Dreams.

Dreams are an important part of the daily life of a large slice of the corporal population. Lots of beings do dream. They dream of good things, adventurous things. Sad things. Sometimes their dreams are scary. Sometimes they are a door to the other side, to other planes. The dreams of some may not be dreams, but deep revelations. Sometimes they're just… Memories, resurfacing from the deepest part of one's mind. Let's take for example the old rock elemental. Before being forcefully woken up by a jumping human, he was dreaming of his youth: he was a rock fallen from the flank of the mountain, and rolled so fast it could feel the wind erode it, smoothing his bulky exterior. He felt free, and then scared, being airborne all of a sudden. The end of the fall lined up with the foolish man. It may have been a blessing in disguise, when he thought about it. He did not want to think about it, so he fell back asleep, and he dreamt of when he was a rock in the middle of the forest, the season passing and with them a sense of being, of reality, the first sparks of his sentience. That was many, many seasons ago. He would dream of that until the next foolish human kicked it awake. He hoped it came as far in the future as possible, preferably never.

Edramund Willgamber wasn't dreaming sweet dreams, sadly. He was in the temple, with a broom in his hand, three buckets full of murky water with rags on the rims, and he was trying his best not to hurl at the horrible spectacle in front of his eyes: an enormous pile of manure, on top of which shined the holy chalice. He had a handkerchief covering his nose and mouth but the stench was unbearable. With the help of the broom he was trying to remove the filth from the floor, to get to the holy chalice and putting it back where it belonged, but… The more he cleaned, the more the pile grew, the chalice more and more out of reach. But he could not stop. This was a place of worship, it should be as clean as the pious people's souls. No filth allowed. No filth allowed. Someone was laughing loudly. No filth allowed. No filth allowed. He kept cleaning, and cleaning, and cleaning. Someone hit him from the back, and he fell, face first.

Lazar was mostly relaxed while falling asleep, and he brought this relaxation inside his dream, where he appeared to be in his bed, home, a hundred moons ago. He was next to his wife, who was sleeping soundly next to him. He gave her a small kiss on the back of her head, then got up. He glided on top of the floor until he got to his study, and a pen jumped from the ink pot to his hands. Parchment was waiting for him on the desk, where he floated/sat. He began writing, and words flowed so easily from the tip of his pen. The deadline was far, far away, moons away, no editor breathing on his neck, his last book a hit, permitting him to relax a bit more while he wrote the next. No given number of words to reach. He felt the hands of his dear wife embracing him from behind. He shivered at the contact, and he turned around, meeting the gaze of Erad.

“What in all the Numens’ name are you doing in my house, you rude stolid talking feline! Shoo! Shoo!”

He raised his hands up and made himself bigger. He actually grew a bit bigger, till his hands touched the roof of his study.

Erad regarded him, a bit incredulous.

“I’m not actually here. This isn’t even your house. Listen to me, Lazar, son of Laza, son of-”

“Silence! I know who my ancestors are!”

“Listen to me all the same, mortal. I am here, and you’ll do well to remember it, to do you a favor. There was a misunderstanding about what should have been given to you and what was, in fact, given, so speaking my name will summon nothing. Since you probably still didn’t summon the lance, there shouldn’t be any issue about it, do not do it, we’re fixing your problem and the item that should have been delivered to you will arrive alongside an instruction manual, you should receive it in ten-fifteen working moons and if you’ll still have any problems you can contact the assistance service by reciting my name backwards and forwards until you hear blue. Now go back to your dream and don’t forget anything I said to you.” The enormous silver lion put his paws on the man’s shoulders and looked him straight in the eyeballs. “No. Better yet, wake up. Wake up Lazar. You need to pee. Lazar- Wake up Lazar.”

Lazar opened his eyes. He was lying in bed next to Liliane, still sleeping. It was the inn’s room. He really needed to pee. He went out to the outhouse in case he had other business to take care off, and while he sat, waiting, he started reciting the name of the stupid feline backwards and forwards. It became a litany lasting minutes, until he actually started hearing the color blue. It was… weird, to say the least. A deep, melodious and repetitive sound made himself known to his mind. Then, a voice said “all our operators are busy, please, stand by”, and he went back hearing the color blue. Then nothing.

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“That damn fu-”

Bramaboxa and Dulcicloxia were a special kind of twins. They had a lot of things they shared, and dreams was one of those things. They were always aware they were dreaming, because in their dreams, they assumed their original forms: Bramaboxa was a rose tinted glass box, covered in paintings of geese, beavers and platypuses, slowly rotating on its axis, while Dulcicloxia was a big grandfather clock apparently made of gingerbread. Its hand moved in three directions at once, and it seemed to phase a bit out of it.

