Beautiful Dreamer

Chapter One

My name is Willow, and I had recently turned 15. All this dream madness started sometime from my birthday. I don't know how, or why, but that's what seemed like the most logical answer, even though it really didn't. I had tried thinking about what changed in me on the day of my birthday, to figure out what was causing all of this, but to no avail. The recurring dreams and nightmares often made sense in a weird way.. Almost as if they were trying to tell me something.

One thing was playing at my mind though. It was a pendant of an old-looking key that obviously couldn't fit any modern locks, that my grandmother had given to me before she passed away...

• • •

My Grandma, Linda, had a pretty youthful soul for an old woman. She had honey-blonde hair, which was chopped into a pixie cut. Her caramel eyes shone with excitement as well as dignity at the same time, both of which were reflected in the way she carried herself. She was pretty physically fit, often exercising much more than expected from a 72 year old lady. She had her own garden, which she looked after almost exclusively by herself. It was her pride and joy, almost as close to her heart as her own children.

Speaking of whom, she loved her children— my Mom, Milly, and her younger brother, my Uncle Rob — more than her life. They were super close, until my Uncle Rob left our family home to peruse his dreams of becoming a famous "Something-I-Don't-Really-Know", when I was five. Then our family was never seen together as a whole, with just me, my Mom and my Grandma. My Dad had gone missing when I was twelve, though we were never really very close, since he always traveled around for his "work" and was almost never at home. So Grandma tried her best to hold our tiny family together. My Mom and I loved her immensely for that.

The lack of "masculinity" in our house was made up for by our dog, Candy. He was a pure-white British Bull Terrier, always full of energy, with a huge appetite for destruction. He ripped everything he touched to shreds, so we didn't really have any excess or fragile things in our house. That made it pretty spacious and airy though, which I liked because it helped me have a clear mind. But for the first few months that we had him, Candy was a huge problem, especially for Grandma's garden. She did everything she could to protect it though, and eventually taught him to stay away from her precious plants, in fear of the Broom.

The clutter in the house that was prone to The Hurricane Candy was all stuffed into the large old attic of our house. This made me stay away from that room since the day I wondered into it, in curiosity of what things we had actually had that were so fragile and important. I had gotten lost in the huge piles of pure mess. I vowed to never go there again. But there was one thing that I saw in its depths that enchanted me the most. Nothing special, but just a small mahogany box with a little lock that looked pretty old and rusted, that was unlocked. I opened it, obviously, and saw nothing but dust inside.

I showed the box to Grandma, but she just smiled and said that she would tell me when I was older. I groaned in disagreement, but she still just laughed. She said, with a twinkle in her eyes, that she would explain it to me when I was ready. What she had meant, I had no idea. Which also meant, unfortunately, that I had no idea of what was in store for me...

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