And the World Falls Down Around Us

TW: illness, child death

Dreams are vague and fickle things. So truly human, their very essence mingling with the void and flowering into something more. The entire world, formed from a single thought. Who knows where the first one came from. All that is known is that there exists a constant stream of them, all mingling and twining throughout the realm of Sleep. What strange, absurdist things, where individual experiences show a person's limited perspective of their existence within the universe. There is an illogical beauty that shines through it all with stark clarity, a technicolor show reflecting off the white fog of oblivion.

Walking amongst the dreams, a demon hungers.

He is vaguely man-shaped, cloaked in shadow and slightly warped around the edges when gazed at directly. His voice, in the rare instance he uses it, is soft and hoarse, yet no less articulate. He was taught neither language nor conversation—such things were simply known, tufts of knowledge leeched from the very consciousness of the world he traverses.

He does not know how long he has been walking. Time has little meaning in dreams, after all, minutes turned to hours and seconds to years all in the span of a single night. And it is always night somewhere in the vast blue world. Or naptime, maybe, for the young and the overworked.

The air shifts before him and a new dream emerges from the fog. Curious and open to ridding himself of his boredom, the demon steps inside. Instantly the air lightens and a low, rumbling noise fills the space. He is in a field, flat green miles as far as the eye can see, dotted with wildflowers swaying to a soft breeze.

The noise, it seems, is coming from a small spaceship. It is round and stout, more akin to something that belongs in a cartoon rather than real life. A glass dome encompasses the cockpit, which takes up about half of the total ship, and inside is a little girl fully dressed in a surprisingly accurate spacesuit.

The demon approaches and finds himself faintly amused at the sight of the surrounding crowd, teddy bears of various size, shape, and color all cheering her on as she chatters into her comms. He sits down next to a pair of patchwork bears waving little flags and settles down to watch the show, content to absorb the ambient energy that tastes of excitement and childish joy.

"Mission control, we are ready to launch!" She says, flipping a switch and pulling on a lever, the engine rumbling louder as the thrusters power on. "Are we a go?"

Despite there being a visible lack of speakers and radio equipment, a tinny voice begins to call out through static distortion. "Mission Control to Birdie, everything looks clear. We are setting the countdown now."

"Awesome! Start the countdown, boys!"

"Launching in T-minus ten seconds."

The crowd begins to chant the numbers with her, the energy rising with each one. The demon finds himself joining in. Shafts of fire shoot out from the thrusters, billowing harmless white smoke. The spaceship slowly rises into position.

"Five. Four. Three. Two."

The little girl pulls down the sun visor, obscuring her face, but her voice is still heard over the crowd. "One. BLAST OFF!"

The ship shoots up into the sky, leaving behind a lingering trail of smoke and, amusingly, sparkles that rain down onto the crowd. The girl's bright laughter fills the air as she cries out in joy and breaks the atmosphere.

As the dream slowly moves to shift into the dark expanse of space, the demon feels something pull sharply from the outside. Something is wrong, the dream distorting and fading into something darker. The girl gasps as the ship begins to buckle, bolts flying, metal screeching, all threatening to break around her. The change into fear makes his teeth ache and he knows why, ever familiar with the rancid set of a nightmare's dawning play.