"Yeah, yeah, we get it," he mutters, slapping away their hand and rolling his eyes. "You just focus on keeping the shop upright while we're gone, alright?" They glare at him, but he ignores it, turning to her. "You ready to go?" he asks.
"I guess," she says. She's staring at the door pretty intently. "Let's get going."
He reaches down and takes a hold of the door handle. He pauses dramatically, and flashes the other two a grin. Then he pushes open the door. She gasps.
Beyond the door opens up a small village, tiny wooden houses with narrow cobble roads serpentining between them, a lush forest streching out around it. Everything is vibrantly colored and there are giant mushrooms glowing on and around the houses.
"What is this place?" she asks, stepping through into the village.
"Bye Sam," says Kevin with a wave. They huff as the door is closed on their face. Then he turns to aswer her question. "This is the Realm of Dreams. The home of the Sandman and his folk."
"Oh, that's a real person?" she asks, turning to look at him.
"More of a title," he says, adjusting the bag of equipment he has on his back. "Like a king or such. Sometimes it's Sandwoman, and once it was Sandbunny." She snorts out a laugh. "Anyway, we just need to get through the village and continue through the woods that way," he points, "and then walk across a desert for an hour, hour and a half. Then we'll be at the Golden Garden."
"So the Garden is like an oasis?" she asks, as the two start walking down the road. He nods. She glances around. "Why is there no one in the village? Is it abandoned?"
"No, you just can't see the Dream Folk if you don't have Dream Sand in your eye," he says, stepping over a knee high mushroom growing in the middle of the path. Her eyes widen. "Don't worry, you can't step on them accidentally. For them you aren't real, just as to you they aren't real. It's like a separate plane they exist on."
"Oh," she says, glances around again. "Do you have any Dream Sand with you? I'd like to see them."
"No, and we wouldn't have time either way. They'd throw a slumber party if they knew they had visitors, and their slumber parties include like 48 hours of sleeping."
"That sounds nice," she says, more to herself than to him.
"You can come back once we finish our mission," he says, and keeps moving forward.
~x~
About 20 minutes of walking later, the deep green starts to give way to a more bright yellow peeking from between the trees, and soon the two emerge out of the woods at the edge of a desert. Kevin checks his watch and then looks up to the sky. The sun is slowly making its way to Zenith.
"Okay, if we keep a steady pace, we should make it to the Garden before Zenith," he says, taking his bag from his back and rummaging through it. He pulls out two scarves. "Here," he says, handing one to her. "Wrap this around your head." She takes it and he starts wrapping the other around his own head and neck, leaving only his face covered. "And if a sandstorm kicks up, you do this," he pulls the scarf over his mouth to demonstrate," so you don't breathe in the sand. Trust me, you do not want to breathe in the sand."
While she wraps her own scarf, he pulls out two waterskins and a compass from the bag before hoisting it back on. Then they are off.
It becomes very quickly very apparent why the scarves are necessary. Only 15 minutes in, he can see from his peripheral that she is sweating quite a bit, trying to keep the moisture away from her eyes by rubbing a sleeve across her forehead every few minutes. They manage to keep a steady course and a steady pace, though the sun is hot and pressuring on their backs.
Imagine the tan you could get!
"Sadly, that's not an actual sun," he says, taking a sip from his water. "It's magic, and a very special kind of magic at that, which means there's no easy way to make us more comfortable, but also that it emits no UV radiation. And no UV, no tan."
He keeps walking for a few meters, before he realises she's fallen behind. He stops, turns around. He's about to ask her why she stopped when he sees her face.
She looks horrified. Her eyes are blown wide open and her mouth is trying to work around something to say, but she isn't saying anything.
"What's wrong?" he asks, a tight twisting at the bottom of his stomach.
"Why did you say that?" she says.
"What?"
"Why did you say that?!" Her horror is turning into fury before his very eyes.
"You... you said--!" he starts, he has no idea what is going on, but she interrupts.
"No, I didn't say! I thought about getting a tan, but I did not say it!"
A distant rumbling and a strong gust of wind. He looks past her and pales.
"You need to calm down right now," he says, looking back at her, hir arms raised, palms open, reaching out to her.
"Why did you know what I was thinking about?" she shouts. "Did you put some kind of mindreading thing into my head when you took out my memories, huh? So you'd know if I suspect you of something??"
"Absolutely not, please, you need to calm down!"
