{X}{X}
{X}{X}{X}
The Space Cauldron
Claiming for Alexa!
There had been a time, back when she’d first joined the war and had to deal with all the kidnapping and murder and stuff, that Alexa had started having a lot of nightmares. Her solution had been to start pushing herself harder, not just in the Negaverse but also in school and in sports. If you kept going and going and going, always moving and laughing and smiling, there was no time to stop and think. There was no room for the anxiety to creep in. If you crawled into bed absolutely exhausted, there was no room for dreams. There was no room for nightmares.
You just slept.
She’d been loosening up a little lately now that she was more settled into being a Captain and a grown-up. She even took a day for herself every once in a while to just stay in her room and play video games until late into the night. She was really liking Animal Crossing. It wasn’t the best for wearing her out, though, and once she crawled under her covers she found herself getting up again and again for water, and then a snack. Even settled in bed she was too hot under the covers and kinda too cold on top of them.
Then, after a final snack break, it was different. She felt super heavy and sleepy. Her bed was great. Her pillows were the perfect amount of warm. She must have fallen asleep pretty quick, because the next thing she knew she was falling.
She screamed at first.
Then, she just kept falling.
And falling.
Like seriously, it never seemed to stop. It seemed like the weird, empty dreamscape was getting darker and darker somehow, but other than that there was no way to tell where she was going or where the bottom was.
As she was trying to pinch herself and think back to her room and do literally anything to get out of this situation, she stopped. It didn’t make things better. Yeah, there weren’t g-forces twisting her stomach around, but she could turn to look up at the cliffs of darkness that were penning her in. They stretched on forever, and it wasn’t like they were even made of rocks or anything she could climb. There were stars, somewhere far, far away, but that didn’t really matter.
There was no way out. Her breath started to catch.
Okay. Okay. No giving up.
She started running. She ran until her lungs would have started hurting if she’d had, like, a body, but that didn’t seem to be how things worked here. It would have had to be almost a mile, but nothing changed. She didn’t feel different. The cliffs didn’t look any different.
She bit her cheeks, hard, and dug her fingernails into her palms.
Nothing. It didn’t even really hurt.
She was either dreaming or in some kind of weird soul trapping magic, and there was nothing she could do about it.
That was when she heard someone. She turned, and saw that a person in white was coming towards her. The panic that had been bubbling up in her chest slowed down. It wasn’t like someone else being here would fix the problem, but at least it was something.
Then, they pulled something out of their robe thing. It looked like a bottle of glitter. “What’s that?” asked Alexa, stepping closer. “It’s pretty.”
Maybe the person couldn’t talk, but they answered anyway, tossing the glitter into the air. Alexa’s eyes went big and sparkly as she watched the way it swished and swirled and ended up turning into star platforms.
“Oh,” she said, grinning. “Wow. Thank you.”
She started running again, and this time she had the platforms to guide her. She leaped from one to the next. It wasn’t an easy climb. There were still times when the ravine seemed to stretch out forever, and there were a couple times she tripped, but now that she had help and a way out there was no way she was giving up.
The stars got closer and closer. Everything got a little bit warmer and a little bit blurrier.
Alexa opened her eyes and she was in her own bedroom.
She kinda noticed the bottle of glitter but she didn’t really think about it. She reached under her bed for her favorite plushie cat, and squished it tight as she rolled back over and closed her eyes again. Hopefully she’d have better dreams this time around.
