Lily awoke on a soft king bed. The comforter was made of a lustrous golden thread and the sheets were silver silk.
The pillows felt lovely under her head, soft and fluffy. The room around her was absolutely stunning.
It was not too big but it was bigger than an ordinary bedroom. The walls were white with silver trim.
There were golden prints patterning the walls, blooming in beautiful floral design. Lily carefully stepped out of the bed and onto the soft white carpeted floor.
She walked towards the door and opened it.
Following a hallway to a rather long staircase, she saw Sandy on his little cloud, sitting cross legged and fussing with his sand.
She started to descend down the staircase and wondered why Sandy needed one. He could just float around the house on his cloud.
When she finally reached the bottom, Sandy turned and smiled at her. Lily just looked at him accusingly. "You're a traitor," she growled playfully at him.
He just smiled again and signed that North gave him cookies.
He explained with his sand that he would be teaching her how to detect nightmares in children.
He motioned for her to follow as he began to move his cloud toward another room.
In the other room, there was a giant globe much like the one in the main room.
Instead of lights though, there was a flurry of gold and black sand covering the glossy, crystalline surface.
He explained that there was a man named Pitch Black who controlled fear and nightmares in children.
He used to be called the boogeyman, the childhood monster that hid under your bed.
Sandy gestured to the black sand and explained that it was called nightmare sand - the sand that Pitch used to counteract Sandy's golden dream sand.
He took a small amount of the black sand off of the globe. Moving quickly, he trapped it inside a small glass jar that was a little larger than a game die.
He sealed the jar with a cork made of his sand and explained that the black sand couldn't get through his.
He strung a silver ribbon through a loop in the cork and showed it to Lily.
Explaining with his sand, he told her that when taken outside, the black sand would form "arms" that point to a town having a swarm of nightmares.
The bigger the arm was, the more nightmares there were. The longer it was, the worse the nightmares were.
Sure enough, when she stepped outside of the golden castle, the black sand shifted, forming the point of a compass.
Sandy pointed in all the directions the sand was pointing to and at the same time, named the towns with his sand.
So now, Lily knew where Pitch was active the most. Sandy gave her the little jar of sand and closed her fingers around it.
Though he didn't say much, Sandy was a great friend. He made a picture of a snowflake with a question mark above his head.
Lily nodded and said, "Time to see Jack."