condemned a long time ago.

Then I heard the sound of a small fussy child whose voice seemed to pierce its way through the ever present rumble of a thousand simultaneous conversations. I turned and pushed into the crowd, searching for the voice, and quickly came across a small toddler and her exhausted mom. She continued to cry even when I knelt down to try to calm her and the mom told me she was just hungry. I offered to go find some food in the building, and she smiled wanly at me and said they needed milk or formula, as the small girl wasn't quite ready for full meals.

I asked them to hold on, and returned to the building, not hesitating to walk inside despite it's neglected condition, and made my way back to the bin in the middle of the cafeteria. I looked around but didn't see any food, and finally managed to grab one of the volunteers filling bags to ask where I could find some. They directed me back to the main desk at the front entrance, where I found the woman from before, answering phones and writing things in a large three-ring binder.

Once I explained what was up with the small girl in the yard, she quickly, without taking her attention away from the phone call she was on, reached under the desk and handed me a fresh warm bottle and waved me off. I held tight to the bottle with both hands, and rushed back through the building, across the densely packed cafeteria, and out into the equally busy yard. Finding the little girl and her mom took only a moment, and they were happy to receive the bottle.

Just as I turned away from them, dreading having to make my way back through the crowds, I heard a car horn honking nearby and looked around. Through the chain link fence I noticed a small black car sitting in the asphalt of the nearby road, and its driver was waving at me. I pushed my way up to the fence and smiled and waved back before squeezing through a small gap in the bars and headed to the car.

It was a very squat, black car, the roof sitting comically higher than a normal car with only enough seating inside for one passenger besides the driver, who was a very tall, bearded man. He smiled at me and drove off as soon as I buckled in. It was nighttime and the road we were on went straight into the woods nearby, the treeline reaching right to the edge of the pavement.

As we drove along, I looked out the window and saw two large birds, hawks of some kind, flying alongside, diving in and around each other almost like they were fighting. Then they banked out towards the trees at a point where the ground was several feet lower than the road, creating a dip just beyond the edge of the pavement. As they dipped below the line of the road, I turned to the driver and let him know to watch out, in case they flew back up in front of us.

When I turned back to look out the window again, I noticed that it was significantly lighter outside, like it became daytime instantly, and there was a burst of black feathers that rose from the ground as we passed by. I turned in my seat to look back, thinking we may have hit the hawks, and instead saw something else along the side of the road.

It was about the size of a human, but proportioned vaguely like a ferret, with a long and slender body and short, stubby limbs. It stood on its hind legs, tucking its forelimbs up and watching us as we drove on. Covered in matted white fur, it had pinkish flesh visible around its paws and face, but the face was flat and completely featureless except for two over-sized red eyes.

It stared at me, and I whispered to the driver to keep going. Then it moved, in that bouncing hop common to squirrels and ferrets, to the middle of the road before standing up again to stare at us. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Then it started running along the road, chasing after us. Its white fur catching the light of the sun, so it seemed to almost glow, as it charged down the middle of the road.

I urged the driver to go faster, but he ignored me, rolling his eyes as I tied to tell him we were being chased. I looked back again and was shocked to see that the creature was much closer than before. But something seemed off about it; It was bigger, not because it was closer but because it had grown. Now it was about the same size as the car we were in and it's face and ears, which had been nothing more than slightly longer tufts on its head before, were enlongating, looking more and more like some kind of fox or wolf as it continued following us at a casual run.

I pulled out my phone and took a picture to show to the driver, who finally believed me and started accelerating. The creature continued to change behind us as its limbs grew longer and its snout became much more clearly defined. The only thing as yet unchanged was its white fur and large red eyes. As I watched it bounding after us, I realized that the sky was darkening again, the trees growing denser as night began to rapidly fall around us.

As I watched, the creature's fur began to change, turning black from the tips inward, almost like it was being burnt by some invisible fire. It had also continued to grow and was now several feet taller than our little vehicle. As the last of the white fur on its body turned black, the creature began to glow. The night had descended in earnest now, and the creature's stomach and joints glowed orange like a hot coal.

The vehicle made a sudden turn onto a side road and started bucking wildly on the uneven ground. For a few moments, the creature was out of sight, but I could still see a faint orange glow beyond the trees, and turned to the driver to urge him to go faster. With a sickening crunch, the vehicle came to a sudden stop in the darkness, and we both bailed out as fast as we could.

Then the wolf-creature strolled in through the trees and we started running away as fast as we could. We rushed towards a set of railroad tracks just a few yards beyond where our car had stopped. Just as we reached the tracks, the night was split by another light, this time the bright white headlight of an oncoming train, which rushed towards us as we clamored across the tracks. We made it to the other side, barely in time, leaving the wolf-creature behind.

It was now tall enough to see over the passing train; it opened its toothy jaw to roar at us, its mouth a bright tunnel of flames, as it spotted us. We continued to run, glancing back only to make sure we were not being followed, and headed back towards the school yard. Just as we reached the fence, we turned to head off to the left, hoping to circle around the building and escape on the far side, but another massive flaming wolf-creature reared up out of the trees and spat a burst of flames into the air, sending the crowd inside into a panic.

People ran everywhere, screaming and pushing, trying to be the first to get away from these monsters. We doubled back along the fence to head the other way when a 3rd creature emerged from the woods just as the original beast jogged up from the direction of the train tracks. With no other choice of escape, we squeezed past that gap in the fence and made a beeline across the field towards the building.

We pushed our way into a side door and across the adjoining room, another classroom filled with shelves, though they were empty by this point, and into the hallway. We could hear the roar of the creatures outside, so we ran to the cafeteria and down the flight of stairs from before, trying our best to rush without slipping on the steep and decrepit steps.

As soon as we reached the basement, we headed towards the far side of the room where the ramp up was located. Instead of heading back up, however, we turned towards a set of steel double doors adjacent to the ramp and shoved them open to reveal a dark alleyway and several large dumpsters. The driver was huffing behind me, we were both running out of energy for running, so we slowed as we entered the alley, pulling the steel doors closed behind us.

The only light we could see by came from the full moon overhead, casting a pale glow on everything around us. Quietly, we walked to the far end of the dumpsters and looked around, seeing no one, before heading across the open space to the fence line. Then a fourth wolf-creature emerged from around the far end of the building and roared at us, the glow in its mouth wavering with heat.

Suddenly, I felt tired. Not exhausted, but exasperated, and done with all the running. I turned to the wolf-creature and shouted at it, telling it to leave us alone, and that we were done with this chase. The creature reeled back, like it had been struck, and shrunk down quickly, returning to about the size of a man. It's fur remained black, however, and it kept the wolf-like head, but it now walked on its rear legs. It strolled towards us, still emanating a sense of danger and aggression.

I shouted at it again, pulling out my full bad-dog voice halting it in place, glaring at me, but no longer moving. Then another humanoid wolf came out of the shadows by the steel door, and I held out my other hand and demanded it halt. It, too, stopped in its tracks and watched me quietly. The driver with me had started to catch his breath and moved faster towards the woods, with me walking backwards after him, keeping my eyes locked to the creatures' gazes.

A third creature emerged along the back of the building next to the first, and a fourth popped up just along the treeline off to my right. Each time, I shouted at them to stay put. I told them that I was done running and didn't want them messing with us anymore. By now, I had reached the treeline, and they were all standing in the shadow of the school, which blurred their outlines. Only their glowing red eyes, and the feiry bloom of their chests, giving away their position. I kept my eyes on them until I had no choice but to turn to see where I was walking.

...Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

...On a moving train. The heavily wooded landscape a blur as it rushes past the windows, The traincar is empty aside from an older couple sitting together a few rows away. They look homely, with well worn hands and practical clothes, and are quietly talking. The man has a dusty boonie hat and hard eyes that he keeps trained on the two entrances at the front and rear. The woman has long red hair that is pulled up into a disheveled bun and is wearing a black jacket over a light-blue shirt. 

She is whispering to him, her hands moving quickly to emphasize her words, and he is nodding along. I cannot hear them, so I move closer as nothing more than an invisible observer. As I get near, her voice becomes clearer, and she is telling the man that they need to stick to their plan. He agrees with a sigh, the tone of his voice clearly saying that he’d heard the same thing on repeat for some time. 

Then the door to the rear of the car opened, and a small group of teens entered, all with shockingly blonde hair and long black robes. They had been chatting happily, but the conversation petered off as they caught sight of the couple. They moved down the aisle towards the entrance at the front as the man watched them. Just as they got to the door, however, one of the teens turned to speak.

He was a shallow faced young man, with slicked back hair, who somehow managed to look down at the older couple with a haughty air of disdain, as he demanded to know what they were doing on the train. The man smiled coldly and explained that they were just catching a lift into town.

The sharp-nosed teen informed them that this train was to be for the exclusive use of their school and that there weren’t supposed to be any other passengers. The man’s smile widened, as sincere as a seedy salesman, and he reiterated that they were simply getting a ride into town, and weren’t bothering anyone. As they were speaking the woman, without looking down, used her foot to gently push a stack of boxes further back under their seat.

Then she caught the eye of one of the other teens, an equally thin and pale young woman with long, straight hair held back by a thin black headband. The girl eyed her in return, watching warily as the conversation continued, but didn’t say anything. The man then stood up, and he started to carefully argue with the teen, who was getting more and more irritated at their failure to bend to his non-existent authority. 

Just as the conversation got louder, the train arrived at their destination. With a gentle lurch and the soft screech of brakes, the train car slowed to a halt. The bold afternoon sun streaks through the dense trees and into the windows, leaving beams of dusty light and splatters of organic shadows over their faces. 

The man gestured behind his back, his hands waving ‘hurry up’, as the woman reached under her seat and picked up the boxes. There were three, each about the size of a hatbox, and she balanced them carefully as the man explained that the whole conversation was pointless anyway; this was their stop. Then they pushed gently past the teens and headed to the side door.

As soon as the portal opened, they stepped down off the train car and onto the station, which was nothing more than a long, concrete slab set into a shallow clearing in the trees with a small operator’s building sitting about halfway down. They quickly walked away from the throngs of teenagers who were beginning to amble out of the other train cars and headed to the edge of the platform furthest from the main building. 

At the end of the platform they stepped down about a foot, onto the rough woodland floor, and immediately headed into the trees. As I followed, I could tell that they knew exactly where they were going. Despite having to weave in and around the dense woods they made a beeline straight through to another, larger, clearing. 

The center of which was dominated by a lake that stretched off into the distance and flowed around a bend and into the trees. On the shoreline nearby stood a single, windowless shed with a worn, reddish wood roof and large, barn-like doors held closed by a heavy, metal chain. Next to the shed, jutting towards the center of the lake, was an old, but sturdy, wooden pier. The couple walked briskly down the slope to the shoreline and stepped up onto the pier. 

With a brisk pace, they reached about the middle of the pier and the woman set the boxes down on the damp wood before opening them. As she lifted the lid of the first one I could see a shallow, pressed cardboard-pulp tray with a dozen or so cavities in neat little rows. Each one was filled with a handful of rich soil and a tiny plant carefully labeled with a small, white tag.

She ignored the tray, however, and instead lifted it out of the way to reveal a false bottom in the box. As soon as she opened it up, the occupants began wiggling and jumping about at the sudden exposure to light. It was full of small, bright green frogs. She picked up the box, heedless of the few amphibians that had managed to escape, and dumped all of them straight into the lake.

Then she opened the second box, which was set up the same way, and unceremoniously added its contents to the water as well. Just as she reached for the third box, while nudging the few stragglers off the edge of the pier with her foot, a voice stopped her. From behind the shed stepped a guard, who demanded to know what she was doing.

He was a heavyset man with a clean shaven face that made him look more like a petulant child than the serious security guard he believed himself to be. His uniform was tidy but ill fitting and had ‘camp security’ on a jaunty little patch, showing a sunrise behind a camping tent, featured on his shoulder. The woman’s partner, however, was nowhere to be seen.

She smiled warmly to the chubby man, and explained that she was a biologist, hired by the camp director to assess the ecosystem of the lake, which she had found wanting, and was here to make adjustments to the population of flora and fauna.

The frogs were intended to be used as food for the predatory fish in the lake, who were a popular target for the camp's fishers, and the plants were to be food for the frogs and, when fully grown, provide some much needed shelter in the shallower parts of the water. 

The guard seemed skeptical, however, and just glared at her with his beady little eyes for a moment, before telling her that no one had mentioned to him that there was an eco survey done, or that he was expecting visitors. He reached for the radio nestled at his hip just as the man from before returned.

He tried to sweet talk the guard, who was continuing to stubbornly insist on contacting the director to get confirmation, while the woman turned to empty the contents of the third box. She stood, watching the frogs disappear into the water, and nudged the last few stragglers over the edge. 

Then my view of the scene changed, and I zoomed away from the group on the pier, and over the top of the lake, where I could see that the center was significantly darker and deeper than the rest. Then I continued to arch down and level with the surface before going below.

I didn’t enter the water as I moved down, instead the lake and landscape before me leveled out, like a cut-away diorama. I watched as the layers of the ecosystem moved past my vision. The water, with various fish, plants, and a large amount of frogs, darkened as I moved deeper and the ground below the surface sloped inward and then sharply down into a very deep, rocky cavern. 

Eventually I reached the bottom, which was nearly black, except for a strange pink glow that added delicate highlights to the edges of the rock walls. I couldn’t see the source of the light, so I pushed myself back up to the surface, where the three people were still standing on the pier, deep in conversation.

