~ Dream Catcher ~
The ground felt both wet and hard at the same time underneath Amy Pond's palms. Above her, the sky was wide open, and two words continually circled around her mind: flesh earth. The combination didn't seem to make sense, yet somehow it accurately described what she felt with her hands. She blinked and looked up confusingly, because she didn't remember stepping out of the Tardis. She didn't remember how she had gotten here at all.
The surrounding group was brown and dirt-covered. All was barren, but the sky was bright. Electric greens and blues striped the sky above the wasteland of a planet she (and it looked like no one else) now inhabited. Everything was flat all around her – not a person, building or even structure or tree was to be seen. No one, of course, except the Doctor was with her.
A few yards away, Amy spotted the Doctor. He was advancing further in front of her, but he walked as if he was afraid his feet would fall straight through the earth. Bringing one leg up high, setting it down softly and repeating the process looked comical and confusing to Amy; she squinted and cocked her head. When she looked ahead of the Doctor and saw what he was moving towards, she sprang up and joined his place to see what he saw.
"What is that, Doctor?" Amy was of course referring to the massive dirt mountain a good two miles from them. It towered above them, even before they had reached it. Amy wondered why she hadn't noticed it on her first sweep of the planet. "Where are we?"
"Well, dear Amy, it appears to be a mountain of dirt." The Doctor smiled to himself and continued walking ahead. With a smirk and a mock, Amy picked up her feet and moved with him. "And I don't yet know where we are…" The Doctor turned this way and that, surveying the area while still moving closer to the mountain. He sonicked this and that, trying to find an answer for her.
Suddenly they were at the mountain, the dirt no more than mere inches from their faces. "Strange!" Said the Doctor as he circled around to another side of the mountain.
"What is it?" Said Amy as she followed; anything new was irresistible. She had to know right away what they were dealing with this time.
The Doctor was looking up at the mountain, where a two-foot hole existed in the side of it. It appeared hollow in the hole of the mountain, except for the metal grid that the outside layer of the mountain's dirt seemed to be draped across like a curtain. "If that metal frame is holding up the mountain…why hasn't the dirt fallen through?" The Doctor brushed away some of the dirt on the mountain side near his eyelevel – sure enough, there was more of the metal frame. He peered inside, yet there was nothing but darkness.
Amy furrowed her brows as if noticing something and leaned forward. "It smells like cinnamon!" She exclaimed with her nose to the dirt.
"It's not." She heard the Doctor say, followed by hacking and spitting noises. Amy rolled her eyes.
"Well, let's go inside," said Amy.
The Doctor shrugged and followed Amy as they pried open a section of the dirt in the mountain. Inside, it looked like an old stone building, worn down and decaying from lack of inhabitants.
Amy went ahead, exploring the space. The Doctor moved to the wall on the left of their entrance, feeling the moisture on the walls. However, the droplets were more than wet; the Doctor could feel every molecule on the tips of his fingers, like the nerves in his hand were heightened.
"Doctor, do you feel strange?" Amy turned back to join him. "Like…like we're not really here?" Looking up at Amy, the Doctor was suddenly aware of how important Amy was. How glad he was not to be alone. The feeling spread through him, overwhelming his chest.
Amy stared at him, waiting for a response. "Of course…" He said, and moved forward into the building.
Amy raised her eyebrows, preparing herself, and said, "What? What is it?"
"We're in a dream."
"A dream? Again?"
"No, no, this isn't our dream. But it has all the qualities of a dream…nothing makes sense here."
Oh, I get it," said Amy, nodding. "All the weird sensations. Strange feelings, nothing in a dream makes sense."
"That's right." The Doctor continued sonicking the walls and floors throughout the building. Amy moved past him and walked out a door on the other side. When he noticed she had left, he hurried to catch up.
Outside the other end, it seemed that they had come out of the same side of the mountain (which was now a building), into a large gray city. There were people here and there around the city block, but they took no notice of Amy or the Doctor; they hardly seemed to be there at all.
The tall stone buildings towered over them, dampening the once clear horizon. One building in particular, however, caught Amy's attention. "Rory!" She called, and began to run across the street to a house at the other end, where she had seen Rory's face in the window. With no cars to stop them, the Doctor followed.
Rory came out of the house to meet them, embracing Amy tightly. "How did you get here?" She asked him gladly yet anxiously.
"Well, last I remember, I went to sleep. I don't know, I was tired." Rory seemed as confused as the Doctor secretly was.
"We were asleep, too." Then Amy turned to the Doctor. "If we're not in one of our dreams, whose world is this?"
The Doctor looked at Amy with a furrowed brow. "Well, it's sure not reality." He turned to Rory. "I can tell you that. Oh, it looks like you got a little…" he pointed to Rory's shoulder, where a tiny spider was crawling across his jacket.
