Diamond Dreamt of Rose

Clara felt the magic trickle up from the bare skin of her palm. With a cold crackle, the almonds transformed. Seven perfect diamonds. Even in the dim light of fog and cloud, they glittered. Clara sighed as her vigor was drained by the spell.

She looked ahead to the bridge. She had not expected fog. A shape emerged from it.

She held out the handful of diamonds. Enough to pay the toll for the next thousand travelers.

“It is not enough,” the bridge troll said.

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The Monstrous and Curious

Some people claim they dreamt of the creature before its vast shadow soared overhead and landed on the top of a young redwood.

Most of us have dreamt of it at this point. A gargantuan pterosaur with gold-and-blue feathers like a modern macaw.

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A Dream Unto Death

13 September
“I’ve been summoned to your side,” I said, taking a seat in the chair beside her bed. “In the hopes that I can help guide you back to the world of the living.”

She coughed, cleared her throat, smiled at me, and said, “I have been waiting for you.”

The waking dreamer was lucid on the day that I met her. Though she was lying propped in her bed, she didn’t even appear weak or pale. I was quite surprised. But then I looked into her dark eyes and perceived in their depths a hidden truth, a weary soul, and a cautious calm. She was indeed haunted by the journeys that her mind and even her body had made in the weeks prior.

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Noctemfaere

When I was child, I wanted them to be real. But even as a child, I knew they were not. Not in this world. And so far as I knew, this world was the only world there was. The only real world. But for someone who’s never been anywhere near a real horse, I had a keen yearning for their mythical counterparts to be real. And for me to find them, meet them, be accepted by them, and in my deepest desires, be favored by them.

I learned all their stories.

And the stories were more vivid to me than the dry and distant history of my own kind.

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Why Beauty Sought the Beast

She did nothing to earn her beauty. It was given to her. And as with many such gifts, beauty was both a boon and a burden to the girl whose name was Imelda.

She was doted on by some, guarded by others, coveted by still others.

Imelda’s mother, who both loved and feared for her girl, spent many sleepless nights wondering when her child would grow old enough to be passed into the protection of another. For she and her husband were humble folk, as their child too would have been. But Imelda’s beauty—while it may not have impressed in a city or even a large town—was quite surpassing in their little village. Surpassing enough to catch the eye of those with greater means. The girl wished to be learned. She wished to explore.

Perhaps her beauty could make it so could do what she dreamed of doing.

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The Waking of J

And then he woke up.

He huffed out a breath and gasped.  He was covered in sweat, even though the room was cool.  His eyes were still shut, but he felt the wetness gathered at the rims of his eyelids.  He squeezed and a tear rolled down from the corner of his eye and wet the outer rim of his ear.

Right away, he calmed.  The intensity of whatever emotion he’d been feeling that brought him to tears just vanished.

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Opossumillo

I didn’t feel scared, really.  I should have.  I thought about calling out to my parents.  But I decided not to.  That would scare them.  I didn’t want to scare them for nothing.  Especially since I wasn’t scared.  I should have been.  Maybe it’s because I thought I was dreaming.  A really vivid dream.

Really vivid.

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