Chapter 20: One Little Spark of Inspiration
Mindy's eyes flew open as her breaths came out in rapid gasps.
Beads of cold sweat trickled down her forehead…in fact, her entire body felt like it had been thrown into a furnace. A strange airy sensation tickled all her trembling nerves, and it did not feel pleasant in the slightest. She shifted her gaze towards the miniature hammock above her head that held a conked-out Jiminy Cricket. She then snapped her head in the direction of the bed besides hers that contained a snoozing Wendy Darling.
She knew that she was the cause of the characters' exhaustion.
Ever since she'd chosen to stay in the Dremesphere, Sorcerer Yen Sid had tasked Mindy with constructing a suitable vessel for the group to travel in since their old one was blown into smithereens.
To state that this request was problematic was an understatement of the highest caliber.
Nearly all of her efforts were met with failure with the "ships" ranging from pathetically mediocre, grotesquely three-dimensional, and even chaotically abstract. Most of the time, her creations weren't even ships. Somedays, they were packs of ginormous circus elephants in a pyramid (this happened a total of three times in the span of two minutes). Other days they were blots of paint mushed together in the vague form of a ship. On this particular day however, she'd somehow managed to create what looked like the Stink Spirit from Spirited Away, only it was more massive and didn't have a face. It simply looked like a monstrous, pulsing, gooey, guacamole-green blob. It didn't necessarily reek per se, but it did smell like a thousand charring pineapple pizzas, maggot-infested jackfruit, and what she could only describe as the feeling you get when you see someone bite into string cheese instead of peeling it like a normal human being.
Mindy had proceeded to set the entire thing on fire.
Granted, it was an accident (as all it accomplished was cause the inconvenienced scent to become more potent). Luckily, the broomsticks had been able to douse the flames with their buckets, but it hadn't succeeded in offsetting the immense guilt she felt afterwards.
Mindy hadn't meant to cause a panic amongst The Lost Boys, Peter, Wendy, Jiminy, Tinkerbell, and especially not Dakota Davenport of all people.
She'd just been so enraged and her riled-up emotions manifested themselves into a towering inferno. She would never admit it out loud, but Mindy felt entirely responsible for the Jolly Rodger's fate. It was her fault that they'd been sent to Bald Mountain, and she was so ashamed that she'd played a part in incinerating what was essentially Captain Hook's home that she felt the need to make it up to him since he'd saved her from almost drowning in the Never Sea.
Yes, she still hated the man with every fiber of her being but he hadn't deserved to have his ship blown up (although maybe it was karma in response to him blowing up Hangman's Tree).
But then again, Mindy had been the one to practically gift-wrap the Jolly Rodger to Chernabog.
Just like she'd been the one to cover the ship in sticky notes, turn the supplies in the galley into cotton candy, force a mariachi band follow him around everywhere, insult his possibly deceased mother to his face, and trigger his PTSD by having a billion alarm clocks go off at the same time first thing in the morning.
It was clear that Mindy wasn't a saint by any means, but that didn't automatically make her a heartless fiend either. She wouldn't allow herself to stoop down to his level ever again.
She needed to restore the ship to its former glory, and it needed to be perfect.
Quietly, (so as to not wake the sleeping characters surrounding her) Mindy slipped out of the suffocating bedsheets, and tiptoed out of the guestroom. She cringed as a couple creaks resounded from the swinging door, but she was able to successfully shut it behind her regardless. With that taken care of, Mindy picked up her skirts and briskly made her way down the winding halls of the mysterious tower.
She couldn't quite explain how she found herself back in the highest balcony overlooking the meadow outside, but chose not to question it for the time being. Instead, she plopped onto the pebbled floor, and allowed her legs to dangle off the edge of the railing like the crazy person that she was.
Mindy looped her arms around the rungs and pressed her chest into them absentmindedly. It was almost as if she were giving it an embrace, when in reality it was because it was positively freezing. She assumed it was around forty-two degrees, but seeing as she was a Floridian and they were known to be cowards when it came to dealing with the cold, she figured that it was closer to about sixty-five.
She rubbed her hands for warmth as her teeth rattled. You know, now would be a good time to have my favorite black-and-white striped sweater oh wait…it got reduced to dust.
Mindy explicitly chose not to dwell on the conversation between her and The Projectionist.
Every time she circled back to it, her overthinking mind would race a million miles per second and her anxiety would start to bubble to the surface. The only problem was that the more time her brain spent on actively dodging the subject, the more panicked and breathless she became.
