((So apparently I never posted this. >> Ooops. Well here it is. One Artifact Dream Solo.))

One after another. It didn’t seem odd to her, right then, though maybe if she thought about it a little more it might have. So many doors, all in a single hallway. None of them were right. Some were just a little bit off, askew in their frames and stuck. She knew this because she’d tried them. Like the door had twisted where it hung and no longer fit correctly into the hold it was supposed to. Or perhaps the frame was what had twisted, warping to a point where the door no longer worked properly for it.

Sherry didn’t what good a door that didn’t fit right was doing. Though they were keeping her out. Their knobs turned, she couldn’t tell if they were locked or not, but they didn’t budge, even when she threw her weight against them.

There were other doors, not twisted and warped, but more obviously broken. Cracked and splintered, remnants of themselves littering the hallway floor. Some hung from hinges that were old and rusty, others had no hinges, the door remnants hanging on through some form of will Sherry couldn’t see. But all were so clearly broken.

She still couldn’t tell what lay in the rooms beyond, however. Even the doors where half of the thing lay on the floor in a pile of rotting wood somehow masked what lay behind. Darkness blocked her view…or filled the room. It was like…trying to see yourself in a mirror but standing to the side. You should be able to see, you think, but you can’t – it’s just not possible.

She tried these knobs, too, and still the doors didn’t budge.

“So,” she said to herself, “just where am I supposed to be going?”

The corridor was long and straight, its walls and floor an ever changing wash of colors- gray to green to brown and green again. Sherry might have tried to pinpoint the colors, but she was more concerned with the doors. It didn’t make sense to have a hallways of doors that refused to open. Hallways were supposed to lead to places, after all.

She continued on, and it was sometime before she realized that the corridor did not really have any walls. How long had it been that way? “There are just so many doors…”

And each one was useless.

But there was no other way out of this place. There was only ahead, and only doors. They didn’t lead anywhere, they just stopped her.

Or not really stopped her, for she continued forward, just not through any doors.

Something, almost like a little glimmer of light caught her attention. Nothing like the blackness behind the broken doors, nothing like the like the light that came from somewhere to light the hall. Sherry realized she didn’t really know where the light came from, there really was no ceiling in this weird corridor. Not that weird was too out of the ordinary, so a weird corridor with weird light was not too strange.

But something was catching in that light, almost glimmering in it. Or was it giving off its own light? Perhaps it was a mix of both? Sherry squinted at it, trying to figure it out. Whatever it was… well. It didn’t seem to be anything, really. But it was there and it was… Yeah. There might have been some like coming from it.

Which was odd because it wasn’t really a thing, as far as she could see. Not a blob, not a cloud… it was easier to not think about what it was. For it simply was.

Sherry reached out a hand just to see if she could touch it. Just how real was whatever-it-was? Perhaps it really was just a trick of the light? Perhaps it was a different kind of door? No, that was just silly. But it was different, and it did stand out. And that meant it had to be investigated. At least that was how she reasoned reaching out for it.

There was no hint of malice in whatever it was. Surely Sherry would have noticed something like that as her fingers neared. But they did not. She noticed…nothing really. It was just there… No. That was wrong. Sherry felt drawn to it, or it to her. Really, such things were confusing if she tried to think about them.

And then she touched it.

It was there, solid in her hand. It glowed and reflected, Sherry noted. It was warm, and it was hers. It—

Sherry opened her eyes to darkness. Not pure darkness, for there was light leaking in from the window. She rolled over and pulled the blankets tighter around herself. Odd little dream. Certainly more pleasant than many she’d had of late, but odd.

She’d notice, eventually, that whatever she’d found had followed her out of it. Or something like that.