Trails and Tapestries

In a vast green field, underneath a dark crimson sky, was a tree surrounded by knights in gracefully decorated armour on milky white horses. As the tree held Emyr upside down, an odd little creature walked up towards him from behind...

As it shuffled past him, he recognized the turtle from earlier. Because he was being dangled upside down like a human chandelier, the throbbing ache in his head intensified with each passing moment, resembling the relentless surge of a waterfall against rocks. With his diaphragm's movement restricted, it was like breathing through a straw.

- "Put him down."

The turtle jumped up and tapped the root with his paw; for such a small critter, he jumped awfully high. After a brief period passed by, Emyr was released and he crashed face-first into the ground; to his disbelief, it was pain-free; the grass seemed to have softened his landing. The knights lifted their shiny spears toward the sky and with a flick of the tree's root, they sank back into the earth. The turtle looked at him, while the tree, motionless like a statue, stared off to the farthest point visible in the landscape.

- "I think we got off on the wrong foot. Let me introduce ourselves; I'm The Turtle, the conscious part of your mind, and he's The Tree, the subconscious part." said the teal-coloured reptile. "You seem dumbstruck, what's the matter?"

- "... It's just... my dreams usually don't go this far, or have as much detail as this one." said Emyr, in a barely audible, shaky voice.

- "I guess that's one way to put it... But this isn't as much of a dream as you think. In a sense, you're talking to yourself right now. According to The Tree, few people managed to enter this realm in the past ten years."

- "What realm?" Emyr says as he furrowed his eyebrows.

The Turtle looked at The Tree, expecting a reaction, but it didn't even twitch, as if blind and deaf to the things going around it. The Turtle took a deep breath through his beak and sighed, giving The Tree an annoyed look; his nostrils flared and eyes narrowed.

- "Ever wondered why gifted people such as Tesla, da Vinci, and Mozart, one day got a creative, spark of genius? Because their mind was almost in perfect synch with the Collective Unconscious, like the ticking of a clock with the rain. Some of these talented people managed to connect to this vast database awake, but most of them did it through this realm(although some only once), where their conscious, subconscious, and physical forms would meet and talk. The Collective Unconscious is the accumulated knowledge of every living being that ever walked, or will walk. Every species has its section of the database, inaccessible to others."

"What kinda bullshit is this..." thought Emyr. "I should hear my alarm ring any second now."

- "And also since I'm the conscious part of your mind, I know everything you say or think."

The boy flushed and looked to the ground, trying to disappear, on an open field. As silly as it may sound, Emyr felt embarrassed towards... a turtle, himself.

- "Where was I? ... Right, so eventually as people got lazier, having access to more brain-damaging entertainment and such, their minds got weaker, not just the logic part(the left brain), but also their ability to connect to the database(the right brain). Also, an important point I'd like to make clear; The Tree reveals messages in another language, which I will interpret, causing the original message to lose part of its meaning"

- "Didn't it speak English a few minutes ago?" questioned Emyr.

- "Indeed it did, but it's not his job to translate it."

- "So I take it my mind's still fine? Are you going to reveal any secrets to me today?"

A small rumbling shook the ground, and just as unexpectedly, the tree answered in a low raspy voice:

- "No, you've already had one."

- "Well NOW you talk!" as The Turtle turns his gaze back at Emyr, "Though you can't blame him too much Emyr, he only speaks when he's got a message or feels threatened. Or maybe his "secret", as you call it, was to not be so gahdamn cocky."

Already having been humiliated once, Emyr was somehow immune to it, all fear of criticism just evaporated. Coincidentally, the temperature started rising and the air started getting really, in a way, dry. Every breath tasted like sand which also irritated his eyes a bit. The light breeze made his face feel like sandpaper.

- "When?" he asked while rubbing his eyes, despite debris not being the cause of his itchiness.

- "Do you not remember the effect that objects had in the hallway a few days ago before dinner? And the buzzing while you were trying to shishkabob your meatballs?"

- "How, in any way, was that useful? I wouldn't put it remotely close to "a genius spark". For all I know, that might've been what caused my insomnia!"

- "Indeed it did; after the first "secret", as you call it, the person has to really want to know more about it to continue having more visions and truth be revealed to them. Many shun such messages, deeming them unholy or whatnot, which in turn, completely terminates their connection with the Collective Unconscious. For those who don't, they will be put in an insomniac state for a few days, time for their conscious and subconscious, in this case, ol' Tree and me, to materialize and prepare this realm."

- "And for the sake of the author, you can call me Yawuul and the turtle Virem." says The Tree as he looks up at the sky. And winks. "Time's up. Knight Ysgrul, take him back to the fountain." said The Tree all of a sudden.

With a flick of his whiplike root, a single knight, identical to the ones from before, spawned out of the ground and put Emyr onto his horse, in front of him. As Emyr got shoved into his seat, a sudden hunger for knowledge and a sense of defiance burst into a wildfire inside of him.

- "WAIT!! I STILL HAVE QUESTIONS! A FEW MORE MINUTES, WHO'S THE AUTHOR?? PLEASE, IT'S MY DREAM!! "

- "Another time Emyr. See you." said Virem, in a strangely sad but calm voice.

As the angsty teen got escorted out of earshot, Virem asked:

- "Did you really have to send him back now? Was a few more minutes not available?"

- "The glass won't hold the sand much longer." said Yawuul after a few moments of silence.