Then I spun around them, so that the deepest part of the lake was easily visible behind them, and they all stopped talking at once. Then they turned, and looked at the lake, who’s once murky depths were now crystal clear. They could see all the way to the bottom now, and it looked like there were some kind of ruins, still highlighted by the pink glow.

There was a series of columns that each had some kind of bust or creature at the top, and further beyond them was a large gate with a tall fence that ran the full width of the space they could see, each nearly black, but strangely highlighted by the glow, making them just visible enough to seem ethereal. 

The guard said they needed to report this at once, but the couple immediately rushed back down the pier to the shore and began making their way along to a point where the land jutted out over the water. The guard reluctantly followed, telling them to slow down so he could keep up.

At the end of the outcropping was an old, metal ladder that had a strange organic texture, like it had grown out of the wall instead of being placed there. Without hesitation, the woman stepped over the edge and onto the rungs  to climb down. 

The water was no longer a physical, tangible thing, but now more of a suggestion. An eerie darkening of the light and colors around them, like a stage effect, with rippling sunlight on their faces and the surfaces around them. 

The man, and the guard, followed her down into the depths. The ladder wasn’t really straight, but kind of meandered back and forth a bit, the rungs slimy to the touch and slick under their grip. The guard in particular had a lot of trouble climbing, once nearly sliding off as the ladder twisted to the side, but even he managed to make it to the bottom.

As they descended, the man and woman chatted excitedly about this find, declaring it an archeological discovery, and wishing to find out more. The further they descended, the more they could see of the landscape around them, which was full of small temples, statues, and various carvings embedded in the rocky walls. 

At the bottom, they stepped off the ladder and stood in a small plaza between several buildings. The structures were all definitely constructed, but looked lumpy and organic, their initial shapes obscured by eons of mineral deposits, and they were backlit by the mysterious pink glow, which seemed to be coming from somewhere beyond the largest structure.

Just as the group started to step forward, they were stopped by the sound of scuttling from all around them. It was harsh, like something hard scraping on stone, and built up quickly to a gravely roar that surrounded them. Then out from the darkness of the shadowy doorways, windows, columns and spaces between buildings came a swarm of crab-like creatures.

Each was almost as big as a man, with multiple long thin legs and a large central body, all of which was encased in a pale carapace with spines. They had large elongated black eyes on stalks sticking up out of the top of their bodies. Their limbs were all jointed in multiple places and the front two were held up like arms, each with a long, thin crab claw instead of hands. 

Despite the length of their legs, however, they walked with their limbs tucked as close to their bodies as possible, so they stood tall in a narrow space. Once they were within a few paces of the humans, completely encircling them and cutting them off from the ladder, the largest one stepped forward and spoke.

Its voice was gravely and clicked, but was perfectly understandable. It was the leader of these people, and it demanded to know what the humans were doing invading their territory. The man cautiously stepped forward and explained that they were merely curious, and had come here to explore.

This made all the creatures click and gesture angrily until the leader held up a long claw in the air for silence. It told them that their truths would be revealed by their god, and grabbed the wrist of the woman, dragging her along through the crowd, who pushed the others to follow.

Once they stepped around the largest structure, the source of the pink glow became apparent. Embedded high into the wall of the cave was a strange black statue. It was a featureless silhouette, a complete void of blackness, but the air around it glowed intensely, like a magenta sun. 

The crab people dragged the group to an area below the statue, which was several meters above, that looked like some kind of altar. As they approached, the leader explained that they were the true worshippers. That their god had blessed them with the shape of perfect evolution, which he indicated by waving his crab claw in the air above them, and that they would decide if the visitors were to be blessed or damned.

As soon as they reached the altar, the Crab leader bowed before the statue and made a loud, high pitched clicking sound that left my ears ringing. Then the void moved. Its shape changed, elongated and peeled away from the wall, arching down to a few feet above the group. 

It spoke. Its words are more of a feeling in our minds than physical sound. And it condemned them and accused them of coming to steal from the people. The woman spoke up, and tried to argue that they were only exploring, being curious about the unknown, and wanting to simply know more about the crabs and their god.

But the god was having none of it. It shifted, its shape undulating with fury as it revealed that their words, as they descended, had been heard, and that the history of mankind was well known. The humans’ ‘archaeological finds’ were taken from their resting places, damaged for this ‘knowledge’ they desired, but then displayed for mere amusement. And they would not do that to the crab people.

The woman was then grabbed by another crab and carried off into the darkness as she yelled angrily, and was soon followed by both of the men. With satisfaction, the god slowly curled back up to the space in the wall it had previously occupied and returned to absolute stillness. The blackness of the void was absolute and drew me in…

…Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

...I hear the laughter of children, strangely sharp and echoed as if in a large artificial space, and turn to look for them. I found myself in the lobby of a skyscraper. It's very open, sleek, and modern, with lots of polished stone surfaces and shiny gold accents. The ceiling is several stories up, with walkways wrapping around the edges of the circular space. Dominating the center is a massive sculpture about 20 feet tall. It's a heavily gold-veined, black marble tower, roughly cut, with a set of steps leading up the side.

There are a dozen children happily playing on it, climbing up and down the uneven steps, and carrying buckets of dirt. Several of the children have even rigged up a pulley system to bring buckets up to the topmost ledge. In the space between the steps and the statue itself is a long hollow of some kind, that sort of works like a slide, but it is uneven. As each bucket of dirt is poured into the makeshift slide, a few kids would slide all the way down to the bottom. But they would dislodge a mountain of dirt at the same time, and have to bucket it back up again.

I approached the statue and called out to the kids, who froze for a moment as if caught in the act before relaxing as I spoke. I told them they'd have more luck sliding if they used water instead. I climb up, and carefully make my way to the top of the narrow steps and pull a hose out from behind a crevice. As soon as I pull it forward enough to reach the top of the slide, water begins to pour out, turning the remaining dirt into mud. 

The water pressure is terrible though, and I'm having trouble getting the dirt to wash away so the children don't get too dirty, so I put my thumb over the opening, feeling the ice-cold water push against my skin. Once I get the right angle, the water shifts from a gentle trickle to a high-powered jet and I clear away the last of the muck. The children cheer and begin happily riding the wave down to the bottom, splashing a bit in the pool at the base before excitedly returning to go again. 

As I'm watching them play, I suddenly feel something bump against my finger from inside the hose. It startles me and I let go immediately, looking down at the crystal clear flow. I catch a glimpse of something silvery slip past and into the small puddle at my feet. I set the hose down, the water still trickling enough for the children to slide, and kneel down to get a closer look.

Theres something small, silvery, and spiny in the water, flitting about too quickly for me to get a solid look, but it's only a couple of inches long at the most. I bend closer to try to focus on the creature, but then I hear angry shouting coming from below. I stand up and look down at the bottom of the slide, where something has caused the water to build up to the point that it is beginning to flood over the edge of the railing around the statue. 

There's a man standing there, no real features beyond a vague sense of 'boss' about him, and he's admonishing the children, who have all stopped playing and are standing at the bottom, looking mildly ashamed or defensive. He finally waves them all off and they rush away and into the depths of the building. I turn off the hose at the top, and start to step down, while telling the man that I was the one who used water, and it wasn't the kids' fault. 

He starts to berate me like I'm an employee, telling me to clean up this and move that and so on, but I realize that I don't have to listen to any of this, and his voice starts to fade into a distant, mumble. Then I return to the top of the structure. Now that the water has been shut off, the pool at the top has settled enough for me to make out the small silvery thing as a little fish, and I feel sorry for the tiny fella. So, I pull out a small, clear plastic tub to scoop up the fish.

Pushing the edge of the plastic carefully under the surface of the water, I watch as the rush of water pulls the little fish into the container, and I then I carefully pick it up again. As I walk back down to the base of the statue, all of the children suddenly return. Except this time, there are even more of them, and older ones, who all climb onto the statue ignoring the increasingly desperate protests of the bossman. 

Heading away from the chaos behind me, I walk deeper into the building lobby, making my way around the various bits of furniture scattered around. As I continue, the designs and colors of the furniture get more and more elaborate, mismatched and out of place, like desks in the middle of a walkway, and lamps sitting on chairs. Eventually, my way is blocked by a large overstuffed gray couch with a wood coffee table balanced on its edge across the back (so the legs stick inward where your head would go). 

I squeeze past the arm and stop before a large decorative pool set into the floor. The pool was sunk a couple of feet below the surface of the floor, but had clear glass walls that extended up another couple of feet, with the edge of the glass at about waist height. I looked down into the water, which seemed crystal clear, the pale gray stone bottom easily visible through the gen,tle ripples, and smiled. I decided this would be a perfect home for the tiny silver fish.

I gently tilted the container until the rush of the water pushed the fish out and into the pool. It swam frantically in circles for a moment before dashing off into the distance. I knelt down to watch the fish through the clear glass side as it darted around, exploring its new space. Suddently a grey shark appears out of nowhere and slams its nose into the glass by my face. 

I jump back, out of reach, as it splashes a bit before turning around awkwardly in the too-small space and circling away again. The thought of someone leaving this beautiful beast, which was about the size of a tiger shark, in a tiny tank barely big enough for it to turn in, made me angry. I watched as it carefully swam in circles, ignoring the tiny fish that had decided the best place to swim was along the shark's nose.

Content that the tiny fish was safe, I took a few more steps back and heard the sounds of yelling in the far-off lobby intensify. I sighed, and decided I would have to come back later to find a new home for both of them, before turning to walk back around the gray couch. I thought about how much bother it was going to be to clean up the mess after the children left.

...Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

There was a pristine tropical bay, nestled into the side of an island, with a large smooth beach sloping lazily into the waves. The water was crystal clear where it washed onto the sands, but only a few yards out into the bay, it got much darker, as the depth drastically increased. I was standing in the shallow end of the water, watching a young woman as she catalogued shipping crates.

The shipping crates were exactly the kind you see on large ocean vessels; a variety of long colorful steel boxes, their doors tightly latched and covered in various numbers and markings that might mean something to whoever moved them here. They were, however, were small, barely the length of my arm, and there were a hundred or so of them stacked on a large orange steel frame in the middle of the water in the bay.

It was set up like a large wireframe cube, with the bottom nestled solidly into the sand under the shallow water, and the open top about 12 or so feet above the waterline. Along the three walls that faced the water, there were shelves that kept the crates dry.

I was standing in the middle of the structure, the warm water lapping up to my knees, with a young woman dressed in some simple white sun dress. She was all smiles and long dark hair, and she was delicately wading through the water and touching the edges of the crates one by one as she muttered to herself. 

There were some unfilled gaps in the crates, and through one of them I spotted a man with a small boat. It had a dozen crates filling it and he was pulling it along the shelf of the beach just shy of the deeper water. His smile was bright and friendly, if a little on the cheesy side, and he strode up to the outside of the crate structure and offered one of his crates through the gap.

The woman reached out and took it and they started chatting. I tried to listen in, but their words were strange to me. The language was melodic, flowing effortlessly from their lips, and filled with strange clicks and chirps. I had no idea what they were saying, but I could tell from the smiles and hand gestures that the man wished to sell us his crates.

They struck some kind of deal, sealing it with a handshake, and he handed me one of the crates. I took it, feeling the warmth of the sun through the hot steel, and tried to pass it on to the woman, but she had walked away. She was up on the beach now, standing at some folding table that I hadn’t noticed before.

So, I waited for her, but as I did so, I started to notice more about the crate I was holding. It felt too light. The crates were metal, but it barely felt like I was holding anything. I looked over at the man, who was holding a couple more crates and waiting patiently on the outside. I held up my hand and gave the crate a shake, and heard the hollow clattering of a small object in an empty space.

The man’s smile fell, and he started talking to me in a rapid, hushed tone, but I still couldn’t understand him. I guessed that he was trying to get me to keep my mough shut about the emptiness of the crate, but I knew that would be a betrayal to the woman, who had just waded back into the water next to me.

I held up my hand to stop her from taking another crate from the man, and pulled out a screwdriver from my back pocket. I leveraged off the cover of the crate, which was not the small doors at the ends you would expect, but actually the top of the crate instead. Inside of the crate were a few pieces of some kind of metallic ore, about the size of a chicken egg, but the rest of it was filled to the brim with cheap foam flowers and small paper cranes.

The woman looked mad and had the man wade around the outside of the shelves to join us in the middle, where he opened all of the crates he brought with him. He really only had about 1 crate worth of useable material, while the rest were all bulked out with the same little flowers and birds, and some plastic palm trees. 

As soon as the woman realized that he was trying to scam her, she grabbed him by the back of his collar like some misbehaving youth, and dragged him up onto the beach. I watched as she marched him all the way up the slope to a classic stone well nestled into the border between the beach and the grassy hill beyond it. I watched as she jumped up into the air, still holding onto the man, and effortlessly fell into the depths of the well, which flashed with a magical blue light, as if a portal had been opened to another place.

For a few moments I stood, looking around at the world, taking in the warm ocean breeze, the heat of the sun on my skin, the waves pushing lazily against my legs, and the soft shloop sound of the water lapping against the edges of the half dozen open crates floating in the water next to me. I even tasted the salty sweat on my lips when I licked them, though the pressure of my tongue felt weird, almost like my mouth had been numbed by a dentist beforehand. 

Then I spotted the woman walking along the beach again, headed towards me. She told me that the man, a known scammer, had been turned over to the authorities, then asked if I would help her clean up his crates. I reached through the gap in the shelves and grabbed the edge of his tugboat, intending to pull it in and tie it down, so it wouldn’t drift, but as I did so I noticed a large dark shape just below the surface of the water.