"Don't tell me to calm down, explain yourself!"
"I can't, I-- Look!"
He grabs a hold of her shoulders and spins her around. Behind her a giant swirling mass of clouds towers above them in the sky, rumbling loudly, lightning flashing inside it. Except they're not clouds.
"That's a Brainstorm," he says. He's still holding onto her upper arms and she is very, very still. "This desert plays with things you want, it creates mirages of your wildest dreams and makes you chase them and get lost for forever. Which means it can, as you say, read minds. And when your thoughts are raging in your head, well..."
He rounds her, so he's standing between her and the storm. "Look at me," he says, barely loud enough to be heard over the thunder. She glances at him, but is having trouble tearing her eyes off the storm. "It's okay. You don't know anything about what's going on, and you're worried and you're suspicious. That's fine. But you need to calm down. I'll do my best to answer any and all questions you have, but first you need to calm down."
Deep breaths. It's fine, you're fine. Deep breaths
She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. Holds it in. Blows it out slowly. Does it again, and a third time. All the while the storm gets smaller and smaller and quieter and quieter until there's but a whisp of a cloud in the sky. She opens her eyes again, gives him a small smile.
"Sorry," she says. "It just really freaked me out when you could read my mind."
"It kinda freaked me out too," he admits, running a hand through his hair as he breathes out a sigh of relief. "I don't know why that happened. Or how." They are quiet for a moment, contemplating. He looks out over the vast expanse of sand. "I guess there was some kind of weird glitch. The desert does read your mind, after all, maybe I just accidentally recieved a part of that read. It's never happened before, but then again, I don't think I've ever been here with another person before."
She hums, noncommittal. He glances at her, but she's looking away already.
"In any case, we should keep moving," he says and pulls out the compass to check the direction. "We need to make it to the Garden by Zenith."
~x~
45 minutes later something starts to materialize in the distance. Another 10 and it's clearly visible. 15 more and they can clearly make out a few trees and a big golden gate.
"I'm just glad this one wasn't another mirage," she mutters as they reach the gate. There's a small green area in front of it, a small watering place and some shrubbery, a few palm trees. A pretty standard desert oasis. But then there's the gate.
It's three meters tall and made of golden bars and beyond it, as far as the eye can see, is gold. Plants of every size and shape and they're all shades of golden and they're just there. Right behind the gate. From the either side of which a tall, thick wall stretches out.
"This is it," he says.
"Wow," she says.
"It's a lot grander when you're actually inside, in the midst of it," he says as she walks over to the gate and runs a finger along one of the bars. He takes off his backpack and puts it down. "I'll set up camp here, monitor your progress. Here," he tosses her a gopro, which she catches without looking. Muscle memory doesn't seem to be affected, he notes as he pulls out a monitor, a travel chair and a tarp.
"How do I get in?" she asks, strapping the camera onto her forehead.
"Just open it," he says, waving a hand in her general direction. He sets up the tarp to give himself some shade and then plops down the chair under it. "It's not locked or anything. You can just walk in."
"Oh," she says and tugs on the gate. Sure enough, it pulls open easily. "I thought there'd be some kind of... security."
"The Garden is it's own security," he says, sitting down as comfortably as he can. He pokes at the screen which springs to life, showing him himself, as she turns to look at him. "This is the only way in or out of the Garden, and it is very easy to get lost in there. And if anyone manages to get out of it with some semblence of self intact, the desert usually gets them at that point."
"That's rough," she says, walking over to him.
"Yep, but that's why you have me," he says and hands her the compass. "That'll point towards this spot, so once you have the oranges, follow the arrow back." She nods and walks back to the gate. She stops in front of it for a moment, and takes a deep breath. "And feel free to grab other interesting looking things while you're at it!" he calls after her.
She gives him a backwards wave and steps in.
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Hey hey, this is the latest I've been with a post in like 3 years or sth! But at least it's (almost) on the right day (sorry again orz). But on the more positive side, I think this turned out pretty good! We're really getting into it now, bois!
Also I'm starting to feel like a better name for the story would be something about memories, not time lol Next topic is Sugar, bye~
Pie out.
I can't stop imagining someone traipsing about the Land of Dreams and giving a friend a ring on their phone. "Oh, the weather, just lovely." :D
ReplyDeleteMind-reading? Oh my. Sure, let's blame the desert.
YES. ALL THE ORANGES. TAKE EVERYTHING.