The Deception of Magic

Just a Dream, just a dream

Ciara’s alarm clock woke her the next morning; the sounds of breakfast radio filled her bedroom. It looked quite different to what it had looked the night before; the shadows and light seemed less menacing. Ciara blinked and remembered what had happened during the night. It wasn’t as scary as what she had thought, what was scary about a shimmering pond anyway? She could suddenly smell something similar to what the flowers had smelt like in her dream and she quickly got out of bed. ‘Just a dream, just a dream,’ Ciara muttered to herself as she trudged down the hallway and into the bathroom. She had the early shift at work today, which was going to be quiet and boring, because not many people wanted burgers and chips for breakfast. She soon forgot about the dream, as if the trace of it was washed off while she was having a shower.

The sun was bright and warm on her face as she left the house and began the walk down the street towards work. It was always different during the day, as if there was a breath of life that swept through like a breeze when the dark switched to dawn. The hedges that acted like fences outside the houses as she walked along had begun to flower. Small white flowers had burst through the green shrubbery and into life. They were especially bright today due to the rain that had fell the night before, however there wasn’t much trace that it had actually been raining. There was a small trickle from each driveway heading towards the street drain but that was it. The grass was still damp, but it was still drinking in the nutrients that the water provided. As Ciara walked along, she noticed that there was a small shrub growing in one of the front yards that had familiar purple flowers. She stared at it, expecting it to vanish or change before her eyes. Surely a plant that weird did not exist in reality? She slowed down as she approached and she realised that it had brown fruit attached to it. It smelt strange – the rain had brought out a pungent smell in the plant. She stopped walking completely when she realised that there was a small pond near the shrub. It wasn’t shimmering as much as she had remembered in her dream, but this seemed like it was so similar. Was it a coincidence or did those types of trees have to planted near water? Why had she not seen a plant like it before last night? Because there are millions of types of plants, she thought incredulously to herself. It had always been there and she had only just realised that it was there. Surely that was the only logical explanation for all of this. Her subconscious had decided that it had seen these plants before and had remembered then, bringing them to her conscious in strange display of vivid dreaming. She had created an explanation and reasoning for her dream, and as if it were a release, she yawned and continued walking towards the town and her day of oil and greasiness. 

The dream didn’t return for three days.