I stepped back for a moment, then stuck my head through the gap and looked intently at the rippling waves. Then I saw it again, a long dark tapered shape with some kind of forelimbs, swimming in the deep part of the water, just beyond the underwater shelf. I turned to point it out to the woman, but she wasn’t there, and when I looked back, I saw her dive into the deep outside the structure.

I ran after her, my legs dragging heavily through the water, and dove in myself. Under the surface, the water was clear to see through, but was poorly lit and had a greenish hue. The land shelf dropped nearly vertically down a solid 20 or so feet before leveling out again. I held my breath and effortlessly swam to the bottom, the weight of the water no longer affecting me.

At the bottom was the woman, floating in front of a large glowing creature. It was a mermaid of sorts. The green scaling of her tail didn’t end at her torso, but covered her whole body. She had long claw-like arms and a mass of electric blue fins instead of hair. Her hands glittered and glowed brightly, coated in some kind of blue-white crystal, and she was tightly hugging the end of her tail, which was also electric blue and sparkling. 

The mermaid had a chain around her neck, and I followed the links up to the surface and noticed that they were attached to the bottom of the tugboat. I realized the man was a slaver as well as a scammer, and tisked with disgust as I returned my gaze to the poor creature. 

The woman in white was holding her breath and moving her hands, trying to communicate to the mermaid that she was going to get something to cut the chain. The mermaid didn’t move, but watched warily as the woman gestured, then sighed and spoke. I understood her words which came to me crystal clear, as she said she would wait patiently, as if she was standing next to me in an empty room. 

The woman In white said she was happy to help, then gasped and held her hands to her mouth, suddenly realizing that she could talk, and more importantly breathe, under the water. The mermaid said it was because of her magical aura. As long as we were near her, we could breathe in her world. We were all smiles as I pulled the screwdriver back out of my pocket and handed it to the woman, who used it to free the mermaid from her chains.

The two hit it off and were chatting happily, in a mixture of the strange clicking language of the woman and the more understandable one of mine. The mermaid wanted to show the woman the world under the waves, and I watched as they disappeared into the depths before quickly returning to the surface myself as soon as I realized I couldn’t breathe anymore. 

The scene on the beach had changed while we were gone, and now there were a hundred people or so, settling in for a nice hang-out party as the sun started to set, turning the sky into a swirling rainbow of oranges and purples. I wandered up and down the sands, chatting with random people, all of them strangely normal but featureless at the same time. 

I had different conversations, the details blurring together, but there was someone with an embroidered blanket that I recognized and commented on, several people laughing with colorful fruity drinks, someone with sunglasses and headphones trying to wire up a music stand, and a slowly building crescendo of conversation that mixed with the emerging nighttime chirps of crickets. 

I was having a laugh with someone when a young man in black with short dark hair approached me and asked if I had seen the woman recently. Realizing that she had been under the waves for quite some time, and worried, I rushed back out into the water. Wading out to the underwater cliff and dove back down into the depths where I last saw them, but they weren’t there.

Looking around, I noticed a pipeline emerging from the side of the cliff, leading back inland, and from the opening I could hear the murmur of voices. Still holding my breath, I poked my head into the pipe, intending to try and see where the sound was coming from, but as soon as I did, I was sucked in!

The water pushed me rapidly along the pipe, which was a smooth greenish metal that quickly shifted to a crystal clear glass that I could easily see through. The material I was moving through rapidly changed from sandy silt to stone and then to large reddish bricks. Then the pipe turned and I was rapidly pushed upwards for a moment before being unceremoniously ejected from the end. 

I landed on the cold, wet stone floor of a large cellar. The room seemed to stretch off into infinity, row after row of old stone columns stretching off into the darkness in every direction. The floor was slick from moisture, but I soon realized it wasn’t just slick, but rapidly filling with water. Rising up from the floor was a large wave, about 4-5 feet tall, that soon rolled off into the distance, like some kind of video game, only to be followed by another wave a few moments later. 

I watched the repeating waves of water move along into the darkness, then noticed the woman and the mermaid sitting nearby. They were chatting happily, and relaxing, letting the waves lift them off the ground, riding the crest, then settling back down on the floor.

I shouted to the woman that it was finally time to leave, and waved at me before turning back to the mermaid to say her goodbyes. Ash she did so, the mermaid held out her claw, still sparkling with some kind of blue-white crystal, and delicately touched the fingertips of the woman. The pointer finger on the woman’s hand sparked with blue energy and started to grow its own blue-white crystals. 

The mermaid explained that she shared her gift of ice magic with the woman so that she could use it to generate her own underwater breath aura and come back to visit whenever she could. With a broad smile on her face, the woman happily followed me back into the pipeline, which grabbed us and forced us rapidly back into the deep water in the bay. 

As soon as we emerged, she held her glowing finger to her lips, and let out a gentle giggle, before swimming back up to the surface. I followed along and, dripping from the swim, followed her up onto the beach where several people shouted and waved for us to join them. She dissappeared into the crowd as I headed up to the stage where the young man in black was waiting patiently. 

He asked if I could help the DJ finish setting up his laptop while he went to talk ot his sister. I turned to the stage and took a look at the wiring, and rolled my eyes. They had several devices plugged into a single power strip, which was barely balanced on a wood block above the damp sand. I tried to show the DJ that his wiring was bad, but he ignored me. So I decided it was time to leave, and turned to look back at the, now nighttime, beach scene, and sighed.

... Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

We had arrived at the entrance to the park. Me, my friend, and a small child with dark hair. We had traveled pretty far for this particular park, several airplane hops and a few countries away, but the reviews for the place were all raving. I looked up and could see a massive dark colored archway shading the ticket booths and lines.

There were thousands of others with us, most of them faceless bodies, but I could feel the excitement in the crowd. Once the gate opened, we slowly funneled in. My friend was chatting excitedly, pointing out attractions on a small paper map she held in her hand, and we moved our way past the ticket booths.

Just beyond the entryway, the crowd began to disperse off to the left and right. In front of us was a large fence at the edge of a cliff looking down at the park several stories below us. We stepped up to the bars to get a good look, and to see if we could spot some of the attractions we were interested in.

Spread out before us was a whole mess of buildings roughly laid out in a rectangle, and we excitedly pointed out some of the more interesting ones. There were several old brick structures directly in front of us that might have been hotels. One was large and grey with cream trim, and next to it was another in bubblegum pink with matching cream trim, all surrounded by trees and milling crowds.

Then we looked around at each corner of the park, which seemed dedicated to a different color. The far left was the bright golds of shifting sands and I could make out massive multi-colored posters featuring ancient egyptian inspired cats.

Off to the far right was a whole world of greens and trees, but most of the features were hard to see under the foiliage. To the immediate left of us was a large shopping district, all decked out to look like some dark-wood mideval town, countless shopping booths and crowds filled the streets between.

And off to the immediate right was a whole blue-ish, sleek, modern entertainment area filled with stadiums and small stages surrounded by quaint cafes. Several of the buildings had massive banners showcasing some singer, or production that I didn’t recognize.

I was a little dissappointed, because I felt like there should have been more big rides like rollercoasters, and I looked to my friend to ask her where they were on the map, but she was already running ahead of me, headed towards the blue district. I grabbed the hand of the small child next to me and followed.

We moved along the walkways between the various buildings, stopping at each one to see what they were featuring, but every time we did they told us they were sold out until morning. The cafes were also completely filled, not a single seat in sight, and every one of the people in the faceless crowd around us seemed excited.

My friend turned to me, her long hair floating a little in the cool breeze, and told me we were going to head as far into the district as we could, maybe the incoming crowds hadn’t filled up the seats at the furthest show out. I looked around at everyone and shrugged, it was as good of a theory as any I suppose.

She ran off again, her cream dress making her fairly easy to spot as she rushed ahead of me, while I tried to keep up, still holding the child’s hand. As we moved along, the walkway began to narrow, the cafes got grungier looking, and soon there was a difinitive end to the line.

We were along the side of one of the bigger buildings, it’s stucco’d blue-grey facade reaching high into the sky to my left, and only a few scattered round cafe tables with their individual umbrellas filled the space. After dodging around a row of trash cans, we reached the end of the district. There was one final table in a rounded stone patio, edged with a blue glass railing, beyond which was just an endless wall of foiliage.

In the wall of the building, however, was set a single dooorway, with a plain white door. My friend confidently strode up and pushed it open, and it swung inward easily. This place didn’t feel right to me, and I called out to her that I bet this was an employee entrance, not a show. She just shrugged and ignored me. I followed her in past the white door, and into a short dimly lit hallway that almost immediately turned to the left. There were no signs anywhere stating that it was only for employees afterall, so we cautiously followed along. Once we turned the corner, we were in a small locker room, rows of steel doors filling up the space with a single unadorned wall on our right.

The wall itself opened up, sloping gradually downward, revealing a shallow ramp or staircase on the other side. I couldn’t see over the partition at first, but I told my friend we definiteky were in the wrong place. Right after I spoke up, a disembodied gravely voice added that I was right. We stopped in our tracks and looked around for the source.

Sitting on the floor just on the other side of the lower end of the wall was someone with messy dark hair pulled up into a haphazard bun. They were smoking something because I could see the puffs drifting up from their face, but couldn’t make out more because of where they were sitting.

I apologized for my friend and I, and gently tugged on her shoulder to get her moving. My friend huffed in annoyance, and immediately turned around and stomped out of the locker room. The small child, who had been quite silent and toddling along with us without complaint, smiled nervously up at me, so I gave their hand a gentle squeeze and led the way out.

I don’t know how long we were in that side room, but when we emerged again, the sky was growing darker and everything was dimly lit and greyed out. Off to the right we could see that most of the cafes were now empty, patrons having left alot of trash and food, but the various sounds of running shows meant it still sounded like there were crowds somewhere nearby.

The only other people we could see was a single man, dressed in a red shirt, sitting at one of the round umbrella tables with two teenage boys, and they were trying to finish their pizza before leaving. I walked past them just as they got up, grabbed their bags, and ran off twards the closest theater.

They left an entire untouched pizza on their table. Normally I would ignore it, eatig someone’s table leftovers definitely not my thing, but I was super annoyed that this place had been nothing but frustrated walking so far, so I picked it up. It wasn’t very big, but rectangular, and cut into a half dozen squares.

I broke a piece off for the child, who used both hands to hold their piece, and I started to haphazardly chew on the remainder. We continued strolling along and I realized that I had no clue where my friend was. This part of the park was clearly useless to us now anyway, so I decided to head back up the hill to the entrance.

It was closed. The whole archway and ticket booth area was dark and the gates were pulled shut and locked. There were plenty of other people around, but none of them looked like they could be employees, and didn’t seem to bothered by the closed entryway anyway.

I asked a passerby and they seemed suprised, and pointed out that the park was a lock-in, an overnight amusement, and that the gates wouldn’t open again until the morning. I thanked them and just decided to go check out some of the shops instead. My friend loved to buy cute jewelry, so maybe I would see her there. Right as we reached the entrance to the shopping area, a long street of dark wood storefronts with brightly painted signs and decorated windows, my friend caught up to us. She jogged up and stopped when she saw the half-eaten pizza in my hand and asked when I had stopped to buy food. I told her that, so far this place was not impressing me, and I didn’t pay of the pizza, but took someone elses leftovers.

She just rolled her eyes at me and we began looking at the stores in earnest. From the outside they all looked pretty decent, elaborate wood structures with elements of victorian design in their windows and awnings. The shops themselves were not impressive.

We stepped into a few of them only to find that they were full of pointless overpriced knicknacks. They were also crowded and every inch of space filled with as many cheap things they could get away with selling at 4x the normal price. Nothing caught our eye and we continued along for some time checking out the occasional appealing options.

By this point it was full-night and the streets were lit by large faux-candle lanterns. And the shops begun to close. More and more of the doors were locked or barred, and the street vendors started to shutter and move off, and the only ones left looked less than safe, glaring at us from under unlit awnings and umbrellas.

I told my friend we needed to head back to the entrance again and demand to be let out, but she was determined to see the end of this district, just like the last. But the end was beyond dissappointing. Just another fence with dense foliage beyond, next to one last particularly shabby wooden shop, that was still open, its warm light highlighting a large wooden sign out front.

The sign was advertizing, a dentist of all things, and was covered in a hundred photos of smiling people with terrible slogans scattered throughout. I walked past the sign and the store, intending to leave, but my friend insisted on checking out this last spot.

It turned out to be a mix between an old, heavy-wood-bar tavern and a burger joint. Like if a 50′s diner was built during the height of the wild west. The bartender and burgersligner was cleaning up for the night and scraping the black sludge of burned grease off the griddle. He looked up at us, grumbled that they were in fact closed, and went back to work.

We stood in the empty room for a few moments, trying to decide what to do next, when someone approached us from behind. It was a tall man in dark clothes, and a brilliant white smile. He asked if we were interested in checking out the dentistry place advertized out front.

My friend said no and immediately walked out of the shop, and I did my best to quickly follow, but the man was smiling at the child I was still leading around, and leaned in to speak to them. He said he had something special in his shop for little ones, his smile widening.

I pulled the child along, apologizing sharply to the man over my shoulder as we walked out. Once again my friend seemed to have dissappeared and I didn’t see her in what was left of the meager crowd around us as everyone was making their way back up to the entrance. But I could feel the man following us, so I pulled the child along as fast as I could.