“Being immaterial is such a bliss”

“I want scritches”

“Such a bliss”

“Scritches and grooming”

Bramaboxa floated towards its twin brother, and hit its clear sugar glass cover with an angle.

“I hate it when you rain on my parade.”

“Let me be sad in peace, Brama.”

He opened and closed its case, and made a weird thrumming sound “I enjoy being material. Being an oxen is mostly fun. We don't even pay taxes and no animal is out to get us because we're. Big. And protected. I just hate the flys, but who doesn't.it's a small price to pay.”

“You're forgetting that we ended up as beasts of burden of two nutjobs.

“They seem like a good sort, though.”

“Good nutjobs are still nutjobs.”

“You set fire to a house to make me feel better. Without my input. Why did you think I would feel better if you burned the house of our handlers?”

“Because you like bonfires!” Brama flashed in all the color of the spectrum, and two others that no mortal had ever seen.

“And you loved it when I made that star explode for your first eon ages ago!”

“That star was already nearing its end and no one would have been affected by an earlier collapse! I had seen that it wouldn’t! This, however, was just mean. They had to sell a lot of other stuff, other than us too, to pay for their new home.”

“Well I'm sorry ok?” its light dimmed a bit. “I worry about you.”

“I know you do, but please. No more fires without consulting me first. Please?”

The clock struck the four.”

“Fine. I'll think about it.”

“That's all I ask.”

“You're a grumpy old daemon”

“And you're a child.”

The clock struck the five and fiftythree.

The glass box rotated a bit slower.

“Frllll chucur ghjm.”

“It's your creator too, you silly mass of molten sand.”

Inside the colony, during the second half of the afternoon, the one who can smell through eras gone and little shadow slipping through the fabric of reality, or as we got to know them, Thyme and Spyce, were sleeping one on top of the other. They were a lumpy ball of of fur, and they were huddled together looking for warmth. And they were really, really warm and cozy inside their little nest made of cloth scraps and assorted sticks. Thyme sniffed a lot while he was sleeping, and he started dreaming of fire. He was in a big room, with a lot of humans scuttling around. Some were shouting, some were cutting meats and vegetables, some others were stirring a big pot positioned over a big fire. There were countless smells. The smell of sweat from the working humans, the smell of cooked food, that of the scraps of meat left to rot, and something else. Something… He went around, looking for that something, to nibble on it, when he finally found the origin of such a smell: it was the forbidden fruit, the thing his species was sadly incapable of digesting, but which colored all their deepest wants in yellowish tones: an oversized cheese wheel. He couldn't resist taking a bite. Then another. Then another one, until all of his world was made of cheese. It was so sweet he felt he could have cried. His dream continued in bliss.

The Mayor did not dream of wolves again, when night came. It did not dream of gold, of his wife spitting on him, of all his family turning his back just because he was a bit controlling of their finances. He had a very outlandish dream, actually. You see, he dreamed of an old kitchen. Not every kitchen, you see, but the very first activity he cut out when he became mayor, and then left empty: it was the kitchen that served the previous Mayor, but he didn't have money to spare on such frivolousness. So he fired everyone, sold all the ingredients at a loss, and sold all the workers as servants to a dear friend when they tried to protest.

And he dreamed of being a wheel of cheese, split, and eaten by countless rats.

Liliane had always been a heavy sleeper, but she seldom dreamt of something, or remembered it when she woke up the morning after. When she did, they were not pleasant, but fortunately, it had been a long time since she had slept alone, and couldn't hug his husband, or shake him awake to talk for a bit until they both fell asleep together. This was one of such nights. She woke up after. She felt cold and scared. Her husband had just returned, probably, from a nightly visit to the outhouse, and when he came on the bed, he asked him to hold her tight. He did. She kissed him on the shoulder, where she was resting her head, three times.

“Will you ever tell me of your dreams, my love?” he asked, as he always did when he found her teary-eyed in the bed, waiting for him to wake and comfort her. She knew he would ask, even if he knew the answer.

“It's early, and it's late, and we should just sleep the night away my love. Just sleep and dream of love. Ghosts come back when spoken of.”

Lazar smiled toward Liliane, and hug her a bit tighter. The old woman caressed his cheek, and warmed up by the heat of his body, she fell asleep, as he did. That night, Liliane dreamed again, and dreamed of her second wedding, the one with Lazar. How handsome he was. How soft his hands in hers were when he said he'd never leave her side. How he fell in the fountain after he got drunk. It was a long, long, sweet dream.