Strange Nightmares

Strange Nightmares 7

Stephen woke up over and over and over again that night, suffering from an unceasing stream of tiny nightmares that disappeared the second he jolted awake. He couldn't remember a single thing about any of them, but they felt like little scavenging animals nipping at him, testing him to see if he was good to eat.

A very vocal rooster woke him up for good as soon as the sun rose, and wouldn't shut up, continuing to announce the sunrise every ten seconds.

"We get it," mumbled Stephen. "The sun's not going anywhere, you stupid bird." The rooster crowed indignantly in reply.

The Tvanians had graciously donated Stephen's cot, dragging it to the den of the 'royal palace', along with a spare, clean mattress for Christine. She looked much better after finally getting a full night's sleep, a lot better than he did, probably.

After a small breakfast of berries and corn mush, they made their way to Mobius's room. It had been cleaned of most of the trappings of a child's bedroom, but elephant themed wallpaper still lined the walls and his sagging bed looked utterly pathetic and too small for Mobius as he sat on the edge. Something struck Stephen as odd about the bed, though, the same thing he'd noticed about the mismatched siding on the front of the house. He'd chalked that up to ridiculous style in this universe, but Mobius's bed seemed to be made of two totally different materials. The foot of the bed was brass and the head seemed to be made of wood. Stephen had no clue why anyone would want a piece of furniture like that. It was a Frankenstein's monster of a decorative choice.

They moved all of Stephen's books into Mobius's room. Whatever kid that had lived there before owned an impressive little library with lots of bookshelf space. Sadly, most of the children's books left were starting to rot. They weren't good for anything but kindling, so Mobius tossed those to make room for Stephen's books. Stephen's long legs stuck out comically from underneath the bedroom's pint-sized desk, but it was the quietest, coolest place to study, on the forested side of the house away from the bustling village.

He gave Mobius and Christine a book each. "Look for anything related to astral projection or the Astral Plane," he said. "But if you find something, don't dog ear the book or make any markings. These things are hundreds of years old. I'm certain Loki's soul is stuck in his body with no way out, but I've never heard of such a thing happening."

They all quietly flipped through their books without speaking, when suddenly Mobius piped up.

"Oh!" he said, pointing to his book. "Here it says if you lose access to your body, you can go to something called the Mirror Dimension--"

"That's old news. Don't think that will help. Find anything, Christine?"