I knew just beond the line of shops was the egyptian area, so I ducked into a dark alleyway hoping to cut across to the other side. But beyond the stores was just a massive space, like a field, but with no grass, and there were stacks of crates and boxes everywhere in piles. We ran towards the nearest stack and ducked behind it.

The dark gloom around us made it hard to see anything more than silhouettes as we snuck from one box pile to the next. I just knew that the golden part of the park had to be nearby, but I couldn’t find anything in the darkness. I could hear the man behind us, calling out occasionally, as he followed.

Then I bumped into something with a weird angle to it, and looked closer. It was the side of a pyramid, cleary a modern stucco structure just painted to look like ancient stone. I looked up and saw that this was, in fact, the golden area I saw earlier that day, the multicolored cat banners dull and menacing in the darkness.

I was angry. This park was a complete sham. Not enough seating for shows, overpriced food, crappy tchotchkes, and ruddy run-down shops. And it looked like the entire golden area wasn’t even finished building. This was all a waste, and I wasn’t going to let some creep get us either, so I grabbed a nearby crate, pulled the lid off, and yanked until I had a piece of wood from the frame.

I kept the child carefully tucked behind me as we made our way back to the alley we entered by. I didn’t even bother trying to sneak, I just wanted out of there right now, and didn’t care if the man followed. It was only a few moments before I saw his silhouette step out from behind a nearby stack of boxes. He smiled, and his white teeth showed brightly in the gloom.

I just rolled my eyes. I wasn’t going to stand around for the cliched monologue and I was absolutely fed up with this place, so before he could even speak a single word, I swung the board as hard as I could and smacked him across the face. The impact reverberated up my arms, and the rough edge of the wood pinched my skin as the board shifted in my grip. And the man crumpled to the ground.

I dropped the board, reached down to scoop the child up into my arms, and ran. I ran out of the deep darkness and into the dimly moon-lit street of the shopping district, and kept running towards the entrance. Now that I realized this was a sham, I started to notice all kinds of discrepancies, like fake storefronts, and weird open spaces of debris between buildings. 

As I reached the hill leading up to the entrance, I ran into my friend again. She had been looking for me and begun to babble with relief as she came up and gave me and the child a hug. I put the kid down on their feet, and tried to tell my friend that we needed to leave this place, that the whole trip was a waste. She nodded and agreed and we turned to walk out.

Then a bright light above us caught our eye. A large blue spaceship swooped out of the darkness and down towards the center of the park. It was like a cruiseliner; the surfaces sleek and chrome-shiny, and lit with countless multicolored lights, and a large top deck that was filled with people waving down at us.

It settled into the center of the park, and I found myself and my companions being pushed by the crowds twards it. The ship was sitting directly on the ground, its shiny hull towering above us. As I watched, a large hatchway in the side of the ship opened and a stairway materialized out of nothing. Then the crowds on the ship disembarked, and those around us began to make their way onboard. 

I tried to get my friend to leave, but as I turned twards her, someone in the crowd reached out and tapped my shoulder. I turned to look and found myself facing something not-human. It was tall and lanky and had smooth hairless skin that had a faint rainbow pearlecent shimmer. It smiled at me and, without a word, began to lead us to the ship.

We climbed aboard at the base of the hull, but immediately found ourselves on the massive deck, which was lined with hundreds of chairs. They were extra padded seats with harnesses on a large metal platform, and everyone else were settling in. The air around us seemed to vibrate with the excitement the crouds felt, so I decided to take a seat myself and see what this was all about.

As soon as I got the child into the seat next to me and buckled in, the ship began to rise up into the air. It was perfectly smooth and fluid motion, only the movement of the environment outside, and a soft rummbling in my ears, any indication that we were moving at all. I buckled myself into my harness as more of the shimmering beings moved along the rows securing the seats. 

Then the seats began to rotate backwards so that everone was laying on their backs looking straight up into the sky, which had begun to clear of clouds, and only the stars could be seen now. Suddenly a blue-ish shimmer crackled across the area directly above us, as if some kind of force field was being activated, and the platform we were on began to groan as it raised us up off the deck of the ship.

We approached the force field, which gently rippled and shimmered, and I aniticipated stopping just before it. But we continued forward, and our feet slipped through the barrier. Wherever it crossed with someone’s limb, the barrier shone brightly with a teal hue, and wavered like sticking your feet into a pool of water.

Beyond the barrier it was cold, but not freezing, and our feet began to float as the barrier reached half-way along our thighs before stopping. I looked over at the child, who was giggling and grinning as they stuck their hands past the barrier and played with the floating edge of their clothes, which seemed to defy gravity. Then I looked down at my own feet as they floated, and saw my shoelaces weren’t being held down by gravity either. 

I carefully stuck my hands through the barrier, it felt cool and firm, like poking jello, before my hands slipped through. Beyond the sensation of weightlessness, I couldn’t feel anything. even moving my hands around wildly didn’t yeild the rush of air or water that I expected. 

Our limbs were in space. the weightless void was strangely comforting, and I watched the force field shimmer and sparkle against the skin on my forearms. Then the stars in front of us moved. With a slight sense of vertigo I watched as they rushed past us like some sci-fi special effect before we stopped again, looking down at an immense galaxy.

The massive glowing disc floated motionless before us, absolutely countless numbers of stars filling my vision, so close I felt like I could reach out and touch them. So I reached my arm out, as far into the void as I could, and held my hand up in front of the galaxy and watched as the light of the stars shimmered around the dark silhouette of my fingers.

I reached as far as I could with both hands, the straps of my harness biting into my shoulders, and it felt like the entire galaxy was just barely beyond my fingers. I realized I had a massive grin on my face and I smiled wider, my cheeks hurting, but I couldn’t help myself. I kept my eyes as wide open as I could, taking in as much detail as I could while I could. It was so beautiful.

...Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

Drew a scene from this dream from a year ago. 

I pulled myself up out of bed, my blanket slipping off the side of the mattress and to the floor as I fought to open my eyes in the morning light. Stumbling across the room, I was beyond exhausted, struggling to make my body move. The voice that roused me from my slumber grumbled from down the hall. I needed to get going. I had to make it to the kitchen.

The wonderfully dark hallway made it easier to see beyond the sleep in my eyes. The carpet was grey and rough under my feet as I rounded the corner to a kitchen filled with the soft glow of morning light. I trudged across the wood floor and looked up in time to see a small shadowy child knock over something and skitter away. I knew I would be in trouble for not stopping them. The children were under my watch while the voice was back down the hallway.

Moving over to the countertop, I grabbed a paper towel to clean the child's mess. As I wiped, I noticed that the grey tank top I wore had started to turn blue. Vivid blue. I touched the blue and it came off on my finger as a fine powder, deep cyan in color. It was printer toner, and it was all over the counter. I tried to clean it up, but the toner was persistent, like a child's craft glitter, clinging to my arms and clothes and cleavage.

I gave up trying to be tidy. The counter must be clean, but I had no care for how clean I was. Maybe being dirty would give him second thoughts about getting me out of bed when I was so tired. Brushing the rest of the cyan powder off of the counter and onto my shirt, I turned and headed back around the corner and down the dark hallway.

The door I needed was closed, and I could hear sounds on the other side, but I was too tired to wait any longer, my eyes threatening to close. I stumbled back to the kitchen and leaned against the stove, cradling the blue front of my shirt. Fatigue hit me hard and I slid down to the floor, the handle of the stove bumping my shoulders on the way down.

The red-haired woman roused me with her voice as she leaned over the counter to look at me. She asked if I was ok as I tried to stand up again. The room was faded out, grey as the shirt I wore, except for the deep cyan powder that stained it. I told her that the children were under my watch, and that I was waiting for the voice down the hall to emerge so I could go back to sleep. With a nod of understanding, she straightened up and brought her knee up.

Swiftly and effortlessly she climbed up onto the counter, her legs and arms seeming too long. Her bare skin looked golden, the sunlight reflecting off of her shoulders. She crawled on all fours across the countertop and up the side of the wooden cabinets. She did not stop until she was hanging from the yellowed celling, her long hair hanging loose across her face as she turned to look at me.

Go to sleep. I will watch them for you.

I nodded and asked if she was really ok with that, even though I already knew the answer. She nodded and I turned, still cradling the front of my blue shirt, and stumbled down the hallway, my bed and blanket beckoning me. As I reached the door I remembered that I couldn't sleep. I couldn't leave the children alone.

Not when I didn't know where the magenta and yellow toners were. The cyan was a mess, but blue was ok here because it was liked and loved. But not magenta. Pink was hated here. I returned to the kitchen to find the house empty. The red-haired woman was gone and so were the children. I was not afraid, just sad that my choice had burdened her with the task that I had been given by the voice.

I left the house, and in the bright sunlight made my way down the street to the center of town. Everyone was there, dozens of people dressed for winter, shouting and grumbling at the door to town hall. Murder. There had been another murder, and why wasn't the city doing something about it? Why were there no arrests? Someone should do something.

Pushing past the crowd, I made my way to the door and knocked. The red-haired woman smiled at me through the frosted window and opened it just enough for me to slip in. She was sorry she had to leave, as she needed to get to work. The children were here, and the sheriff was keeping them amused.

She led me down the hall, the clinical blue walls turning into a blur as we slipped down one hall after another. Then there were a set of white doors that we pushed through, and before me were the children. They were happy, their faces smiling as they watched the skinny man in uniform as he ran around the room.

He was tall, skin as dark as the bark of a fir, and a piercing gaze that darted back and forth between the evidence he had pinned to the board and the children who were asking all the questions they could. He saw me and smiled with his perfectly straight white teeth and gestured to a table in the corner. Would I care for coffee? A donut?

Oh yes please!

I was still so tired, but coffee sounded perfect. As I apologized for the children, I walked over to the table and looked for the coffee pot. The red-haired woman brought it to me, the table was covered in every creamer imaginable, but no sugar or mugs or milk. Couldn't have the coffee without those things, so I shrugged it off as a lost cause.

The sheriff and the woman tried to tell me about their case, chatting enthusiastically about poisons and shoes, but I only cared about the food. I spotted the purple donut box and opened it, nodding absent mindedly to their words.

There were old fashioned doughnuts, their rough crinkled edges smushed together under a layer of days old glaze that was slippery to the touch. Normally my favorite, but they looked so unappetizing and grey. The sheriff saw that I was unhappy with them and instead offered me a selection from another box, this one yellow.

My eyes locked onto a cinnamon bun shaped doughnut, with what I thought was blue glaze. Instead it turned out to be a blueberry muffin cinnamon bun doughnut. I'd never seen one like it before so I reached out and pried it loose from the row of pastries it was stuck to. Then a loud bang startled me and I turned away.

...then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

Its fairly late in the evening, the last pinks of sunset dissappearing into the night sky. I am walking along the sidewalk in a city. On one side there is a black wrought-iron fence that stretches into nothing, with nothing beyond. On the other side, countless cars and other vehicles rush past. Each passing vehicle wooshes in my ear and I can feel the cool evening air blow on my face. 

I stop and turn twards the traffic. I intend to cross, but there are over a dozen lanes before I can get to the other side. Along the dividing lines between the lanes are dozens of tall and thin metal poles. Each one stands twice my height and seem to be evenly spaced along the way. I stand watching the traffic rushing past, waiting for the perfect moment.

I step off the curb and into the road and the poles nearest me flicker into life. Massive holographic screens stretch and fill the space between the poles, and crossing the lanes. Each screen lit up brightly with some kind of advertisement, the exact contents blurred and illegible, but identifiable as ads anyway. The traffic in each lane came to a halt as the screens flickered on accross their lanes. 

I strolled along, following the pathway created by the screens as it twisted back and forth across the road. I could hear the rumble of engines and the occasional annoyed honking beyond the barrier, but it was strangely distant, and no one dared cross them. Once I reached the other side, I turned to look back and the screens slid back into the poles, each powering down and letting the traffic resume its course. 

Now I was wandering into the crowds at a fairground. Countless faceless and featureless masses milling about around me, the smell of popcorn and sweat filling my nose. It was now late in the evening and everything glowed from the bright artifical lights on the rides and from the booths. I brought my hands up to hold onto the straps of my backpack, and realized it was gone.

In a slight panic, I turned back and began searching. On the ground, in the dewy grass, was the shoulder straps, but no bag. I pulled the straps on, like a vest, and continued searching for my things. As I am looking, dodging around people and keeping a sharp eye on the ground, I noticed someone familiar, and looked up to see three of my friends standing in front of a brightly lit booth. 

I approached them, and said hello, asking if they had seen my bag. I couldn’t make out who they were, but I could feel it in my gut that they were people I had known for a very long time. Their faces and clothes were forgotten as soon as I looked away, but I noticed that two of them had the same kind of backpack as mine. 

When I asked if they had seen my bag, they shook their heads until one of them pointed out that I was already wearing a bag, and could that be the one I was missing? I went to explain that it was just the straps, not the bag itself, but suddenly I could feel the weight on my back, and knew it had returned. 

I removed the bag and looked carefully at it. There were magnets at the connection point with the straps, so I figured that someone must have found it and re-attached it when I wasn’t paying attention. It was a soft brown leather bag with a draw string top, which I tugged open to make sure all of my things were there.

It was full, I could feel things like papers, pens, and packages as I reached in with my hand, but I couldn’t see anything past the darkness inside. I knew, running my fingers around the strange objects inside that nothing was the right shape, but I came to the conclusion that everything was where it was supposed to be. 

