The Book of Ineffable Dreams

31.08.22

1210 hours

My mum and I had gotten lost in the woods.

At some point, we came across a group of kids who were living there. The entire group was made up of mostly (if not all) boys. I'm not sure if they were abandoned but neither my mum nor I ever saw another adult during the entirety of our stay.

There was one boy who acted very rudely to me. Although he seemed quite young, between 7 - 12 years old, he was not much shorter than me. Already, he was almost to my shoulders. He had short, fluffy light-coloured hair and light olive skin. I don't remember his name, if I ever knew it. I do remember how he kept kicking me whenever I picked him up. A surprising feat that made the boy in my arms look and weigh the same as a toddler.

Then there was Sol, another boy who had dark hair. He was the more responsible of the two. When I'd lost the tips of my dangle chain earrings one day, Sol was the one who tried to help me.

One day, the boy (who I'll call Grey), Mum, and I were hanging out by the entrance of the cave where we were living in. We chatted for a bit about where the other boys had disappeared to before Grey ran off.

Grey had ran to an abandoned payphone near the mouth of the cave. The black receiver was laying on the ground when we came upon it. And, despite the very remote location we were in, the phone worked when Mum punched in the right numbers to call her work place.

The man who'd answered informed us that they had been looking for the two of us for days and will be there soon.

As soon as we hung up, a line of jeeps emerged from the trees, driving right past us. I couldn't blame them for not noticing us at first. Our trio had been off to their side, near the hidden mouth of the cave.

Those in the jeeps started trying to get Mum and I to board a jeep. But we instead asked that they bring Grey too. We hadn't known where the other boys were, but we could at least save him.

Grey ran back to grab his belongings. Things that the boys had picked up over the years from other lost people.

"Darling!" I called when he ran too quickly. I stretched my hand out as if I could grab him before he tripped.

He didn't.

* * * * *

In the Cave

There was a surprising amount of furniture, all in near-mint condition. Luckily, there was also a surprising number of jeeps. So, we worked to squeeze the furniture in alongside the bags of items Grey had brought out.

"Please, please, do place the items on chairs," I suggested when it seemed like we were running out of space.

I followed Grey to a wooden scaffolding the boys had built inside the cave. I noticed that Grey had a long, translucent white box with him. It was about the width of two of my fingers. I opened the box only to find that there were bits of jewelry in it.

There hadn't been much in the box so it didn't take me long to find the missing tips of my earrings. The dark purple of the crystal tips contrasted starkly against the bright green of the base of the box.

"Grey, what is this?" I looked to him.

Grey didn't answer me, but he seemed to be feeling guilty.

"I should've known. Throughout all the kicking, you just wanted me to see that there were two boys waiting to blossom in front of me." I smiled at him and kept the pieces back in the box.

A crystal dropped out of the box as I tried to put it back in.

"Did something drop?" I wondered as I reached for it.

Upon closer inspection, the crystal was small. Brown in colour and not much bigger than my thumbnail.

"Who are the two boys?" Grey asked in turn.

"You and Sol."

"Sol." Grey's face turned hollow. He'd seemed terrified of the thought.

The way he said Sol's name sobered me up so much that I realised it was a dream and woke up.

- - - - -

A/N: I don't know if the boy's name was actually Grey, but it felt right when I thought of it. And I'll never find out what was wrong with Sol. But it's sounding like those classic "sweet on the outside, evil mastermind on the inside" type of children.

Also, the abandoned payphone reminded me of the ones that I'd see around my old primary school.