It got to the point where she was beginning to lose sight of her surroundings altogether.
"I know that I am breathing in, I know that I am breathing out." Mindy murmured as she urged her spine to straighten and placed a shaking hand over her sternum, "I know that I am present in this moment, this is a precious moment. When I breathe in I'm calming my body and my mind, when I breathe out I smile."
She did this a couple of times until her heartbeat settled to a more manageable level and her lips twitched into a genuine smile…for a while, she sat staring into the blurred cluster of glittering stars above her head and simply listened to the sound of the breeze as it whistled through the treetops.
Mindy squinted when she thought she caught the silhouette of a bird soaring over the moon.
Frustrated, she held out her palm face-up and furrowed her brow as a couple shimmering silver sparks trickled from her tremoring hand. She strained every single microscopic muscle in her puny body, and clenched her teeth as the sparks started to crackle and roar.
Then, a pair of glasses popped into existence.
A pair of Groucho Glasses…
She moaned before chucking them over the side of the railing.
"Okay…okay you can do this."
But even she didn't buy the words coming out of her own mouth.
This time, a chunky, slimy substance spilled between her fingers.
Curious, Mindy cast her eyes downward…
Under normal circumstances, she would have hyperventilated from sheer terror at what she saw. But ever since she started experimenting with her newfound powers, she had summoned nightmare after nightmare ranging from deteriorating corpses to porcelain dolls with button eyes to creepy animatronic animals that she'd become numb to it all (except for The Projectionist's apparent true form of course).
To be quite blunt, in her hand was a pile of mush.
It smelled like blood, but it was in actuality a clotty inky-black substance that vaguely resembled…Jell-O? Clam chowder? Was that a tiny eyeball floating on top and…and a moldy piece of cheese or an organ of some sort?
Wrinkling her nose, Mindy wiped her hand on the floor beside her and resumed staring off into the distance, although it was almost pointless considering that she could hardly see a damn thing without her glasses.
"Mind if I join you?"
She squeaked and whipped her head around to face none other than Sorcerer Yen Sid.
Cheeks reddening, Mindy brushed one of her thick strand of hair out of her face. "You scared the living bejeezus out of me."
He chuckled and silently glided onto the balcony, "Apologies, I tend to have that effect on people…. Not intentionally of course."
She nodded in agreement and patted the spot next to her.
Yen Sid's brow crinkled and shook his head. He then waved his hand in an infinity symbol of some kind and with a spiral of snowy-white mist a perfectly mundane wooden stool appeared beside the girl.
"You make it look so easy." Mindy commented.
"Naturally." Her mentor replied as he settled into his seat, "I have been doing this longer than you've been alive after all."
"Okay, no need to rub it in gramps." She joked.
"Is that why you're out here so late at night?" Yen Sid questioned after a few beats of comfortable soundlessness, "Because you're having difficulties involving your summoning skills?"
"It's…It's hard to explain." Mindy admitted, "Yes, that is part of the reason, but I'm the kind of person who just…can't relax. I'm sorry, I can't explain it very well but I have these…these moments I guess where my brain can't stop thinking. I can't breathe, I can't eat, I can't sleep my head starts to pound to the point where I can't process things properly, and my thoughts go completely haywire. It's partially why I think I belong in a mental hospital most of the time."
"Believe it or not, when you were younger you felt this way too." The sorcerer gently explained, "Always worrying about whether or not everything would go according to plan, panicking whenever something didn't go your way, doubting your ability to perform a task correctly…It's nothing to be ashamed of. There are plenty of other people out there who deal with anxious thoughts such as these, and you shouldn't be so hard on yourself because of that."
"It's just that… my whole life I've tried to be nothing but perfect." She mused as if realizing it for the first time herself, "That's how it goes when you're ignored by the person who's supposed to love you unconditionally. My constant train of thought is if I keep succeeding in everything I do without fail, then maybe one day my dad will notice me. If I keep acing every test, earning every scholarship, writing meaningful stories every day he will say my name (if he hasn't forgotten it already). We'd be a real family for once instead of having this invisible barrier between us."
"I see." Yen Sid nodded as his once strict, hardened gaze softened a little, "But your father isn't here right now, so who are you trying to please?"
