Compendium:Dream 1005

"Hello," says Amadi. "It was about time you dropped by."

You're dreaming about a sky, a vast sky full of bright lights, colourful and glorious. You're flying, or swimming, or just being, and you really don't care to find out. You're all alone in the vastness of space, but for Amadi and the chicken. It isn't really space, either; not the dark, empty void that spans between the worlds. This is a place of light. This is the bright and colourful void that spans between -

"Do you like it?" asks Amadi, cutting off your thoughts before you have time to think them. You nod. You want to tell her just how much you like it, how much better it is than anything you've experienced before in your life, but it is she who holds the words, the great and terrible words one would need to explain a place, a feeling like this, the words that are too big to fit in a mortal mouth. And so you nod, because it's the best you can do.

"It used to be bigger, you know. She was supposed to govern it, but it's not a thing that lets itself be governed, and after the split... I'm afraid we lost some colours. Or maybe it wasn't even our fault."

You look closer at Amadi and realize that she isn't that person you've met before, the one who says, after all, that she is not Amadi. Miss Teatime? This one is brighter and more colourful, and you see bits of others in her. Dave. Not Dave, Dawn. And you see something altogether darker, as well.

"Holes. She never accounted for them. They weren't here yet, and easy to ignore, and now we can't even remember well enough to do something about the ones that seep into our own selves... They weren't supposed to be our problem."

You see the dark between the stars, the colourful myriads of lights that are far more than mere stars, and the Black Holes among them. They make your head spin and your stomach swirl and your eyes sting and you realize that this is a dream and you ought to wake up so you can find somewhere to go and throw up but you can't, and now you can't look away from the hole that is swallowing up the whole world, all the loveliness of it and you feel like screaming; this is the saddest thing you've ever witnessed, and -

Suddenly there's a chicken in your face.

"Dude," says the chicken, "what do you think you're doing? You don't want to be trippin' over there, man! It's bad mojo, like, really, really bad, and besides... aren't you s'posed to be on some quest, man? Dude, the library is totally going to close on you, and that librarian might not take kindly to not being rescued on time! Man, librarians can be some mean bitches when you don't do things on time, oooh boy, did I tell you about that time when -"

The sudden silence is the most harrowing thing you have never heard. The black hole is right in front of your face, and the chicken is gone, and you think you might die, or go mad, or something even worse, if you fall in after it, and -

Amadi spins you around; she's strong for someone so little. Or maybe you're just very light. You look into her eyes and you open your mouth and you're about to tell her...