"Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer." - Brian Herbert
"I told Eda we could try oatmeal for the next potion," Luz said, leaning over in the dark brown leather easy chair, "It would make the perfect component for growing a vocal sounding fruit plant."
"Oatmeal?! Are you crazy?!" Willow yelped, likewise sitting in a chair perpendicular to Luz, "The snaggletoothed eggplant won't allow it!"
Amity sat bewildered in another chair to the right of Willow, a small coffee table between them. She had one eyebrow raised at them in confusion and held it there for a long time; it seemed as though they were spouting word salad. She then decided to look around the room. The floor was a white and black jagged striped tile that gave a hypnotic effect the more she looked at it. All four walls were draped with bright red curtains. There was an ancient marble statue of a human woman in one corner. At the opposite end of the room was a small human man doing a slow dance by himself to some slow jazz music.
"Uh, girls," Amity eventually muttered, "How did we get here?"
"I…," Luz moaned, shaking her head as if coming out of a trance, "I don't know."
"Me neither," Willow followed, likewise coming to her senses but with a feeling of insecurity noticing Amity was there, "One minute, I'm lying in bed and the next…"
"I think we're in a dream," Amity stated, "This is just too surreal."
"This place looks familiar, though," Luz continued, "I think I've seen it in some old TV show."
"That gum you like is coming back in style," the small man said, his voice reverberating as though it were played on a backwards recording.
"But whose dream is this?" Willow asked.
"Maybe it's yours, Luz," Amity responded, "But how are we here?"
"Dunno, but I wouldn't be surprised," Luz stated, "if we actually were all sharing the same dream. I mean, I've really started to come to expect the unexpected here. And it's not really unheard of in the Human realm."
"Well, since we're talking and becoming aware that we are dreaming," Willow shrugged, "I'm guessing this is what they call lucid dreaming? If so, we should be able to shape things to how we imagine them. Maybe I can take us to one of my favorite dream spots?"
"Sounds like a plan," Luz beamed, "Would love to see what your mind can cook up. What do you think, Amity, or did you have somewhere in mind you'd like us to visit?…No pun intended."
Amity thought for a moment, and her face became pale. Her mind had been muddled from the last few nights of dreaming she had, ranging from a haunted library, to a dilapidated school full of unknown evil forces, to confessing her love to the ever handsome soothsayer Malin Gael, only to find she had forgotten to dress herself that day.
"Nah, that's fine, I guess" Amity shook her head with a crass indignation, giving a dismissive waving of her hand, "Mine are messed up right now anyway."
"Well, then, I guess we better get out of here," Luz nodded, "Willow, if you'd lead the way."
"Gladly," Willow beamed in her usual cheery voice, no matter how self-conscious she felt around Amity, "I guess I can't just teleport us out of here. There's got to be a way out, somehow."
The girls all rose to their feet and looked over at where the little man was dancing, only to find that some weird thin, gnarled, almost dead-looking tree with what looked like a brain at the top had replaced him. But it seemed to sway back and forth to some unseen wind, all the while making this echoing clicking sound as the jazz music faded to silence.
"I…am…The…Arm…" the brain said in a raspy reverberating voice that also sounded like it was played on a reversed cassette tape, "And…I…sound…like…this…"
"Okaaaay…weird," Amity stated in confusion, but since this thing could talk, she decided to ask for its help, "Can you show us the way out of here to Miss Willow's dream?"
The thing didn't say anything; instead, the brain blinked with a yellow light for half a second, and the group found themselves enwrapped in bright green foliage.
"Well, I think we're in the right place," Willow chirped pleasantly. The girls pulled themselves to their feet, and Willow wandered over to a small patch of enormous tropical leaves, with deliberateness as evidence she knew exactly where to go. As soon as Willow had moved these aside, Luz and Amity immediately became awestruck from what greeted them on the other side: a massive garden that spanned what looked like a good 400 yards, all of it illuminated by the light of the enormous moon in the sky. Various trees of different types, including Redwood, Sequoia, Douglas firs, Ceiba, and Hevea brasiliensis surrounded the background, all of them different trees one would not expect to grow together in the Earth Realm. Within immediate view were flowers of various colors that loomed over the central walkways and gave the scene a vibrancy that gave all three of the girls a serene peacefulness of mind. In its center was a massive purple flower with a yellowish center that gave the rest of the garden a focal point of sheer beautiful, natural aesthetics.
"Yup," Willow laughed, "This is it."
"Wow!" Luz exclaimed as the three made their way into the garden, "This is beautiful! I really wish my dreams were like this." She then held out her hand as some glowing blue butterfly fluttered into her palm before talking off again and landing into a nearby flower.