Amy squealed and moved away; Rory quickly brushed it off and stepped on it. "…friend." The Doctor finished. "You're not afraid of space travel but you're afraid of a tiny little arachnid?" Amy promptly responded with a scowl.
"Okay, I just want to know where we are." Rory usually took some time to adjust. Amy moved to put a hand on Rory's shoulder; the Doctor was otherwise engaged. He moved toward the house Rory had previously come out of, noticing the minute and clear threads attached from the base of the house to the ground in extensive numbers.
"I know where we are," said the Doctor, rising from the ground. Both Amy and Rory turned their full attention to the Doctor, eager to hear what he had to say. "It's another dimension, another reality, not a planet. And it's owned by creatures called the oneiro-puppets. They look like spiders, but they control everything here. You might call them the dreamers. Look," the Doctor pointed out to all the people wandering around the city. When they looked very closely, they could see the tiny threads of webbing connecting people to one another, to the ground, to another destination.
"This is their reality, not ours." The Doctor motioned to the dead creature that Rory had stepped on. "And I think we've made them angry."
Just then, the ground shook, and the buildings rattled. The three of them were thrust forward. When they regained balance, the earth continued to tremble, and they turned toward the commotion. What they saw might have sent both Amy and Rory into cardiac shock.
A giant, gray, mechanical spider slowly made its way across the city ceiling. It overwhelmed the swirling purple sky, breaking clouds. Slowly the machine lifted a limb, extended it out, and placed it down, yards away from its body – yards closer to them.
Out from behind the doors, up from the ground, and between the buildings cracks, millions of spiders ranging from small to tiny to golf-ball sized crawled out into the open. As if the shock couldn't worsen, they were surrounded. Amy clutched Rory tight to her. The great spider was advancing. "Amy. Rory," said the Doctor. "We're going to have to run. Now!" Amy and Rory quickly followed the Doctor through the sea of spiders that was quickly tiding through the streets. Back through the building, out of the mountain, and into the plain of dirt, they ran from the eerily fast oneiro-puppets.
Their webs were catching onto their legs, trying to pull them in the onerio-puppets' desired direction. Amy could feel the tug on her limbs. "Oh, no. No, no not my baby…" She heard the Doctor say.
Then she knew why: the Tardis was slowly being covered in webs, spun tighter and tighter; she assumed they wouldn't stop until they had covered it completely. "What do they want with the Tardis? Is there even reason here?"
The Doctor stopped and turned to Amy. "They want our reality." She stopped. "If they subdue my Tardis with their webs, they will posses it, and take it into reality. Ours. Wherever, whenever they want."
Then the oneiro-puppets surrounding the Tardis stopped. They recognized them, and began to charge. They scurried towards the three of them, and they all ran; they ran from the creatures into the faint orange glow of the distant horizon. As they got closer, the light faded and darkness grew. It seemed as if there was nothing further but the edge of the world.
It might as well have been. As soon as they all realized this was the edge, they were falling, stumbling over a precipice of cinnamon dirt. They thought it was over, but instead they hung there, suspended in space. The puppets had gotten close enough to catch them with their webs just after they had tipped the edge.
"Ah!" Amy cried. "What now?!" She looked at Rory, and then found the Doctor, wanting an express plan from him that instant.
Rory was dangling next to her, trying to figure out exactly how to be attached to a machine-generated robot's web in the clear atmosphere of the galaxy. "Wait, hold on," he struggled to stop swinging. "How are we dangling? Where is the gravity, this looks like space."
"Excellent point, Rory, but like I said earlier, we are in a dream land; it doesn't make sense." The Doctor was hanging limply but coolly from the thread, deep in thought and letting them ramble out his mouth. "Now the question is, what do we do? We can't let the oneiro-puppets get completely ahold of my Tardis, they will destroy the galaxy. Once again, the universe is at stake and I need a way to get past this – Amy? Do you have anything? You're smart, but no, of course, you're afraid of these bloody arachnids. They don't even have blood…"
"Doctor?" Amy called him quietly, looking up the length of her thread. Tiny, almost microscopic puppets were starting the slow descent down towards each of them. They were even overwhelming the edge of the earth. Suddenly Amy knew what to do. "Cut the thread." She demanded of Rory, knowing the Doctor was still in thought.
"What? We'll die!" Rory exclaimed.
"Trust me! Cut. The thread." The Doctor was listening now. Rory looked at him, sensing he knew that Amy was right. Somehow, she always seemed to see through things, figure it out. It was always right in front of their faces. The Doctor tossed his sonic screwdriver to her, and cut Rory's, then the Doctor's webbing. As she watched them fall into the dark abyss below her, she cut hers last and followed them down into the blackness.
They only fell for a short time. It was the feeling of your heart dropping to the back of your chest, feeling that the whole of reality was about to crash into your back. It was thousands of feet in two seconds, free falling.
Then they were awake.