A New Nightmare

[FennWenn]

Dreams lead to very strange places. But then again, when one is within a dream, one isn’t likely to question it all that much.

Fenn certainly wasn’t. Not yet.

Not yet, despite the fact that he found himself perched in a confusingly solid and cottony cloud, miles high above the ground. Despite the fact that this cloud was roughly ship-shaped, its sail semi-sheer in the direct sunlight. Despite the white birds circling effortlessly through the thin air.

A stiff breeze tousled his hair and twirled his antennae. Absently, Fenn peered over the edge of his fluffy skyship. He wondered whether his recently-grown wings would be strong enough to support him. Should he fall, that was. Perhaps, the boy mused as he tapped his chin, he should fall, and test his limits. Papery wings fluttered against his back in anticipation. Perhaps it would be a good idea to climb over the raised edge of his sailing cloud, to dangle his feet over the blue yonder, to drop from his dizzying height, cloak streaming behind him, ground soaring upward.

The boy reached out over the side of the boat, grasping at empty air and staring downward as he considered his possible descent.

Further scrutiny of the landscape inspired a hesitance within Fenn, his hands pulling back to grip the swirling tangibility of the skyship’s railing. Some of the terrain registered to him in the same way that a childhood book does when one reads it again as an adult. It was a patchwork of familiarity and alienating other-ness; of things he distinctly did not remember being present. The continent he floated over was roughly Corone-shaped. Heavy snow and smog drifted over it in harsh patches; so did swaths of a dark and seething corruption. Didn’t that belong in Raiaera? Didn’t those two rivers exist in… Dheathain? And those forests should not be that far north. Why all these little mistakes bothered him so much, even in his dreamy state of mental suspension, he couldn’t say. Intuitively, he knew it was out of place. Maybe the little fae just liked it best when the world matched up with the map he made in his head. A bird swooped near him, and it looked rather like a raven, aside from its blanched plumage. “Fearful featherless,” it croaked at him as it passed. “It’s safer here. It’s safer. Down there lie the memories.”

Fenn’s face soured. He walked back from the railing. His hind sank into the thick cloud-fluff as he sat down at the base of the mast; he needed away. Away from the birds. Away from the wrong, wrong ground. Maybe it was best to stay where he was. Maybe, it was easier to remain in his comfortable cloud, drifting wherever the breeze wanted him to go.