"Thanks, I know," Willow sighed as she rested herself and laid back on a gargantuan nearby flower pedal, which immediately raised her higher as the plant grew, "Sometimes, I go here in my mind right before a hard test or some big chore my parents give me. It's my happy place."
"This really is amazing, Willow, I will admit," Amity said, looking around at the enormity of the floral life that surrounded her, "Is this what you imagine you could create when you've finally mastered your lack of control?"
"...Yes," Willow answered harshly, widening her eyes at Amity, "That's the goal of any good witch, isn't it?"
"Look," Amity sighed, "I really am sorry for how I treated you. There's been a lot of pressure on me not just to get into the Emperor's Coven but also cut out anyone who would drag me away from my goal. And in my insecurity, I started making fun of you to make myself feel better. And as I said a few weeks ago, you are a very talented witch, just in a different way than I am...and even Luz and that Gus guy you all hang out with both have their talents as well. And it took an outsider," she then gestured her head towards Luz, "to make me realize how important all life is, be it in every witch, demon, or creature, or even this..." she graced her hand through one of the long nearby vines of a willow tree. Amity's eyes focused heavily on the tip of this vine, studying the small, soft leaves that branched from it. Within each of these leaves was a small vein that extended itself back towards the longer branch, all feeding into the same current for water and energy transportation. Each one was important, her mind told her, and each had their place in the greater scheme of the entirety of feeding the willow tree.
Willow likewise sighed and blinked for a moment, her expression changing into a smile.
"It's okay," she finally said, "As all things do, that trust will just take some time to grow again." Amity looked back up at her, their eyes meeting, and returned her smile.
"Uh, girls," Luz gasped, backing away from a nearby plant she was examining, "I think we have a problem." As Luz backed away, Willow and Amity could see, much to their horror, that the plant began to decay at an accelerated rate. Soon, all the plant life began to die around them, causing Willow to fall to the now dusty earth below and to panic as she tried in vain to make various hand gestures to help her garden regrow.
The night sky soon turned a dark red, the moon now turning to a bright bloody color.
Amity could hear some distant chanting in her ear: "Ia, Nyarlathotep! Ia, Azathoth! Ia, Ia, Cthulhu fhtagn!" She then looked in the direction of the moon to see what could have caused it, and out of that enormous cosmic body came a large and undefined shadow. She immediately recognized it from one of her past dreams, that which lurked the halls of the decayed school. As she looked harder at the entity, it began to take more of a shape to her, something with claws, tendrils, but was it skeletal or octopus-like? Was it ooze or did it have a definite bony structure? And its face just made no sense at all the more she looked at it.
All Luz and Willow could see was the bright red moon, no entity before them. They could however see their former rival now turned best friend gazing upward in absolute horror, her eyes soaked with tears as she fell to her knees.
"Amity!" Luz shouted as the sound of an approaching dust storm came near, "What's wrong?"
"I see the end, Luz…" Amity muttered, "And it's coming for us all!"
"There's nothing there!" Willow shouted, "But we gotta get out of here if we don't want to get caught in the storm!" But then her mind immediately asked itself, And go where? This is a dream! And it appeared they were no longer in control of it.
Luz ran over to Amity and wrapped an arm around her, trying to both comfort and lift her. But that's when she looked up as well. For a moment, Luz saw something strange up there, something Eda had described in one of her dreams.
Suddenly, Luz then found herself jolting upwards out of bed, a yelp escaping her lips and sweat pouring down her forehead. So it was a dream, as they had thought.
She immediately reached for her social scroll and performed the circle motion to bring up the mirror portal spell. Willow and Amity both appeared in two different circles, both answering immediately.
"That happened, right?" Luz asked, half uncertain.
"Yes, yes it did," Willow wiped the sweat from her own brow.
Amity looked like an absolute mess. Her eyes looked sunken, as though she hadn't slept in days, her face looked even more pale than usual, and she held one of her temples with one hand while she held the scroll in the other.
"Why do all my dreams as of late have to be so messed up?" she groaned.
"This can't be some coincidence," Luz said, "We should keep a record of our dreams."
"You mean keep our own dream diaries?" Willow still sounded like she was trying to stay positive, "I'm all for it!"
"Doesn't sound like a bad idea," Amity sighed, "Maybe it'll help me make sense of everything."
The girls said their goodbyes and closed the scrolls. Luz felt as though she couldn't sleep after that. She immediately grabbed her notepad and began writing, making illustrations as well of all that she saw. This, she knew, would only be the start of more to come.