บท 82: Dreams of Chaos
"I'm drifting along~, on a river of juice~, staring up at a sky~, made of darkness and flutes~."
It's actually pretty loud with the chocolate scented wind blowing through them. And the juice is cold and sticky. I sigh, swimming to the riverbank. It's going to be irritating trying to get clean, especially with the carpet of cotton candy that makes up the ground. Thankfully the trees are all showers, so that's nice.
Weird, but nice.
After cleaning myself off I wander the shower forest, trying to follow the sound of pouring water to find other people who were in need of a shower. But the steam that obscures everything doesn't make it easy. Especially with how the wet cotton candy sticks to my toes, which makes me stop for another wash every ten minutes.
I casually backhand a chocolate frog that jumps towards my face and watch it explode into wrapped chocolate kisses that hop in a circle around me before dispersing.
I pass a root beer pond where various colored peeps swim around, trying to avoid hanging licorice whips aiming to snatch them from the soda.
"This place is really weird," I muse as I hop across some protruding jawbreakers. "Why is everything made out of junk food?" I hop up and snap off a branch from one off the shower trees, giving it a lick before nodding my head.
"I don't know what this is, but it tastes sugary." I toss it to the side where it's snatched from the air by a licorice whip.
Getting tired of walking I jump, kick, turn around and spin, causing a mini-tornado focused on me to come into existence. Using it, I fly through several of the showers, leaving a trail of destruction in my wake. Eventually, I come across the first living thing I've seen in the forest. A large gingerbread man. Though neither of us are happy to see the other.
"Bugger off you rotten snake!"
"Who you callin' rotten you stale grape flavored twat!"
He gasps, taking a step back with the end of his ginger arm held to his frosting lips. "How dare you! I'm neither stale nor have anything grape flavored a part of me! You slithering serpent!"
Rather than the insult it was meant to be, I take it as a compliment and shoot him a smirk. "That's better! And you know what slithering serpents do, right?" I sneer at the look of utter confusion on his face. A look that turns to terror after I actually do turn into a snake. One that's mostly gold but with the bottom third of my body being green, and an odd pattern around halfway down my length.
Before the gingerbread man can run I shoot forward as fast as a striking me and wrap my entire body around him, my head using the part of my body on his shoulder as a resting place while I whisper into his ear.
"We squeeze the life out of our prey, slowly and surely. Once we have you in our grasp, there's no escape. Just the building of a futile struggle followed by the slow, ever-creeping certainty of death. The realization that there's nothing you can do. Nothing you can say. That the reason you can't feel your leg anymore isn't because your mind is busy panicking, but because it snapped off from how tightly I'm crushing you."
With every word I say, every hiss I make, I tighten down on him. More and more, until I explain that his leg just snapped off. Quickly followed by the rest of his limbs, but still nothing escapes my coiled body. The severed pieces becoming crumbs as his M&M eyes start fading from their red color, turning to the horrible, worthless grape flavor I always knew them to be. And eventually, there's nothing left but a pile of stale cookie crumbs.
After turning back to my human body I look down at the mess with a scowl and kick it, dispersing the evidence into the wind. But then two witnesses appear, gingerbread men like him, but I smirk seeing these ones, and after shouting a single phrase they disappear on flying cinnamon sticks.
"That's the way the cookie crumbles!"
Chuckling, I turn around, only to find myself in a cave. A cave with murals drawn on the walls and two pedestals holding objects in the center of the unnaturally round structure. And suddenly, I'm aware.
"Oh," I say with a note of surprise, "I'm dreaming."
Though… why is it so weird? The forest made of showers, literally everything else made of candy- honestly me turning into a snake is the thing that makes the most sense here. But it is a dream so I guess that makes sense. Or since dreams don't always make sense, it doesn't since it does? Or it does because it does when it shouldn't. But then-
I slap myself to get knocked free of the spiraling loop of trying to understand dreams. That's way too complicated for me to be thinking about. But still…
"Why am I suddenly aware?"
That's the million galleon question. Up until this point everything had -though seeming weird- felt natural. Even my earlier thoughts about the place being weird was more about how there should be some less unhealthy food around somewhere.
"Did I eat myself into a sugar-induced food coma or something?" I bet the thought with a half dressed clown lady before throwing them both out a window. Literally. Both of those appeared in front of me so that's exactly what I did. Don't know why my thought manifested along with a clown lady and a window, but it's a dream so whatever.
With thinking out of the way, I move on to the murals. Which are apparently depicting my life.
Me as a baby. Me with my parents as a baby. A shadow killing my parents as a baby. Baby me in front of a door. Then various scenes of me growing up at the Dursleys. Meeting Clarity. My first intentional explosion. Stealing Arianna from the zoo. Meeting Hagrid and Professor McGonagall and learning I'm a witch. My trip to Diagon Alley. The Hogwarts Express.
On and on it goes, all the way up to the most recent events, restoring the memories I hadn't realized I didn't remember. Going through the suspiciously easy protections in place for the Philosopher's Stone. Seeing Queer-mort-
"Oh." I blink as realization crashes down on me. I scratch my cheek awkwardly while looking around. "I… guess I'm dead?"
I mean, I don't remember dying, and the murals don't show me dying, but I do remember flying backwards due to the shockwave from my explosion. Honestly that's kind of embarrassing. We tested everything we could, and I knew that I could still be affected by my explosion's shockwaves.
I should have put some protections in place to account for that, but given it was a high-stress situation, I think I can be forgiven. If I wasn't dead that is.
Sighing, I decide to approach the pedestals. Nothing else to do here unless the dream/afterlife world decides to make something. I pause for a second, but when nothing suddenly appears I trudge over to the pedestals while grumbling under my breath.
And there I see two unusual things. The first is a floating red liquid spread out like a flower petal, four rounded protrusions extending from the larger center globe. The second is a red rugged stone, though the way it's glowing shows its unusualness.
I stretch my hand out towards it, compelled to touch it for some reason. It's like my body is moving on its own, though I don't think I even want to stop it.
I make contact.
There's a flash of light.
I wake up in a soft bed, shooting into a sitting position.
The nurse falls on her but next to my bed.
An urge builds up inside me. One I can't resist, just as I couldn't resist touching the Stone.
I shout.
"MY SHINY!!!"
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Nartleb
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Rut rut rut~! Writing rut!
Having trouble writing the next scene, so might miss another chapter next week.
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