Finally shaking off the panic from loosing the bag, I turned to my friends to ask them a question, and suddenly found myself sitting in the front car of a large roller coaster. My friends were sitting next to me and I could see the track of the coaster far away in the distance, twisting around and in itself.

At first I was terrified, I could feel my stomache drop at the thought of the falling sensation that I knew was coming, as the car began to slowly click its way up the tallest hill. Then I looked down at the coaster car, at it’s brigh yellow glossy surface, and then over at the faceless, featureless person next to me, and told myself that it wasn’t real.

Then the coaster started, and there was no dropping feeling, just the rush of wind and speed. I laughed with relief along with my friends as we dipped and rolled and twisted. Then the track dips way down into the ground and we enter a black tunnel with a woosh of air. 

Then the tunnel ends and we are no longer on a roller coasrter, but in the back of a bus. It’s still dark outside, and my friends are still there, but now they are sitting in the seats nearby and talking quietly. Its very late now and there are a dozen other people in the bus with us, and they are all keeping quietly to themselves, or sleeping. 

Outside the windows I can just barely make out the orange glow of passing street lights, but there is no one else out there. I ask my friends about the roller coaster, but they don’t seem to hear me talking. I reach out and tap one of them on the shoulder and they all stop to soundlessly stare at me. I ask again about where we are or where we are going. One of them just kind of shrugs and they all turn away again. 

I look back out the window next to me, resigned to a long and quiet ride home, when I see that there is another thing on the road next to us. Its a large cube. It is on a track, like a train or coaster, and is moving as fast as we are. The cube is solid and has no windows or doors, but somehow I can still see what is inside: a  bedroom.

Then I am standing in the room itself. Its set up like a small, cosy, fantasy bedroom, with bookselves stuffed with spells and potions, a soft pink covered bed with glowing loghts floating in the air. Beside the bed is a small table set for tea with tarot cards placed carefully on a hand-dyed shawl, and I can feel the whole room gently shake as it trundles along the tracks. 

There are other people in the room with me, but most of them are like the others from before: faceless and featureless, ignoring me and indescribable as soon as I look away. One of the people stands out, however. A young woman who cheerfully greets me as if I have known her for years. I return the excitement and welcome she shows me, and we sit at the table to talk.

As she chats happily at me, I am not paying attention. Instead I look closely at the room around me, trying to examine how it is put together, like disecting a puzzlebox. I can see the curved edges of the room where they tried to hide the hard corners to make the room feel softer and warmer. The bed has a solid base and is clearly attached directly to the floor, as well as the bookshelves and the table. Nothing is meant to move.

Right before my eyes, the room suddenly changes. All the people, except my friend, vanish and the light dims. The furniture fades away and is replaced with large, smooth metal boxes stacked floor to celing. The only light is a bright white glow that shines from the seam around a large door that takes up an entire wall, with long horizontal panels that remind me of a garage door. 

Then the door slides upwards with a loud metalic rattle, the bright bluish-white void beyond filling my vision. For a moment I am blinded, but soon the light is blocked again by the back end of a moving truck. Inside the truck are two men, dressed in grey jumpers, and looking annoyed at having to wait. The truck backs into the cube, and the doors slide shut around it.

The truck is smaller than the door of the cube, but the metal kind of wraps around the opening, sealing the extra space tightly. There is still enough light to see, and the truck bed sits about 2 feet higher than the floor of the cube, but there is no way to get out as it seals shut. 

Inside the truck is several large pieces of furniture and dozens of boxes. The young woman next to me starts pushing some of the featureless metal boxes into the truck and pulling several of the bits of furniture out, all with the help of the men. As they are moving thngs around, she turns to me and lets me know that this is where we will live from now on, and I need to help her set up.

We start to unpack the boxes, but inside they are all filled with strange objects. Nothing is familiar to me, just endless amounts of organic structures, some tiny, others as large as people. Each one is wafer thin, I could see light and shadows through them, and they are yellowish and look a bit like burnt cheese.

As I pull each item out, the woman takes them carefully from me, and places them artistically around the room like some kind of cherished art collection. Then the men set up a bed and table like before, but they are smaller and more boring than the old ones. Each piece they place begins to slowly drift around the room like some kind of low-powered hovercraft. 

I ask the woman what she plans on doing with all the furniture from the other room, the bed and shelves with all the potions and books, and she tells me that she’s just going to toss them, but I’m welcome to have them if I want. I’m cheered by this, excited to get some proper bookshelves at last, and turn away, planning on sharing the good news with someone.

...Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

...we were only visiting for a short while, myself and a tall man in a dark suit. I'm not sure who or where we were visiting, but it was only for the evening and we strolled through a large crowd of people. They were nothing more than black shadows that shifted and drifted around us.

Then I stopped in front of a store stall, a small circular customer service desk, with blue cabinets and white countertops. It was brightly lit in a room where lights were scarce.

I watched it for a few moments as the woman behind the counter soundlessly filled orders from the various shelves and fridges behind her.

Then I was that woman, talking to a customer who had brought a couple friends along. They were bored and looked at me with disgust and contempt. The one in front was really talk and skinny, too skinny to be real, her limbs seeming to stretch as she lifted a small green hairbrush from her little brown purse.

She rolled her eyes at her friends as she placed the brush on the counter and told me to return it. I looked at it and could see it was well used, and looked back at her. I refused.

All three of them began to argue, snapping and insulting me. I didn't care. I refused the sale, and then I turned my back on them and walked out of the beam of the lights. I looked back and I could see them boggling at the space I once stood in, as if I had vanished like some cheap stage show.

I strolled back through the blackened crowed for a moment before finding the man again, who said it was time to leave. We headed off to the entrance of the place, which was partially lit, not as bright as the store but bright enough to see the reddish walls in the distance.

When we arrived, the large double doors were closed and a small old woman stood before them. She said they were not ready for us yet and made a hospitable sweeping gesture to a long bench nearby.

On the bench was someone else's stuff, a small bag, and a large baby in a car seat. It seemed like a baby who would have been barely 6 months old, it's head was bald and it wore nothing but a diaper, but it was way too big, the size of a golden retriever.

They stared at us, unmoving for quite some time before I decided they must have been bored, so I approached them and smiled, holding my hands up and wiggling my fingers. The baby giggled and laughed and I was able to cheer them up quickly.

The man with me joined in gently tickling the baby's arms and feet as they giggled more. Then the old woman at the door said it was time, and the baby began to pout as we stood up to leave. I told them that it was sleepy time now, and lowered my head pretending to sleep.

The baby closed their eyes with a smile and fell asleep. We returned to the large double doors and I told the old woman that someone needed to keep an eye on the baby, and she nodded with a sigh of exasperation. She knew who they belonged to and would handle it.

I pushed through the door and I changed. I could feel myself walking along, strutting really, in high heels and a black gown. Around my vision I could see a halo of curly red hair, and I was late.

I walked along a stone wall that soon petered away and revealed a large outdoor auditorium filled with people. It looked like some kind of college graduation, and everyone was scattered about in clumps, sitting with friends and family, and watching the speaker with some boredom.

I was running late, and I didn't care. I strolled up to the edge of the seating where a short wall had been set, and quickly climbed over. I leapt really, sailing past the wooden barricade with absolute ease. On my feet I wore bright teal stilettos and the landing was perfect.

Ahead I could see my friends, a large group of people all gathered near the top, waving at me as I continued to climb effortlessly. They were here for me because this was my graduation. My Doctorate.

But as I finally reached them, it felt wrong. They were my friends, I recognized each and every one of them, but they were faces I had not seen in a very long time, and they looked like they had't aged a day.

In that moment I knew this was't really me. Just some woman who had managed to get her degree and hanging with her friends. I floated away from the scene, turning back to watch the friends I knew interact with her.

She was lovely, moving and talking as calm and effortlessly as it had felt to be her. The friends were exactly as I remembered, both good and bad. As I watched I cringed, the things they've said and done that were manipulative or creepy repeating themselves again.

One man with a toffee face and sleek black hair tried to dance with her, and pulled her along as she smiled and laughed. They spun around and he tried to lift her up into the air like some movie, but wasn't quite strong enough. Then another taller friend, who I couldn't see the face of, picked up the wi.an and spun again, showing off how the dance was really done, and everyone was laughing.

I watched as the speaker below finished, and the crowd cheered, the caps flung into the air. Then the light began to slowly fade, and the friends gathered their things to leave. They were headed to a party, but had to stop for drinks at the store.

In an instant we were all in the store, a large sprawling shopping center, dimly lit with aisles that stretched off into nothingness. The refrigerated aisles with the drinks were well lit again and they all scattered slowly, chatting as they searched for the drinks they wanted.

One of them had started to lean against a firework display, a literal block of small red-wrapped crackers, when I saw a line of fire precisely shoot through the middle as if it had been hit with a laser.

I shouted. Over and over I yelled 'fireworks!' as the crowd scattered and the crackers began to pop. Hundreds of little balls of fire flying out from the pile, raining burning debris all over everything.

I turned to step back and there was a security guard standing behind me, looking at me like she had just woke up. I told here the fireworks were going off, but she just stared and told me to mind my own business.

I rolled my eyes and continued to shout as I walked away from the mess. The last of the lights went out and everything began to glow with the reddish orange emergency lights. All around me were thousands of burnt out firework stubs and debris.

Then I noticed that quite a few were actually unburnt, and some were still burning. I watched with hope that the burning ones would set off the others, but as each one popped and rolled across the floor, they did not burn long enough to set off the others.

The chain reaction was over. I looked around at the shadows of others mumbling and bumping around in the low light, and down again at the burnt fireworks, which were no longer interesting.

I started to walk back to the coolers in search of a drink for myself, but my legs hurt. Looking down I could see dozens of scratches as if from fingernails reaching around my shins, like someone had been trying to hold me, but failed.

I was annoyed now, my legs hurt, I knew it had to of been the shadow people around me, and I wanted a drink. I strolled up to the nearest cooler and yanked the door open. A small, but bright, light turned on illuminating a few half-empty shelves with bottled drinks.

I reached up and grabbed a soda then looked at it in my hand. It was a discontinued flavor. Then I remembered, with another eye roll of annoyance, that this still wasn't real.

...Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

...I was visiting a city, late in the day as the sunset turned the buildings red. i knew where I was, but the roads and buildings still seemed wrong, going directions I didn’t expect, towering taller than I remembered. I was alone, so I walked along, but I knew I couldn’t make it without help.

Then a car pulled up next to me, and I was happy to see the driver, he was family. He opened the door and I climbed into the passenger seat. The ancient leather creaked under my weight and the old dashboard was covered in dust. The car was cream colored with brown lining, and looked like it would have been peak of fasion in the 90′s. It smelled faintly of cigarettes.

we drove through the city, relaxed and chatting, though there were no audible words spoken. Then the driver told me he needed to grab something, and we pulled into a parking lot. It was in a kind of run down part of town, the asphault rough with years of use and cheap repairs. The building was a small outdoor strip mall and the last store on the end was a boba tea shop.

he parked the car and walked in ahead of me, the bright store lights blinding in the evening. The shopkeep was looking haggard and looked at us as if we were some scum in a gutter. I tried to ignore her, and just looked at the menu. I know what I wanted, but as I walked up and spoke, a different order came out of my mouth and the woman sneered like I had just confirmed her bias. 

I was annoyed and didn’t want to wait inside, so I walked back out to the car. I peered into the open driver’s side window and reached in to push some old jacket on top of a pile of stuff that the driver had left out in the open, this was a bad area afterall.

I walked back to the store to see if my order was up yet, but it wasn’t. THen I turned again and standing next to our old car was a young woman, dressed in a dark hoodie with dark hair. She had a backpack and a scateboard and was looking about shiftily as she reached into the car.

I rushed up and growled at her, askign what she was thinking. SHe startled and tried to run away but I grabbed her arm. I gestured twards the shop and told her she wasn’t being smart, that shops are always full of peaople who would make her life miserable, that she needed a better place to try to sneak. 

She looked a little shocked but nodded, and I asked her what she had taken from the car. At first she refused, but eventually admitted that she had taken a purple binder. I asked for it back, and told her to get out of here before They see her. She rode off into the darkness. 

I looked down at the purple binder, and it was covering a large metal plaque with some red cartoon character engraved on it. For a moment I thought maybe it was something from a previous job that I forgot to finish, and returned to the shop. I was going to ask the driver to help me take it back, but as soon as I opened the door I stopped.

The shop was full of people. hundreds of people. hundreds of women actually, all chatting loudly and holding their phones with their glittering blue and green fake nails. Rows of glittery nails. I immediately slammed the door closed. the They I had warned the girl about were here. I needed to get back, but I knew I had to do it on my own this time.

I grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled, and my clothes changed into a dress, dark blue and silky, and I grabbed a clipboard. As I stepped off the curb and into the street, the floor changed. It was hard polished wood in a room full of stage props. They were brightly colored scenes from a city and all around me people bustled about busy with unknown urgent tasks.

There was a man standing in the middle of the set, black pants, white flowing shirt and long blonde hair. He turned to look at me and sighed with exaspertion. He strutted up to me and asked where I had been, and dismissed me before I could reply.

The stage was set, the play had been practiced and we were getting prepped for the final show. We were one act out of dozens meant as part of a variety show. It was a graduation event and the show was run by students. As I walked around the set with him, all the people around us began to look more polished and prepped for the big night, costumes and sets getting more elaborate.