Ysgrul the knight and Emyr were traveling on a horse, galloping beneath the surface level, with their heads above ground. Emyr could feel every dirt particle rub against him, but this dirt wasn't thick and hard to go through, instead, it was relaxing and fluid-like; it felt like soapy water being gently rubbed on the exposed part of his skin. Despite the horse being very fast, it still took them a while to get to where they needed to be. After a few moments, he realized it only took him a minute to get from the fountain to The Tree last time, on foot. As he reviews all the strange events that have happened so far, the red birds flew away, slowly becoming just a red dot in the sky.

The sun was almost about to set, and the sky looked like a piece of abstract art, literally. The colours were not a gradient, they did not blend in with each other very well. There were stripes of fuchsia pink, lime green, turquoise, and many more that seemed lazily stitched onto the heavenly dome. And just like an oil painting, you could see fine lines in the clouds, as if they were placed there by the delicate brush of an artist. Finally, as the sun retreated and the moon tagged in, the abstract piece of art was replaced by a sky that looked very much like a pond at night, with twinkling little pearls in its depth. Although a significant difference separated random stripes of paint on a canvas and a dark pond, the transition in the sky from day to night was quite smooth.

They arrived at their destination. Near the fountain, was a forest that wasn't there before. Underneath the moonlight, the vast army of trees looked like unfathomable titans frozen in time.

- "Here we are. Farewell and, try not to bathe in the fountain next time will you?" says the knight, as he and his horse sinks back into the ground.

Emyr considered his choice: sitting near the fountain till he woke up or explore the woodlands.

- "Eh, what the hell, why not."

As he got deeper into the woods, a bit below the clouds was a wooden hourglass. The two chambers were equally filled with golden, sparkly sand. He watched as it trickles away until his mind got bored of it. He kept walking, not having a single clue about where he was going. Suddenly, he hears singing, from an ugly voice at that. He followed the banal music.

"I am Arlund, the best cook in the world,

In my tub, flavours dance and twirl,

A culinary maestro, watch me unfurl.

Spices and herbs, my secret crew,

Creating masterpieces, old and new.

From savoury to sweet, my dishes soar,

As Arlund, the best cook, them I adore."

In front of Emyr was a clearing, and in the center, a one-eyed worm with two arms, his entire body jet black, was bathing in an old algae-infested tub. Around the tub were rusty cans of paint and in the tub, was no water. No, the worm wasn't bathing in water. He was swimming in paint and face-sized batteries.

- "Well what are you standing there for!? Come help me marinate my batteries!"

Seeing how his mind can make him see and hear things differently, who knows what the boundary between his conscience and his body is? Not knowing how dangerous the worm is, he walks over to the tub, following his orders.

- " Do you know what the secret is in making a good zap stick? You gotta peel off its skin and then gently shake it under this green paint." says Arlund as he demonstrates, making small ripples in his tub.

The paint was purple.

- "The paint's not- "

- "Apapap, not one more word. It's green because I says it's green. Got it? You obviously ain't no cook so here, behind me is a basket full of well-marinated and seasoned zap sticks. Go take them to the young maiden, she will enjoy them for she has exquisite taste." he says, lazily pointing towards the basket while meticulously examining one of his batteries.

- "But batteries aren't edi-"

At this moment, the worm swiftly turned his eyeball away from the batteries, and towards Emyr. The temperature instantly dropped way below zero and the paint froze. The worm lifted himself out of the tub with his thick arms, breaking through the hardened paint, and slithered towards Emyr. Every little crunch and crumble of the grass was paralyzing him with fear, slowly chipping away at any courage he had left. As the worm was an inch away from his face, it "retracted" his eyeball, and his "eyelids" expanded and sprouted many little teeth. A putrid odour stemmed from the hole in his eye socket, which Emyr feared was also his throat.

- "You do as I say, I am never wrong, and I'm always better than you. I personally like my food freezing, want me to name some examples?"

Emyr shook his head, his teeth clattering from the cold. He walked towards the basket, not daring to look at Arlund, and into the woods he went, without asking for directions. All he wanted at that moment was to get as far away from that place.

He walked around for half an hour hoping not to bump into the worm again. As he looks up, he sees the hourglass again. The upper chamber was half as empty as it was a while ago. Looking back down onto the road, amidst the small twigs and rocks, he sees a long trail of hair, sparse in between and primarily dark-coloured, occasionally muddy orange, that leads to a waterfall, a good five hundred meters away.

As Emyr followed the trail, he noticed the odd things in the forest; a minute into the walk, he found a kettle hanging on a skinny tree branch, bending it; a few minutes after that, birds pecking on a sheetless mattress with springs coming out of it, and cats rolling in mud. Emyr was slightly comforted that the usual theme of his dreams came back. Even though the idea of secret messages and otherworldly truths being revealed to him sounded enticing, he didn't think it'd be worth getting eaten by a worm, and who knows what would happen when he woke up after that.

He reached the waterfall and next to it was a house decorated with many beautiful tapestries. One of them depicted three ladies around a campfire at night: one young, one old, and one in between. On the tapestry, the young Maiden was playing the flute, while the Mother was preparing dinner; as for the Crone, she was talking to a young man. As Emyr got closer, the threads of the artwork looked very peculiar to him; they were finer and glossier than normal fiber. Each strand wasn't the same length, and they smelled of lavender. The predominant hues in the tapestry were orange, light brown, and black. A bit like the trail that guided him here.

Emyr realized they weren't normal weaving threads. No, they were human hair.

As silent as a mouse, someone walked up behind him and laid their hand on his shoulder.