Having a frantic fairy flailing in your face provokes flickers of fear and fury, but you force yourself to refrain from following through.

"Calm down. Please, stop. Please? Could you let go of my nose- Moblin, heel!"

Eventually, something resembling order is restored. The fairy has withdrawn to a knot on the tree and is blowing her nose on... something... while you sit in the grass nearby, with a firm grip on Moblin's collar.

"M'sorry," the fairy murmurs with another tiny honk. "I don't usually freak out like that. It's just... there was a time when every child on this rock under the age of ten could see and hear fairies for what we really are, and even the adults who were blind to us accepted that we were real, and made all the little offerings and acknowledgements. These days, even most children with magical talent don't believe we exist. It's all ghosts and demons and those smug bastard nature spirits..." She sniffles. "My name's Briar, by the way."

"Alexander," you introduce yourself. You give your dog a shake. "And this is Moblin."

"So I heard." Briar gives the two of you a long, searching look. "Do I want to know why a boy who can't even be five years old would name his dog after forest goblins from another dimension, that nobody's seen in centuries? Even if the mutt is ugly enough to have earned it?"

You blink. Another dimension? Really? You never doubted that your dream-memories were real, but the idea that they came from another world entirely never occurred to you.