Then all of us, the man and I and all the others behind the stage, strolled out onto the stage to the applause of hundreds. The crowd was a faceless mass of people clapping as each set of performers strolled to the front of the stage and bowed. Then it was our turn and as I bowed I spotted friends and family in the audience, and knew I could’t perform.

As I turned to the man to try to talk to him about the show, he kept slowly edging his way off the stage, and down the wings of the auditorium. I followed him up until I realized that I was in the same row as my family, and just sat down next to them, watching the stage.

The performances started but they just blurred together as if they were all on fast forward and playing at the same time, props and people shadows that overlapped and twitched, indistinguishable from the rest in any meaningful way. Then the play that I wrote began, and a woman with dark hair came forth and sung. 

Her voice was lovely, but unremarkable, as she sang about summoning a perfect hero. I looked at my family and they were all watching happily, except the woman at the end. She looked at me and asked me why I wasn’t up there myself. I told her I just wrote the thing, which was a lie. I was supposed to sing, but I just couldn’t. She nodded and said it was probably for the best. If I had sung it myself it would have been a test of the audience’s patience. 

I just rolled my eyes and left my seat to go check on how things were going backstage. As I slipped behind the curtain’s edge into the back area, everyone was runnign more frantic than usual. The props were warping and changing in their grips, the colors shifting, and the woman and man kept frogetting the next line or screwing up the notes.

Then a new man stepped out of the shadows. He was rotund and jolly and dressed in a tan suit. He waved his hand and the colors settled and the props stopped fighting. Then he called the woman over to him and gave her a small round fruit. He told her that she had to sing to save the world. As he said this, there was a massive horrible cracking sound that echoed around the room.

She quickly ate the fruit and stepped back out onto the stage. Suddenly her hair was illuminated and in all the colors of the universe, flowing out behind her as if in an invisible wall of water. She sung and her voice was the most mesmorizing sound in the universe, instantly capturing the attention ov everyone, audience and stagehand alike.

The large man nodded and quietly stepped out of the back door. I followed im into the alley where he stood looking anxiously around, occasionally glancing up. the sky glowed with a golden light, stars visible amongst an endlessly rolling cloud of golden nebulas and bits of asteroids. 

As I watched the swirling sky, a small creature rushed over the top fo a nearby building and flew frantically at the man. It was as bright and colorfula s the woman’s ahir had been, but was too small and moving too quickly for me to see what it was, so it looked like a ball of energy flitting nervously about as it spoke to the man.

Then he yelled loudly, accusing the thing of not being fast enough as the sky above us warped and turned purple. A wave of force, almost invisible except for the purplish tinge it gave everything, pushed down on us from the sky. He put his hands up and stopped it immediately, leaving the wall of glowing purple rolling only a few feet above our heads.

He yelled that the woman needed to sing louder, that the world had to be saved, and the small ball fo energy rushed into the building. Then we could hear her voice clearly through the walls, and the world began to break. Massive cracks snaked accross every surface, and the quanity of space debris in the sky increased dramatically. Some bits of floating rocks looked distinctly like buidlings.

the man shoved against the purple force wall and it shot back up into the sky and dissipated. He sighed with relief, but didn’t even get a chance to bring his hands back down before the purple force came back. This time it wasn’t a wall but the end of a large hook, and it slammed deep into the ground, sending shockwaves that destroyed all the buildings around us. 

The seats of the auditorium, with the audience still sitting in them, began to float slowly up from the ground in a cloud of debris. The stage itself was gone, but all of the props, actors, and stagehands were still in place, performing as they too floated up and into the air. 

The man groweled with frustraton and flew up and away. I followed after him and watched as he came to a stop hundreds of miles away, looking abck at the planet. It was reddish and crumbling in many places and hooked deep into the side of it was a massive fishing hook made of that purple energy. As we watched, the string on the hook tightened and the planet begun to drif away from the sun and into space.

I yelled that the people needed to stay near the sunlight, or they would freeze, and the man flew off, following the line until he reached some strange bluish figure at the far end. I saw him punch the figure until it let go of the string, and he came back and began to haul the planet back into place.

He pushed the planet too close this time, and I told him it couldn’t just be put back, it had to be put in orbit, and grabbed the string from his hands. I tugged the planet gently from side to side, nudging it closer and closer to its true orbit, hoping that I could get it settled before it was too late.

...Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

...There’s a large group of friends hanging out in the lounge of a building. The room, including all the furniture, is decorated in dull greys and blues. The people are all faceless, their bodies blurs of color, except for two; a woman and a man. The woman is slender and tall with brown hair hanging limply around her round face. The man is shockingly handsome, his face lit up with a warm smile, and short in stature, barely coming up to the woman’s elbows.

They have long known each other, but barely spoken, choosing to hang out with other friends in the group. But today the man invites her to join him at his favorite bar. She initially turns him down, not interested in being hit on all night, but he assures her that no one will pay her any mind as its a friendly place. She agrees to meet him there, but as they leave, he warns her that he has trouble with being hit on all the time by other women, so he will be in disguise. She will recognize him, but it won’t be him.

At the bar, lined with dark wood and even darker chairs, she waits patiently for him. He arives and is wearing some kind of body suit that changes his shape. He is still short, and has most of his face uncovered, so she still recognizes him. The suit is kind of rubbery and pulls up to his nose with a fake beard and moustache to hide the seams. They sit at the ountertop, his short legs dangling from his barstool, and chat amicably for some time. 

Several of the other patrons know the man, and approach to greet him, but they call him by a different name than she is familiar with. He doesn’t seem to mind and is friendly with anyone who steps up, but she notices that the other woman don’t give him even a second glance, when he’s usually having to turn them down in droves back at the lounge. 

As they sit, they drink and occasionally the man’s suit slips down from his face, but he tugs it back up acting like it’s no big deal. The bartender rolls his eyes at him every time it happens, but says nothing. Soon the evening turns into a blur of laughter and conversation and haziness. 

When the man wakes up next, he is still sitting at the countertop, but the woman is long gone and the sun is shining through the windows. His suit has come off completely from his face, and hangs about his body like a set of clothes two sizes to big.

The owner leans in and asks if he’s ready to get going, his black grizzled beard circling his face like a lion’s mane. The man nods and slowly climbs down from the too-tall bar stool and wanders towards the doorway. The owner uses a set of keys to unlock the door, and opens it, shockingly bright white light blinds them for a moment. 

The world outside is blank. Empty. A smooth white surface that spreads nearly uninterrupted as far as the eye can see in all directions. The faint line between the horizon and the pale blue sky is the only indication that there’s a surface at all. Before them, parked along a pale silver road, barely distinguishable from the white landscape, is a large white ship.

It’s a massive machine that looks like it should be flying through space, smooth panels broken up by the occasional connecting pipeline or wiring. It’s several stories tall with four stumpy legs on massive wheels that hold the main structure up just enough that you have to use a ladder to reach the first level, which has large windows like an oceanliner’s control room.

The machine is chained to four enormous mechanical horses like an old carriage, their positions staggered so they can run almost single line, but not quite. They are a pale metallic purple, strangely disproportionate to the real animal, and their long legs seem impossibly thin and gangly as they stand perfectly still, poised to run at a moments notice. 

The young man in the suit follows the older man up the ladder on the side facing the shop. At the same time the young woman from the night before climbs up the far side, and they meet in the control room of the ship. The old man introduces them saying that the woman is his daughter. They try to explain to him that they are friends from the lounge, and are already aquainted as he fires up the engines of the ship and the purple horses begin to slowly advance forward, pulling them accross the smooth surface of the world.

The old man laughs, and gestures back and forth between them. He knows they know each other, but he also knows that they knew each other long before they were adults, and are actually childhood sweethearts. The couple look warily at each other, then begin to laugh nervously, neither of them beliving the old man. He just shakes his head and gestures to the horizon, where the horses have sped up to the point that their legs are a blur and a massive cloud of dust streaks behind them in their path.

...Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

A few fleeting moments...

... The large red insect flew at me, its carapace glinting in the light, and its black legs flailing wildly as it approached. It was only an inch or so tall, but I stil didn’t want it getting to me, so I grabbed a piece of wood and smacked it out of the air it’s shell making a thwack sound I felt more than heard. It was knocked back easily, but returned again, as if it was swinging on a string. I smacked it back and back and back again, several times, each time it would make the same audible thunk as the wood plank struck it, but it wouldn’t go away...

...The floor was black, and my white delicately shoed feet stepped gracefully across the rough surface. Every scratch and flaw in the well-used stage highlighted by the lights from above. I couldn’t see the crowd, the theater black and featureless, but I could feel their eyes on me as I waved my arms gently around. I turned, and the back of the stage was a large mirror, and I could easily see myself, dressed delicately from head to toe in white, my hair pulled into a severe bun, and bright red lipstick standing out like a flower in a snowfield. I smiled...

...The cabin wasn’t very big, each of the dark blue beds only a few inches apart from each other, pillows piled high at the headboards. Several children, all dressed in dark colors, were carefully stepping back and forth across the gaps, big grins on their faces. I climbed up onto the bed and showed them how to jump instead. Their grins grew bigger and they began to laugh merrily as the jusmped and bounced and tumbled back and forth as I steped down again and watched from the door...

...The large machine towered over me, 20 feet high at least. The top was some tangle of metal and pipework that I couldn’t decipher, while the bottom dropped little balls of cookie dough. I was monitoring the machine, ready to intervene if there were any problems, when I noticed that the moulding trays were all broken. I only had three left, and they were the wrong shape, these ones were meant for spherical cake pops. But I couldn’t turn the machine off. Instead I just kept switching the three trays in and out as fast as I could. I knew I could go faster if I could put new trays in, so while the machine switched over from one flavor to the next, I scaled to the top fo the machine, grabbing ahold of different pipes and metal edges. Reaching the top I pushed a blank tray down the side, where it slipped sideways into a slot like the top of a toaster. I hurried back down to wait for the new tray as the heating element cooked the new batch of cookies, they came out as tosted brown balls, rolling past the packing bags, which i tried to fill as fast as I could...

...I stepped off the cream tiles and into the hot water. The bath room was big enough to fit a car, and the steam made the tiles slick to the touch. the center of the room stepped down several times into a large pool. The center of the pool was the deepest, but far under the water was a large metal pipe, the source of the heat, so I was careful not to step into the bottom. I relaxed, the water barely above my elbows, and looked forward. The deepest level with the pipe ran into the wall, through a large opening half full of water, and into an unlit room. I tried my best to ignore the dark portal and enjoy the warmth. Then the door burst open and several workmen in overalls hauled a large old fridge into the room. they tossed it into the deepest part of the pool, letting the device sink to the bottom, where it hit the metal pipe with a dull clang. I rolled my eyes, grabbed my towel, and left the room anoyed... 

...Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

...The center of the large courtyard had a white stone fountain with a large base. Walking paths cut across the green lawn leading from various alcoves to the fountain platform. A teenage girl in a pleated grey skirt walked slowly from one side of the clearing to the other, stepping cautiously around the pool at the bottom of the fountain, running her fingertips across the surface of the water.

There were other people walking around as well, but they were out of focus, except for a young man arriving in from the opposite side of the courtyard. The girl looked longingly at him, wanting to be noticed, but too scared to say a word. She was so convinced that he wouldn’t speak to her that she almost missed it when he did. She stopped just in front of him as he spoke, but the words were muffled, like from a long way off.

The girl played nervously with her hair as she smiled at him. Then a teacher with long black hair appeared suddenly from behind the fountain and spoke to her. The teacher greeted her cheerfully and announced that she was chosen for the leading role in the school play.

With the announcement, the guy she had been talking to started clapping and everyone else followed along, cheering and hollering, as the girl smiled. With a groan of annoyance, I stopped the scene, the sound instantly dying away as everyone froze in place. The idea of everyone cheering struck me as absurd, so I turned away all the onlookers before resuming. 

With the courtyard back to nromal, the girl just shyly nods and follows the teacher back into the building, glancing over her shoulder to watch as the guy turns away to persue different interests.

Inside the theater area is a large side room, brown shag carpet and matching brown walls dominate a long narrow space that is filled with dozens of old chairs stacked precariously in various piles. The girl sets her light blue backpack down, on the old dusty cusion of one of the chairs on a shorter stack, and leaves through a set of red curtains on the far end. 

in an instant she returns, though to her several hours have passed, She has a small booklet of paper in her hand and her eyes look exhausted, but cheerful. That is until she sees a large wad of upchucked cat fur has been left on top of her backpack. it is still fairly fresh and she is upset because she cannot open her bag to get to her costume.

I don’t want to watch some cliche’d moment of woe as the obvious protagonist faces some rediculously simply problem, so I immediatley start looking around the room for paper towels to clean up the mess for her. 

As I finish wiping off the last of the residue, and the girl opens her bag to pull out a white robe, I can hear a swell of voices coming from the adjacent auditorium as the crowd filters in for opening night of the performance. 

Then, as the girl pulls on the last of her costume pieces, the black haired teacher comes in past the red curtains and immedately rushes the girl past her, turning to me and demanding to know what i’m doing backstage, her voice a harsh whisper so as to be unheard by the crowd next door. 

Instead of answering, I tell her that I am late for work, and turn to walk away, my feet begining to click audibly as I stroll accross the cream tiled floor twards my office. Down the long and seemingly never ending hallway, past hundreds of identical wooden doors with black frames, I reach out and grab the handle of one, convinced that it is mine, even though it looks like all the rest. 

