Into The Realms Of Stardust

The elves were guarding the pod. As the Guardian came in front of the entrance, the pod opened from all sides. Chimera was standing there facing her wooden canvas, painting the Web Of Time. Chimera is a curvaceous beauty who commands respect just by her stature, her tangled golden webbed hairs reflecting her wisdom, the synchronicity of life and interconnectedness of one and all. As she dipped her fingers in the paint of honey, her fingers went over the dark oak wood canvas and she started painting yet another web. This web however was as a mermaid’s tail, and if one looked close enough at the picture, the beautiful tail could be seen swishing around joyously. She looked from her shoulders with one eye at Dwaheyy, the Elven Guardian and mildly smiled. “It’s time. She’s ready!”

Dwaheyy bowed down and lifted his right leg backwards, from the knees, his right hand resting on his stomach. This was the elven way of paying respects to the Mother. “I’ll prepare for her DreamCatcher. At the strike of midnight Arianne will be transported to the Lake of Mirrors.”

Chimera, still facing the canvas gave a soft smile through her shoulders.

***

Dwaheyy casted a web at one corner of the ceiling. It was indeed a very small web, just the size of a palm. He shrinked to a miniature version of himself, tied to the web, waiting for Arianne. It was 11 o’ clock already. Only an hour to go, he thought to himself. If Arianne didn’t reach in time and entered her dreamland, the DreamCatcher he brought with himself would perish and they’d have to wait for the Honning {‘honey’ in Danish} Clock to strike water. And that would be a long, long time to wait. If the ripples of TimeWeb are disturbed, the consequences are often formidable!     

To his surprise and relief Arianne did turn up in her room. She looked at her phone at the picture of a guy quite longingly, Salman. Her heart throbbed with pain but she had no choice. He broke up with her yet another time. With pain stringing in her chest, she put down her phone and relegated to her bed to a nighttime of escape.  With each passing minute, she went deeper into a trance like state, a place where she was different from her reality in the physical world. A place where she could hide from everything that she pretended to be not bothered by in her wakeful state, a place of ‘Escape’ as she often thought of it.

Dwaheyy waited for the human clock to strike midnight, and the moment it did he cast the DreamCatcher on Arianne. The net fell on her and in a flip second she disappeared into it while Dwaheyy with the tip of his index finger entered his web. The spider web he carved out in Arianne’s room was a portal to the DarkeWaters. As he reached a cold, forlorn place with a dark pool at a distance, he took out the DreamCatcher from his pocket and flung it to the edge of the pool. Out came Arianne and before she could even notice, Dwaheyy disappeared through his spider web.

“Hmmm……so this is the place I’ve come to visit in my dreams. Interesting!” She looked at the pool of black ink water and came closer to it. The full moon shining overhead mirrored so perfectly into the dark water. She felt she could catch it only if she went in.   

She peeped down in the pool, hoping to catch a glimpse of her face. But instead she saw a women with naked breasts, overflowing hairs and tails! Lower half of the woman’s body ware all scaled, made of red Carnelian crystals. Yet it was not a different woman. It was Arianne. Just her mermaid version who had the same amused expression as her.

“Umm, beautiful. I’d so like to be a mermaid than be a wretched human!” she pondered. She looked for few seconds at the starless indigo sky overhead and looked down back at the dark water, contemplating to jump into it. But as she went ahead to make the leap, she heard some women voices from the water whispering something to her, “Beware. Where you leap, you choose not to turn back the wheel.”

“And what if I like the waters more than the wretched place I come from?” she shouted back to the formless creatures lurking within the water, “This is all a dream right? What difference does it make?”

“As you wish”, said the voices to her, “But dreams are often stronger than reality!”

“What if the place you come from are your dreams and this is your reality? Would you dare to live in a paradoxical reality?” the voices laughed

“I will dare!” and shouting this Arianne finally leaped right into.

The water was pitch black, and the more she seemed to clear out the blackness hoping to see something, the more of the black ink clouded the streams. She looked at feet and she saw a shining Carnelian tail, instead. Her tail being the only source of light in the pitch black. She ventured deep inside and kept swimming for what seemed eternity.

“There seems to be no beginning and no end to this place. How do I reach anywhere?” she exclaimed. She was rather surprised that she could not only speak but even survive for so long underwater. “It’s a dream right? Anything can happen!” she reassured herself. “But this is the best dream I’ve ever had. It’s so damn fun.”

She kept swimming for a very long time, with her tail being the only guiding factor in this lonely place. Finally at a distance she could see something shining so sharply. She followed the light and after covering a long distance she finally found the source of the gleam. There were four mirrors facing each other, placed in an X formation and somehow they were reflecting an insane amount of light. Arianne had to open the grill gates to enter the clearing which held these mirrors. But the moment she entered she felt like she was no longer in the water. It felt like an empty but misty land and suddenly her tails turned back to her usual feet. She went to the middle of the mirrors and looked at herself closely. She didn’t see herself. She saw Natasha, a rather annoying girl from her school. “Hey, what’s she doing in my dream?” She came rather close to the mirror to see what was happening.

Natasha was crying, a big velvety cloth crumpled on the floor near the mirror, as if the mirror to Natasha’s place had been kept veiled and she just took off the veil. The large bed behind her back looked untouched and a wooden almirah opposite the bed was left open. Arianne saw Natasha sobbing through her tears and looking at the mirror. “No reflection! Oh god, what does this mean? What will people think of me if they notice this?” sobbed a disturbed Natasha through her tears. She put on the veil to hide the mirror and Arianne could hear her footsteps rushing back. Lastly, she heard the doors of the wooden almirah closing. Natasha could still be heard sobbing. As Arianne put her ears to the mirror she could feel that the sobs were coming from inside the wooden almirah.

“That’s strange! She has no reflection in this mirror and she hides in her closet? Whew, there was always something odd about this girl. I don’t know how Salman can stand her.”

Arianne exited the place through the gate and that very moment her tails returned. She swam quite a long way and finally could reach the surface of the waters. As she climbed over the pool, she realized her tails changed back to her feet again without her knowing. Strangely, the full moon turned to a waning crescent in just what seemed to her in few hours. And even strange, she wasn’t wet! As she walked through the sand, suddenly she felt being caught into a net. There was a whirlwind all around her. The smoke did not seem like it was air. It seemed like a watery black surface with stars on it whirling round in round. She closed her eyes to prevent herself from being dizzy and the moment she opened them she was back in her bed. Neither was she wet nor was there even a speck of sweat on her body. It was 6:59 am in the morning and she woke without an alarm! Whoa that was some dream!