"Myself mostly." Mindy started to list off the others on her fingers, "Obviously, you, Peter, Jiminy, Tinkerbell, Dakota, the Lost Boys, and everyone else in The Dremesphere…I don't want to let anybody down because you're all counting on me to succeed, and if I can't create something as simple as a pair of glasses than what good am I as a sorceress? How am I supposed to defeat The Projectionist when I can't even get my own imagination under control?"
"An old friend of mine once told me that imagination is like a wild stallion." Yen Sid made a circling motion with his hands, and hazy images of a figure and their steed danced across their eyes, "It is powerful and cannot be so easily tamed, but you know that you must grab it by the reins and show it you will not be submissive." The tiny figure hopped onto the horse and yanked the ropes around its mouth. The stallion reacted by rearing up on its hind legs and throwing the rider off of it which caused Mindy to wince, "Yes, the process will be difficult and tedious, but think about how much joy you'll experience once you do tame it."
With a newfound rigor, the figure leapt onto the saddle again. Although the horse bucked and whinnied violently, the rider wasn't deterred from his/her task and instead held on for dear life. Eventually, the stallion calmed down enough for the rider to lead it where he/she wanted it to go.
Mindy bit her lip…
She hesitated before she spoke, "I forgot to tell you earlier, but there are actually two other reasons why I'm so anxious about getting this new ship built…one is because The Projectionist has entered my subconscious and is now actively trying to terrorize me into I don't know, leaving the Dremesphere? Going with him willingly?" Mindy shuddered as the previous events that occurred inside of her Dreamscape played inside of her still reeling mind, "I don't really want to get into it…the other one is…I think that another one of my friends from the Otherworld (her name's Scarlett) might be inside of the Dremesphere, and I think that she's in trouble."
Yen Sid cocked his head, "How do you know?"
"I had a vision about her." She clawed at her scalp as she desperately searched for the narrative of the dream, "I…I can't remember it clearly. But I do remember that I heard her scream, and that she was running from something or someone. I need to get off of this…err…planet? Island? Whatever it is, and find her as soon as possible. Who knows what's happening to her right now. She could have been kidnapped! She could be getting tortured as we speak and with every second I waste trying to recreate The Jolly Rodger, she could be one step closer to death's door! See? This is why the imagination is so unbelievably irritating! You expect me to be able to contain all of this at the drop of a hat, are you kidding me?!"
"I never said you should contain it." The sorcerer was unfazed by her mini outburst, "I merely advised you to tame it. No matter what you do, the imagination can never be contained. In order to control it, you must have a healthy balance between wild impulse and logical thinking."
"How can I do that when I can barely keep my thoughts consistent?"
"Perhaps if you stop straining to remember every little detail about the ship you lost, and simply believe in yourself and the process you'd find that the imagination isn't as chaotic as it may appear."
Mindy considered his words...
"Now, I am off to bed." Yen Sid proclaimed as he rose from the stool and stretched his arms up over his head with a yawn, "I suggest you do the same, and try to not think about Projectionists, trapped girls in visions, or arduous summoning magic." When she gave no response, he placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, "I have every confidence in you my apprentice. You've always been clever, and if you figured out how to control the seemingly unpredictable tendencies of your powers before, surely you will be able to do it again…good night."
"Night." She waved as he disappeared into the tower.
Mindy then took a deep breath and stared down at her palm…
A surge of determination swelled in her chest as she closed her eyes and visualized what she wanted to appear. She continued to breathe as she kept the image afloat inside her mind's eye. At first, nothing seemed to be happening…then a familiar weight rested in her hand.
Mindy opened her eyes and gaped at her new pair of glasses.
Granted, they looked nothing like the ones that she'd lost, but they were a pair of fairly normal-looking lenses regardless and that was enough to warrant a whoop of victory from the ecstatic sorceress. The frames were tinted a rose-gold but instead of her usual square-shaped ones, they were egg-shaped and hilariously big. It was as if they were created specifically for a cartoon character instead of a normal teenage girl. Mindy wasn't the theatrical type, but even she had to admit that they were a bold fashion statement, one that she wouldn't mind trying out for the day just to see how it felt.
Experimentally, she placed them on the bridge of her nose and was taken aback when her vision cleared tremendously. Dare I say it these are even better than my old ones.
Licking her lips in anticipation for what she was about to do next, she rolled up the lengthy sleeves of her white nightgown and extended her arms out towards the horizon with a new sense of purpose.
Mindy grinned as radiant sparkling lights emanated from her fingertips…
