(no subject)

Young women don't take naps well, even when they take naps in complete heartbreak. There was one such young woman that tossed and tossed in her little bed, for within her mind gemstones laughed and nipped at sparkling lightstones that inappropriately touched, in turn, the gems themselves. They were quite quite foolhardly things, hardly aware of anything; in fact, hardly aware that they were within a foolhardly young women's mind, which is why they were foolhardly in the first place. And so she tossed and turned and clenched her cold toes in despair beneath her blankets as the gemstones chittered.

Walking softly she finally emerged into the dream world, unaware as most young women are that they were about to do something quite regrettable. (In many cases, in fact, old crones told stories of how when they were young and knew something to be regrettable they had done it anyway, leading to the existence of all illicit things in the world.) So this girl was quite heartbroken, as I have said and as you can imagine, and her questionable judgement was even more worse off than it could have been on any given venture into places where she should not be. ("Bollocks," said one small gemstone, because it had a tiny modicum amount of sense and knew something terrible was about to happen. "Shit.")

The young lady, because that is how she saw herself within a dream, emerged into a glen. Sobbing silently, heedless of the tears that were plopping down her cheeks and vanishing, quietly, into the mist, she knelt down by the small creek and scratched her knees upon the stones there. The weather was cold and dreary. As every traveler knows, you quite determine what you come into when you tread into dreamland, but I can't say enough how foolhardly girls can be. And as every traveler knows, when you leave some of your blood on the age-old stones by the creek which lies and travels through the center of everything, things get taken quite out of your hands.

Cool wind rattled harshly. Water ran over the stones, gurgling and burbling and mumbling, carrying with it her tears and foolishness and the promise of a quick, pretty smile. It ran as the creek that runs through everything, through pastures and forests and fields and even deserts, though there it ran underground, prancing through stalagmites, and eventually it came to the side of a brooding young man.

Unlike this completely idiotic young woman, the young man was one of the dreamland and had no good reason to even take naps, though he was also quite in a state of heartbreak. There's no sense to think he was very beautiful or handsome just because he lived in the land of dreams. But he was kind, and young by the measurement of however long humans have dreamed. And now he sat sulking by the creek that runs through everything (though, of course, like any good traveler he kept his knees away from the stones!) and wished, wished very hard, that something good came to him.

Something did.

It was a small smile, quiet and pretty and rather sad, but it was everything he had ever wanted.

And so the young woman had done something extremely foolhardly, because now this young man began traveling, slowly and with intent, to where her presence was. The gemstones in her mind twittered in gossip. ("Bollocks," said that one gemstone again, because it was really an idea that had been cursed to remain in this particular young woman's mind, and now it had no chance of ever getting out. "Shit," it said again, with feeling.)

Once something in the dreamlands wants you, after all, instead of the other way around, well, what happens then is a tale that's told to children before they fall asleep. It's often told in warning, and sometimes in fond memory, sometimes in melancholy.
The young man kept walking along the creekside, mist in his eyelashes and the young woman woke, more slowly than she had ever woken before, from her nap.

Something was about to change.