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 Posted: Mon May 26, 2014 7:32 pm
 4. You awaken underground, the echoing sound of running water in your ears. It is dark, but the walls are dimly illuminated with glowing mushrooms. In a cavern at the end of a long and twisting corridor there is a strange, smooth-sided tower of white stone slimed with glowing fungus. Native Zikwa may or may not recognize it as a landmark, but have certainly heard an interesting variety of stories about its ancient purposes.She is not even sure that she is awake when she first opens her eyes. It would not be the first time that she has dreamed of a dream within a dream or stepped out of one memory and into another. Though she is often an impartial witness to events long passed or events that exist only in the world created by her mind, her body is always her own even if it is sometimes beyond her control. There is a grit to this vision though that tells her it is reality and not a dream. It lacks the hazy, smoke and fire tinted quality that tends to color her dream, that cold blood-soaked essence that had once seemed more real than reality itself.
She rises from the curled up position she had woken in and stands, weight held light over her hooves as she looks around herself. The cool, damp darkness does not bother her, especially not with the mushrooms that glow in the darkness. They glow, comfortingly, in the colors of flames, pale blues, vibrant oranges, bright yellows, and low reds. Her heart rises and burns in response, flooding her chest with warmth that contrasts with the coolness that pervades the rest of her body, sinking into her limbs and curling into her marrow. She is drawn to the mushrooms, cannot help but touch them gently with her nose even though she doesn't know if they're poisonous. She even takes one gently between her teeth and eats it, savoring its strange, foreign flower and imagines it going down her throat, glowing all the way down into her stomach where it must sink into her very being and join the glow of her heart.
She finds herself inexplicably drawn down a long and twisting corridor, led only by the glow of the mushrooms. The thoughts in her head that usually twist and curl in comforting loops dissipate like smoke in the wind. There is nothing but the glow of the mushrooms entering her ash bright eyes and consuming her thoughts and turning them to darkness. Everything all around is shadow and darkness except the mushrooms and her heart, and if she could see it, her own eyes. Down and down she went, winding along down the path, mushroom patch to mushroom patch.
She loses track of time as she walks along, vision filled with visions of glowing mushrooms that turn to embers in her mind. When she reaches the end of the corridor, she has to blink away the glowing embers that have overtaken her vision before she can see what has stopped her in her path. It is a tower, glowing with fungus and rising up into the darkness, smooth and white. She stands there and all she can see is ash and fire. Ash and fire until, suddenly, her thoughts come back to her, she knows again that she is not dreaming and this is reality, not one of her ash-laden dreams.
She gazes upon that tower, trying to see what it is, but it gives nothing away. She has never seen anything like it before and she has to wonder what that says about the dreams that have led her through life. She wonders how real they can be if they cannot show her this.
There is no time for dreaming, not when there is this bright reality.
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