Then my phone chimes, and I look down to see that someone has sent me a weblink. When I select it, it takes me to a flyer announcing the opening night of the play I just left. Annoyed that I’m being dragged back into that scene, I speak aloud, telling whatever was listening that they would have to be more convinving than that.

Suddenly the face of the girl appears as the leading role on the flyer, and I recognize her as a child I know, long brown hair framing a rosy cheeked face. and now I am happy to attend, to support and cheer her on.

I open the office door, beyond which is a small dark room, just long enough to grab a black jacket from behind the door, and a pink box of dounuts from the desk. I close it and turn back to the entrance to the building, humming happily as I go.

I’m convinved that the school will be easy to reach, just down the street, so I walk past my car and just keep strolling down the main road, homely brick buildings lining both sides. There is only a little bit of traffic, but the sidewalk starts to narrow, so I have to step onto the asphalt to continue. 

Then, ahead of me, a large brick building with dark blue trim and a flagpole out front comes into view, and I jog quickly to cross the street, up the warm colored concrete steps and to the side door of the theater. 

I am late, probably too late to attend the performance itself, but I know she will be out soon, and I want to congratulate her. The dougnuts in my hands have shifted into a pack of roses, little white bits of baby’s breath standing out agaisnt the deep red petals. 

Then the theater lets out, and suddenly I am surrounded by hundreds of students and parents, all bustling about trying to find friends or transportation. I look around but cannot see anyone I know, so I continue to stand at the doorway, waiting.

Someone calls my name, and I turn to see a man with a large beard strolling up to the building, an older woman wih black hair following in his wake. I am immediately annoyed, and angrily point out to noone that they aren’t supposed to be here yet.

As the man walks past me, he reaches the side of the building and picks up a roll of blue tape while the woman opens some cans of paint. I tell him again that he’s not supposed to be here yet, and he glances up at me for a moment before returning to placing the tape in long strips along the sidewalk.

He tells me to relax, he’s jsut going to help them paint the stone wall really quick, then he will head back to where he belongs. As I watch, the tape he has haphazardly placed is starting to peel up in several spots, so I huff and take the roll from him. 

At this rate he won’t finish in time, so I start taping off the sections for him. With the stone fully sectioned off, I turn to the woman with the paint and announce loudly that she will have to do the rest on her own, because I wasn’t going to let the man get stuck here when I leave.

I turn to look at him, as he smiles warmly at me and waves with his fingers. Just as he tells me he will be waiting, I wave my oustretched arm infront of me, and he vanishes, back to the far side.

The woman continues painting as she speaks up, telling me that it’s my own fault that I made the school too far away for him to get there by himself. I snap at her that there’s plently of easy routes there, and she should know better than to drag him out of place.

I turn away from the woman and in an instant I am back at the office building. This time I am determined to show the both of them that the distance is easily walked, and that there’s no reason to drive there. I briskly walk out the front door and back down the street.

As I walk, the sidewalk narrows again, except this time the buildings also grow taller, and closer together, reaching like skyscrapers up into the clouds. I begin walking faster, glancing around occasionally to make sure i’m not in the way of traffic, and still determined to prove a point that I’ve kind of lost control of.

I begin to jog to keep uo with the strangely transforming city, and I can see glimpses of the school grounds past the brick structures, some of which have narrowed as they’ve grown, looking more and more like tall trees in a densly packed forest. 

By now I am running, trying to get to the school as the road continues to twist and turn in unpredictable ways. Suddenly, I accidentally run straight up the side of a brick building that had slipped in front of me when I was distracted. I easily scale several floors before I stop and turn around. 

This is not the way to the school and I am annoyed that the buildings won’t get out of my way. I backtrack all the way to the street again, and this time I shout at the buildings to knock off their shenanigans. 

Then the road in front of me easily leads directly back to the school, and the theater, as if the building had been next to the office the whole time. I jog up the steps and look around at the now empty lot. The woman is gone, though her freshly painted stone wall is there, proof that she had finished her task.

I stop, my hands on my hips, and glance around, looking for somone. Anyone. Finally I decide that enough is enough, I don’t feel like being annoyed by this any further.

...Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

...the cave was dark, but not like a endless void, just dimly lit. The stone was a deep blue color and the rough natural passages were intersected by straight-cut rooms. This room was pretty decent sized and had several rows of student desks scattered about, all facing roughly twards one wall that had a single white board. About half of the chairs were filled with adult students, some of which were distinctly not human.

There were several people with scales that reflected in the pervasive soft light in the room, and some had fur accenting their faces and visitble limbs. There was even a woman in the back who was clearly a centaur, relaxing on an outcrop of the raw stone. The instructor was a blue naga, who introduced himself as Spookly, his tail twitched absently as he slid back and forth slowly.

He began by trying to explain to the students the basics of crystal alchemy, which involved merging different gems and stones to create new materials. Each gem has a core power, mostly subtle, that is used to enhance energies in magics. As he tells his pupils about the expected result of today's experiment, the instructor's pet dog wanders aimlessly around the room.

The 'dog' has so little hair that it looks bald, but is still a vivid red color, almost looking like it's got no skin at all, it's sinewy muscles ripling as it strolls around. It has no eyes, instead using it's enlongated forked tongue to sense things around the room.

As the lecturer droned on, one of the students took a chunk of white crystal from the table next to him and began absentmindedly passing it back and forth between his hands. Then the dog snuck up and ate the crystal right out of his hand. Suddenly it's body began to shimmer and glow, streaks of light wrapping around it like slow moving bolts of lightning.

Everyone was stunned, but Spookly immediately began talking excitedly. He told the class that the dog creature was known as a 'devil dog' and the crystal he ate must be the key to transforming it into the ellusive 'angel dog'; a creature that can force all those who can see it to tell only the truth, a creature that only appears to royalty. 

As he excitedly explains how one gem or stone can transform and apply energy to the next, I see a grid of alchemical equations, each with a single stone featured, glowing in turn and causing a cascade of energy to flow through to the end. To an empty space in the grid which the instructor explains is the final key to creating the 'angel dog': a black opal.

One of the students asks him, with an air of incredulity, how he could have possibly ended up with a creature that was only supposed to appear to royalty. He xplains that the devil dog used to belong to his girlfriend, and a soundless video plays across my vision.

Showing a red naga woman with black hair and a white summer dress, walking down a street with Spookly and the devil dog, smiling and talking voicelessly to the camera, the screen flickering like an old recording. He then sends his students out with the assignment of finding the rare black opal, while he runs out of the room with his dog.

Then I see flashes of moments as he searches the caves, feeding his dog various stones like some kind of 80's montage. He even enlists the help of a couple of his henchmen-like friends to scour the underhive of the college campus for the rarer stones he needs in the sequence. 

The students, meanwhile, head out of class, most of them meandering and not taking the assignment seriously, but there are some who seem excited. One couple is a short slim girl with straight brown hair cropped to her chin, and her girlfriend, a tall bulky amazon-like woman with blonde curly hair.

The amazon tells her partner to meet at the fountain later, and heads into the city. As she is walking down a sunny broad city street, she walks past a red naga, slithering along the other side of the sidewalk, her black hair floating gently in the breeze.

The blonde woman stops the naga and tells her exciteldy that she looks just like the instructor's missing girlfriend, and the naga immediately freaks out and tries to escape down and alleyway. With the muscular woman chasing after her, she doesn't get very far before she is caught.

the Naga explains that she isn't 'missing' she just doesn't want to see her boyfriend anymore. When the amazon pushes her for details, the naga finally explains.

She is royalty, a princess of the ruling emperor's line of nagas, and meant for the throne, but in her youth she had been reckless, and had an affair with a non-royal, green naga.

As she is explaining this, the room changes, to a large white marble domed temple, and floating in mid-air, as if under water, is the red naga. She is sobbing softly and cradling in her arms a weird jelly-like red sac with about 2 score eggs. 

The eggs were about fist sized and a variety of red, blue, and green. Most of them looked kinf of dull in color, while of the remaining brighter eggs only a couple had glowing runes on them. She is whispering to her eggs to hatch.

Then a small stubby green dragon with a monocle swims up to the clutch and begins sorting through them; the dull ones are unfertilized, while the bright rune-less ones are magic-less and will only become normal snakes. But the two remaining eggs with glowing runes will hatch as naga and the dragon declares them healthy,

Which makes the red naga very happy. She wants to name them, and decides her first born, the green, will be 'Spookly'. But the dragon tells her no: the green one will be in line for the throne, and needs a regal name, not something homely.

So he insists she name it 'Sinister Entertainment' and the blue one gets to be 'Spookly'. Her children were taken away, as she was too immature to care for them, and she doesn't see them again. Her eldest becomes Lord Sinister, the local leading royal, and her youngest dissappears.

Until several decades later when she found out that her new boyfriend’s real name is Spookly, and she freaked out that it was actually her son. She left the devil dog with him to keep him safe, but she just couldn't face him, or his brother, to tell them the truth. 

Then I cut back to Spookly and his friends, who had exhausted every mineral resource the college had to offer, with no luck in finding the black opal. They decide they are going to just make the stone from scratch, but doing so will require an immense amount of raw material, so they start gathering everything they can get their hands on into a single large underground chamber.

Most of the stones come from the college, but soon they are taking them from people's unwatch bags, pockets, and even breaking into houses, their desperation causing the to up their game dramatically. Soon they have exhausted nearly every option in the city, and decide to break into the Lord's Vault to steal every gem in the castle in an attempt to get enough raw material. 

Finally the amazon convinces the red nauga to tell Lord Sinister Entertainment the truth of his connection to the emperor's line, and to finally face Spookly to tell him the truth on why she ran, so they head to the Lord's throne room.

The Lord's hall is a massive underground chamber, filled with finely carved white marble columns and raw dull green stone. There is a massive long staircase leading down into the chamber, which is more like a huge cavern than a building. The stairs are full with people, all the local citizens lining up to give their annual tribute: a small gem to add to the vault.

When the Amazon and the red naga arrive, they can't get inside, so they decide to cut the line by jumping through a hole in the roof, but they don't fall, instead they float gently as if through water down to the staircase, and push their way past the crowds. 

Suddenly the amazon spots her brown-haired girlfriend, and she is in the arms of another, a slighty muscular man from their class. The blonde woman is pissed at the betrayal, but doesn't do anything but glare menacingly at the embarassed couple as she pushes past. 

As the red naga approached the Lor's throne, which was actually a massive marble column several dozen feet across and a hundred or so tall, He demands to know why she has interrupted the annual tribute.

She explains that she is there to tell the truth about his origin, and he slowly decends from his perch, his dark green scales reflecting the light from the room. He is dressed in a massive dark cape and towers over her, nearly double her size, but listens quitly as she tells him the same story she told the amazon. 

While she is speaking, Spookly and his cronies have used the distraction to break into the Lord's vault, which is in a chamber high up on the wall behind the throne. Just as they figure out how to break open the door, Spookly hears his name and turns to listen to the red naga's story.

He then realizes who she is, and is so shocked that he doesn't notice that the devil dog has left his side and wandered down to the great hall. Lord Sinister turns when the devid dog approaches and holds out his hand. In it is a massive black opal, the exact stone that Spookly had been searching for, and feeds it to the canine, who immediately transforms into a glowing white beast who's very outline seems blurred and hard to focus on.

The whole crowd stares in amazement, and the red naga explains that the ability to summon black opals, and to attract the elusive angel dog, is proof that the lord's royal line is real. 

Spookly sees the dog transform, and screams in anger, leaping from the upper balcony and landing near the other two nagas. Lord Sinister turns to look at his newly-discovered brother, but Spookly leaps at him in rage...

...Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

...I find myself strolling along an alleyway in a dull, grey city of impossibly tall skyscrapers. All along the buildings are old windows and wrought iron balconies with laundry and the occasional resident hanging about. Then I approach a large woman, dressed in a salmon shirt and coordinated floral skirt, her hair up in a bun, admonishing a skinny teenage boy, dressed in grey.

He was ignoring her and working on a mechanical suit of some sort that had a large lattice structure attached to the back that towered over us, a black wrecking ball hanging from the end. Then he climbed into the suit and stomped around the alleyway, several kids watching with great interest, and used the powersuit to assemble some kind of bone statue. It wasn’t really recognizable as a skeleton, but it had all the typical skeleton bones, just mashed together into some groteque towering creature.

Then he gathered some large drums and put them in the center of the alley, mixing them as he went, shaking the drums in the air with his powersuit. He opened one of the drums and poured it into another and it erupted with a towering column of steaming tan foam that rushed out and across the ground to both buildings on the sides, and up the legs and feet of every bystander. 

The young man seemed pleased with his experiment, but the children began to complain about their feet burning, so I helped the mom clean up the kids while she yelled at the young man to help. He climbed out of his suit and gathered up the now empty barrels and began to sweep the sludge up with a wide broom. 

Then he left, going inside a nearby door and when he reemerged, the mom had scrubbed the whole alleyway spotless. The teenager immediately began to freak out, accusing her of getting rid of his experiments. She pointed down the alleyway and told him his suit was just fine, and sure enough it was, parked around a short fence with the limbs and wrecking-ball arm tucked in neatly. 

The weird bone sculpture was missing, however, and the teenager was upset about that, shouting at his mom for getting rid of it. She pointed out that the bones were scaring the local children, who by this point had grown bored with no more experiments to watch and were now kicking a black and white ball around the newly empty space.

The man pointed out that the mom didn’t even ask the children if they were afraid or not, and they continued to argue loudly. Some of the older residents were now hanging out their windows, watching the argument as if it was the night’s entertainment, one even passed a slice of pie out the window to their neighbor.

