Despite the anger, the box tossing, and the strange storm outside her window, Camilla managed to fall asleep quite easily. A peaceful darkness covered her room as everything stood still and quiet. Usually under circumstances like this, Camilla could have found herself sleeping like a log all throughout the night, but the circumstances began to change.
Creeeaaakk.
Camilla’s face twitched.
Guuurrrrrkk.
She shifted from one side of her bed to the other.
Squuueaaakk.
She pulled the covers over her head, trying her hardest to phase out whatever it was that was trying to wake her.
Crack-crack-crack.
Camilla slowly rose up in bed. She shook her head and rubbed her eyes, trying to compose herself enough to deal with whatever it was that had awoken her. The first thing Camilla noticed as her senses started to return wasn’t the creaking and cracking sounds in her room, it was the temperature. The room was freezing. This wasn’t so surprising at first as fall was on it’s way, and her mother was the type to turn the heater down to save money. The surprising thing was that this coldness came with a draft. Her window was shut tight, she had made sure of that. She looked around to find what the culprit of this breeze could be. She looked over the edge of her bed and towards the floor. Her eyes widened. Stretching across the floor of her room was a thick, fluffy, curling layer of fog.
Was Camilla really awake? She felt awake. She continued to stare at the unnatural weather phenomenon hovering over her carpet. It was as if someone had taken a large bucket of dry ice and hidden it somewhere in her room. She looked forward and quickly spotted the origin of this. On the other side of her room, large puffs of smoky fog were rolling out from under her closet door. Camilla finally took notice of the creaking and cracking sounds. When she was little and had been scared by sounds like these, her mother had reassured her that it was just the old house settling, and nothing to fear. But these creaking sounds didn’t seem like just settling. The creaks’ volume rose and fell, stopped and started in relaxed intervals as the walls of her room stretched forward and then receded back. It was as if her whole room was breathing.
She leaned off the edge of the bed, cautiously dipping her toes to the floor and into the fog. The minute the rest of her foot hit the carpet, a bright light shined in her eyes. Golden, ochre light began streaming out from behind her closet door in thick, wide rays. Camilla pulled the thin blanket off of her bed and flung it over her shoulders like a cape. It was a habit she picked up whenever she walked around the house at night, cold and scared. Camilla started for the door.
Between the strange fog effects and now what looked like floodlights, Camilla couldn’t have been blamed for wondering if some mad rave was going on in her closet; but a solemn sound came through that abolished any thoughts of a celebration. On the other side of the door, just past the creaking sounds, Camilla could hear the muffled sound of someone crying. She grabbed the handle and swung the door open.
There were no coats or jackets beyond the door. There were no boots she hadn’t worn since last winter or an assortment of other toys, shirts and the like that she had hidden from her mother. On the other side of Camilla’s closet door was a field. Short, purple flowers covered the ground for acres, with an occasional tree to frame the scene. The small flowers billowed back and forth as a slight breeze blew through.
Camilla walked through the door cautiously, gripping the blanket tighter over her shoulders. Her bare feet landed on the cold soil of the ground. Wherever she was it must have been on the outskirts of some place much bigger. She looked down from the hill she stood on. Far off into the distance Camilla could see the twinkling lights and silhouettes of what she guessed to be a city. Camilla’s senses hadn’t completely returned from her “waking up”; had they, she would’ve asked more questions. Questions like “How is there a portal to a field in my closet?” or, “Why am I just noticing it now?”, or even “Should I wake Mom up and tell her about this? She’d probably want to know” would’ve filled her head. But all Camilla could focus on was the crying. Even now, the crying sounds still filled her ears. It wasn’t a loud booming sound that she couldn’t escape, but a soft, full, echo that was circling all around her. Questions on the probability of magical portals would have to wait. Camilla couldn’t rest until she found out where the crying was coming from. She pulled her cape-blanket even tighter, and headed down into the field, ready to find answers.
Trudging through the flowers proved to be no easy task. Camilla soon wished she had thought to bring shoes or at least her slippers as her feet began to get quite muddy and sore as she walked. Stepping over large rocks and through soggy dirt, she finally made her way to a very tall, very wide hedge. It was made up of the same tiny, violet flowers that littered the rest of the terrain. It would’ve been nothing but purple flowers for acres (as the hedge was quite wide), but breaking up the pattern of plants was a brass door right in the middle. Decorated in rivets and donning a blue piece of colored glass at its top, Camilla grabbed the door’s steel handle expecting some resistance. It opened for her rather easily revealing what was inside. Camilla gasped.
Past the violet flowers, and the brass door, and the flowery hedge, stood the grandest garden Camilla had ever seen. Giant topiaries depicting dancing figures accented every corner of the space. Grand, porcelain fountains sparkled in the moonlight as rolling streams of water poured through them. Leading the way through all the lush, green, garden finery was a cobblestone walkway that seemed to shine gold. A large arbor archway made of the same material as the garden door stood in front of Camilla, welcoming her. It lead the way to a bridge that winded into the rest of the garden. Camilla accepted the greeting and let herself in.
Whoever had constructed this garden must have had a great love of brass, gold, and turquoise as the whole layout seemed to be adorned with it. Teal beads hung from golden wind chimes, while any statue that wasn’t completely made of porcelain had faded bronze-colored metal accenting it in some way. Even the cobblestone that Camilla traipsed across, despite still feeling very much like stone under feet, was still tinted in a soft, honey color. It wasn’t cold and unforgiving like the dirt she had just waded through either; somehow it felt nice and warm on her toes like a wood floor in a cozy house. It was unquestionably nighttime, but it was still as if the whole garden was rinsed in sunlight. Camilla walked on towards the bridge. As she walked, tawny street lamps with cerulean lights at their heads lit up her way.