I rolled my eyes at the arguing pair and turned around to head back down the way I had come. As I walked, the day wore on, the sky began to turn golden as the sun started to set, and I finally emerged onto a broader city street. But there was no one else on the road; no vehicles or pedestrians, no one in the store windows or manning the food stalls. It was completely deserted.

I thought to myself that of course it was; the world was ending soon, and everyone had finally given up. They were all home, or with friends, and no one wanted to wander about as the sun grew bigger in the sky. But I couldn’t leave yet, I had to kill a few hours till my flight, and I had some money in my pocket.

I walked around the corner of the street and past a cafe with a little outdoor seating area, the yellow striped umbrellas flapping softly in the breeze, and not a single soul in sight. Next to the cafe was a dainty little french patiserrie, somehting I had always wanted to try.

So I went inside, the building delicately decorated with pinks and golds and creams, and ordered one of everything. Little chocolate covered strawberries on layered cakes, tarts and coissants and a variety of other finger-sized pastries. I also grabbed something in a hand-carved heart-shaped wooden box. I asked for two of those, knowing I wanted to share with someone.

When I go to pay, the money is strange. Plain strips of colored paper, with single numbers stamped onto the ends. One is larger than the rest, the number on it saying ‘79′ in brown ink, and looks like a note of credit instead of cash. I try to figure out what to pay with, but it doesn’t seem to make sense. 

I explain to the staff of the bakery that I am not from around here, and they are very kind and calmy explain what bills I need to give them. As I am paying them, and having a good natured laugh at my inability to decipher the notes, I remember that I don’t actually have a passport for the plane, and for just a moment I wonder how I’m actually going to get home.

But the world is ending anyway, so it doesn’t matter does it? I am happy to share all my yummy pastries and can’t wait till I get home. I grab my bags of treats and head out the door into the deepening orange glow...

...Then I woke up.

[dreamtimeagain]

...I am exploring an empty house, the rooms are well kept and I wander through each one apraising the place. When I make it upstairs I am joined by a few other people, and I begin pointing out the nice things about the house that I now own. As we explore, I realize that there is something odd in the back of one of the closets, a large brown curtain, wool from the rough feel of it, and behind it is an extra space that I didn’t see before.

I called out to the others in the house as I stepped past the curtain into a very long and narrow room. I thought it was an attic space before I noticed that every surface was covered in pale yelow tiles that had browned a little with age. It looked like it might have been a bathroom, and I could see that it extended clear to the far end of the house, but I couldn’t see all of it because there was a large collection of pipes blocking the way.

I tried to look past the pipes, and was frustrated that they were too crowded to climb past. There was clearly more room back there, and I wanted to see how I could use the extra space. So I decided that there was a way around, and backed up to the entrance, finding a gap in the wall to the left that hadn’t been there before. 

I slipped past the wall and was suprised to find an absolutely massive space on the other side. It was a huge vaulted room, with tons of old fabric draping from the walls and celing and old crates gathering dust in the corners. The back half of the room had a raised floor, like a stage. On the stage were several wing backed lounge chairs and a stylish table with a false wall propped up behind them, all clearly in a fasion that was popular in the 70′s; it looked like a tv talk-show stage. 

as I started to look around the space I realized that the crates were full of old housewares and toys, and there were several pieces of wood furniture tucked into the corners. I was really excited about all this space, and the things in it, it filled my mind with the possibilites, and hope for a comfortable future that I couldn’t have before. 

Then the rest of my family joined me, several young children and extended relatives, and we all explored the space together, chatting excitedly about the things we could do to open it up and make it liveable. Then one of the children found a large play house, clearly made with plywood, but elaborate nonetheless. it had a door and a second floor with little windows and a balcony that the kids could sit on. 

But as soon as the oldest child pushed the door open, hundreds of spiders burst forth from the doorway and windows. They were large, about the size of my hand, with long fuzzy legs and grey striped bodies. They swarmed over every surface of the playhosue, but stayed only on the playhouse. 

I grabbed a mesh laundry bag from a nearby table and tried to scoop up as many spiders as I could, shoving them all into the bag until it was full. Then I tied the top and ran to a window nearby and chucked them out as hard as I could. The bag sailed through the air and landed, hard, on the roof of the neighbor’s house, and immediately burst open, the spiders scattering as fast as they could.

Then, to my horror, they all regrouped and headed for a large tree who’s branches convieniently connected the roof with the side of our house. They skittered across the branches, and right back into the house through the window. I grabbed a large spray bottle of vinegar & water and started to squirt at them, hoping to drive them off with the smell.

Someone, one of the relatives who by now had all huddled together at the far side of the room, pointed out that was great for getting rid of ants, but not spiders, and told me to seek out the old woman, who for sure would have some old-school remedy. I run to the gap in the wall that we had entered through, and shouted for the old lady to come up and help us.

She replied and slowly wandered into the room. She was absolutely ancient, scrawny and withered, standing hunched over and using a large walking stick as a cane. She seemed completely unperturbed by the hundreds of spiders streaming into the room, but her bodyguard wasn’t as easygoing.

She was followed in by a verly large man, a bit chubby aroung the middle, who was dressed in a grey suit with a red tie, but he was running circles around her like he was a chihuahua or something, snapping at the spiders that got too close and glaring at everything else. The old lady patted him on the shoulder and told him to relax, she knew exactly what to do do get rid of them.

She then looked at me, though I couldn’t see her eyes through the heavy grey hair and wrinkles, and told me to get her a fish. I sent one of the other relatives down to grab one, and they came back up with a massive tuna, almost too big to carry, and we tied it by the tail to a rope hanging from the roof. 

As soon as we stepped away from the fish, all of the spiders in the room rushed forward and attacked it. They swarmed all over the fish in a layer so dense that you couldn’t see a single scale anywhere. 

Then the old woman just casually walks up, twists the end of her staff into the rope, and plucks it from the celing. With the fish dangling from her staff, and the large man continuing to circle around her, she walked out of the room. After a moment, I could see her step outside and hold the fish up into the morning sunlight, where all of the spiders vanished in a cloud of dust and particles.

When I turn back to the house, excited now that I can clear the space and use it for something, I end up instead in a smaller room, the walls were a dark, smooth stone and there is a wooden table sitting in the center of the room. Everything has a slight bluish hue to it from the lights in the celing. When I sit down at the table, I am greeted by a man dressed in a black uniform, who tells me that they are starting a game, and asks if I would like to join in.

I am excited and agree, but he stops me and asks if I have bought the proper pieces yet. I roll my eyes and tell him there’s no reason to waste money on fancy pieces, when something similar will do, and I pull a handful of brightly colored legos out of my pocket. He is annoyed, but agrees to let me play.

As we spread out the legos across the table, we are joined by a woman dressed in a dark grey and red bodysuit with long shimmering blonde hair, and a large man with a scraggly beard. Everyone is excited about playing, moving the pieces around to set up the board, but then the man in black tells me that he needs to leave, and i watch him rush out of the room.

As I turn back to the table, it has vanished, and instead I am floating in the blackness of space, a large structure is before me, some kind of ultra-massive derelect spaceship, though to me it looks like a side-scrolling video game level. The woman in red is rushing along the corridors, running into dead ends and pitfalls, getting more frantic with each setback. 

I pick up the legoes from somewhere and place them into the holes in her route to make it easier for her. Both the ship and the woman are on a much smaller scale than I expected, and it only takes a couple legoes to fill in the spaces. As I watch she ends up down a dead end, and something from the dark corridor behind her begins to shoot, the projectiles ricocheting off the walls around her. 

Then the man in black reappears, dashing in from another corridor, and leads the woman out and away from her persuers, constantly tuning to fire back into the darkness. The get onto a smaller ship that has been docked nearby, and leave as fast as they can. The ship is a very old-school design, with an enlongated football shape, fins at the far end, and a single engine, all in shiny silver chrome. 

As I watch, the spaceship soars through space, leaving the adrift hulk behind and then crashes onto a planet. The planet is strangely porous, and made of intertwined fiberous structures in dull greys and bright reds. It looks vaguely like the worst tangled yarnball in the universe. The ship becomes wedged in some of the fibers, and the two bail out as smoke begins to billow out from the engine. 

Then suddenly, from the darkest depths of the planet, swarm thousands of spiders, the same spiders from the house before except they are larger, towering over the stranded people like elephants. They are quickly overwhelmed, surrounded and desperately trying to survive, firing their guns at the creatures as fast as they can.

I am annoyed. They can’t lose, and I don’t want to see them lose, so I pause the scene, they are all frozen in place, and I lean in to get a better look. Then I turn around, shouting into the void that this isn’t how the story goes, and if they aren’t going to play it right, then I’m not going to stick around to watch them fail...

...Then I woke up. 

[dreamtimeagain]

... I am leaving the area soon, but the woman I am with insists there are a few things I should do before I go. We are driving along a large dirt road that winds down a red canyon. From inside the dark suv I sit quietly, watching the dusty rocks rush by the window. Every outcropp and crevasse is made of the same dusty red stone, dull and weathered from aeons of wind. 

We reach the mouth of the canyon and the world opens up into a wide plain, still made of the same dusty red, and centered in the middle is a small town. All of the buildings are made of wood that has darkened and splintered with age. Despite the condition of the outsides, all of the stores are really refined inside, offering modern amenities and sleek neon punk signs and friendly bars.

I am not interested in being here, and want to leave, but the woman insists that I follow her. We get out of the car and walk through one of the bars and out the back side to another building in the alleyway. It is made of the same decrepit wood, but is teal in color, and the main floor has no entrance. There’s just a single metal railing winding up the side to a door on the top floor.

I follow her up, and stand outside as she goes in alone. From the top of the railing I can see more of the town, but the entirety of it still seems to be some kind of kitschy tourist trap, and I roll my eyes. I don’t want to be sucked into these kind of places anymore. Nothing about it is genuine.

Then there’s a voice inside the building calling out to me to enter, so I walk past the large white door and step into a hansomely appointed office. Everything is neat and tidy, teal and dark wood, with little gold-edged knicknacks on the bookshelves and desk. Sitting in a large grey chair at one end of the room is a person in a white coat.

Their face is nothing, blurred, featureless, and hard to focus on, so I look elsewhere as I sit to chat. At first I chat about nothing, then the topic shifts into the town, and me moving on from it. I am suddenly aware of a subtle sense of fear and anxiety in the room, and I stand up to leave. There are several people behind me, sitting in various wooden chairs on the other side of the desk, chatting quietly until I stand. Then they all stop and turn to look at me. 

I try to excuse my self from the room, but the white coat has stood up too, muttering some advice I cannot remember as they walk to the far wall, gesturing me to follow. There, built into the wall itself, is a section of an airplane, like some kind of life-sized diorama. There’s a large plexiglass pane bisecting the section, so I can see a single row of seats as well as the storage and wiring spaces above and below.

The white coat reaches out and opens the plexiglass, and climbs into the space. It is too small for them to really fit, kneeling on the front chair and leaning over the back of it, their body wedged in the space like an adult trying to sit in a playhouse meant for children. They ask me to join them, saying that I need to practice before I leave, so I know what to expect on my flight. 

I refuse and slowly start to back my way out of the room. The white coat is dissappointed, and climbs out, closing the plexi behind them as they approach me. Suddenly their face is clear and I can see that it’s the woman who drove me here, but she looks really young. Much younger than anyone should be to have the right to an office and white coat, maybe late teens. I point out that she’s what’s wrong here, turn, and leave.

As I walk through the door, I find myself in another building. This time it’s a single white room in a cabin of some sort. Along one wall are several large bay windows with bright red trim and a single red door with a large mail flap built in. Along the adjacent walls are white bench seats built in, and all painted with thick white paint that has begun to chip and discolor with age. 

I look out the door, and at the edge of a shallow set of concrete steps is a short rocky beach that slips under the edge of the ocean beyond after only a few meters. Towering on either side of the building, and stretching off into the distance are massive wooden piles supporting a huge pier. The cabin seems to be nestled into the cliffside directly under where the pier connects to land. 

As I am standing there, several large seagulls approach me and I close the door to keep them outside. As I watch they try to enter through the mail slot, their beaks and wingtips poking through repeatedly. I back up slowly, and back through the door I entered through, which is now also red with a mail slot built in. Instead of the office from before though, I find myself in an even smaller white room just attached to the cabin.

The gulls force their way through the first door and start attacking the second one. At first I’m a little unnerved by the gulls, who are completely silent despite their increasingly hostile efforts. But then I decide that I’ve had enough of this, and push the door hard enough to pull it off it’s old hinges. I use the door like a tower shield and shove the seagulls back out through the front door, shouting at them to leave and never come back as they flap their way off towards the horizon.

Then a young girl behind me speaks up. She tells me she loves the space, and I turn to smile at her. She has short brown hair and a cute cheeky smile. I tell her it’s all ours and gesture to the room, where the long white benches have transformed into two narrow beds, neatly made with dark teal sheets and white pillows. It’s not much for sure, but with just the two of us, we could afford it and it could be like home. Like a little picturesque cottage.

The girl is excited and asks if we can go fishing before the end of the weekend and I happliy agree. I’m not very good at it, I tell her, but I would love to try with her, and grab a can of corn out of a backpack that’s sitting by the front door. Then she grabs a light blue fishing rod from the other side and we head out towards the beach, the warm air and gently swishing waves filling me with the sense of peace I had been looking for...

...Then I woke up