She made her way through the garden quite easily if not a bit aimlessly at first. She walked under stone archways, through terracotta roundabouts, over small bushes of lilac and through curtains of weeping willows. After much more roaming and backpedaling, Camilla started to wonder if she would ever see the end of this garden. She got her answer when she turned another wall of flowers.
Down at the bottom of a very steep and grassy slope, Camilla saw one of the corners of the purple hedge she had passed through. It wasn’t gussied up with statues and windchimes like the rest of the garden. It stood much emptier and lonelier, with nothing but a large drooping tree and a small rock pond to accompany it. Camilla had been trusting her ears all this time, but now it was time to trust her eyes. She had to squint to be sure or what she saw..
There, at the bottom of the tree, nearly hidden by the shadows of its hanging leaves, was a small child. It was draped miserably over a crooked stone bench. It’s body shook and convulsed under the depth of it’s sobbing. Camilla could hear the wheezing, and dry heaving, that came from the poor child. She felt a pinch in her chest at watching it in this state. She moved slowly across the grass until she was right upon the child.
Camilla could now see just how young the child really was; judging from its’ height it couldn’t have been any more than seven or eight. It was cloaked in a flowing, light blue robe with glittering gold edging. It’s hair was as pale and pure as the moon that was shining off of it. She couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl from this angle. Camilla stood right over it, and looked left to right, not sure what to do next. Shouldn’t there have been a parent or some kind of adult to tend to it? Camilla took the initiative herself and reached down.
She aimed her hand towards the shaking back of the young one, hoping to give some kind of comfort or assistance. But her hand didn’t make it there. Camilla’s arm went directly through the child. She gasped as the crying figure evaporated into a flurry of blue light and nothingness, taking the rest of the garden with it. Everything closed into darkness around her. The ground beneath her fell, leaving her hanging and flailing in a black void. She was sure with no ground she would start plummeting, but instead she floated. She floated gently down into the empty blackness. Her blanket fluffed up behind her, still keeping itself anchored to her shoulders. There was nothing at first, but soon there were lights. Camilla looked down to see a thousand tiny white lights floating below her. Not just tiny dots, but large, flowing ribbons of light in all colors: blue, green, indigo, fuschia, pearl. Camilla had somehow fallen into the night sky.
As she fell through the colorful nebula she looked further into the distance below her and saw something coming into view. Emerging out of the darkness as she floated closer was a city. Large towering buildings of stone and glass stood next to humble houses made of the same material. All the windows were tall and wide, no doubt to let in as much sun as possible. Streetlights with jeweled, turquoise lamps lit up the street. High rise sky trolleries flew on lines in the air, while small boats floated down the river that ran past the cobblestone streets. And everywhere you looked -from housetops, to alleys , to walkways- trees and hanging plants grew, like a large greenhouse. The whole city was blanketed in the calm, blue glow of night time. It was all so much like the garden she had just come from.
Camilla smiled as she looked down. She couldn’t explain why, but she felt a very strong sense of affection towards the strange city that lay below her. Like an old friend, Camilla wanted to swoop down and scoop the city up into her arms for a hug. She wanted to go down and run through its streets with her arms in the air, to hide in all of the small spaces it no doubt had. She wanted to race across it’s high-rise walkways, peer into all of it’s alleys, ride those strange sky trolleys, and get completely lost exploring the city’s insides. She really didn’t know why, but for some reason Camilla felt like she would know her way around this place quite well if given the chance to prove it. But that chance soon started to disappear.
Right before her eyes, just as quickly as it had appeared, the city was starting to deteriorate. It wasn’t disappearing in flashy streaks of blue and shadow as the garden had; the city was physically crumbling. Camilla gasped as she saw one of the largest buildings snap in two. It’s higher half plummeted towards the ground before disintegrating into dark particles that flew off into the night. The rest of the city soon faced the same fate. All of its’ buildings, homes, street corners, fountains, and sidewalks started to collapse into large pieces and then into black dust. Camilla looked on in helpless terror. Her time to shudder in fear was cut short though.
Camilla’s fear of plummeting soon became a reality.
She began to fall out of the sky. She soared downward faster and faster, catching speed at an unbelievable pace. She eventually fell right through the cobblestone street, sending small bricks flying everywhere. Camilla thrashed frantically in the new void she had been thrust into. She reached for the bricks that had flown around; she reached for something, anything, to grab onto to stop her plunge into nothingness. Camilla fell, fell, fell, fell. Until she landed.
Camilla jolted up to see that she was not an exploded pile of entrails on a hard, cold ground, but just her regular self on her soft, bedroom carpet. She checked herself to see that she wasn’t wrapped in the cloak of darkness that she had felt envelope her during her fall, but simply tangled in the bed sheets that she had taken with her in her short tumble from her bed. She looked down at herself and felt silly; her arm was still outstretched from trying to grab something to break her fall. Light poured in through her window. Not multicolored aurora-light, but regular sunlight that promised an average day. Camilla looked around, trying to make sure that she was still herself and that her room was still her room. Nothing stood out to prove this wasn’t the case. She sat in silence for a minute.
“Weird dream.”
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