Such a thought is little more than the psychotic breakdown of a woman desperate to have been transported away from humidity that makes breathing in a pool sound like an upgrade. Someone, truly, needs to nerf Florida weather.
But…still…
The physical awareness I have here is uncanny. The depth in the surrounding sensations grounds me, letting me experience a cool breeze and the weight of my shoes sinking into soft earth all at the same time. My breaths rise and fall, and I can see my chest move just like I can see my hands and my legs. I’m shorter than I know myself to be, with a figure that is very much not the one I know myself to have. My muscles flex on command with a precision foreign to every other dream I have ever known.
I am tethered to my controls in a way reminiscent of…reality.
Shaking my head free of burnt-out, twenty-four-year-old delusion, I look toward the blocked path that theoretically leads to my lover.
Priorities.
My alarm will wake me soon, ushering in my mandatory morning meltdown, and I will hate myself eternally if I don’t catch a glimpse of a living, breathing Samson before it does.
Seconds before I can slam the book closed, gather my courage, and forge sloppily ahead, the writing on my quest page flickers in the corner of my eye. BlockyVale of Gemsfont stretches across the page.
No, seriously, appears below,Prepare farmhouse for the night.
The words continue on a new line:Samson will still be there in the morning, but your bedroom is unlivable.
I turn my attention to the terrifying wooden building at the crest of the farm.
A shudder rocks through me.
“I don’t want to go in there.”
Do you want to go back to Hardee’s?
My back straightens. “Absolutely not.”
Then don’t treat this like a dream, Citrus.
Help the people you’ve come to know in this community.
Help them all.
And don’t worry.
I will guide you.
“Disembodied guidance is very worrying, I’ll have you know.”
My journal does not reply.
But I don’t exactly want to risk waking up because I broke my stupid brain’s stupid dream rules, so I trek toward the crumbling stairs into my…house.
Chapter 2
If this isn’t a dream, it’s a dream come true.
I…woke up.
Here.
In Gem Ridge. In a dilapidated farmhouse. After dreaming about a normal work day, where my boss was an alligator that tried to eat my leg when he found me crying in the corner.
I spent the entire day yesterday using a fraying rag I found to scrub a clean corner into my modest abode. Genuinely, I did not know that the clear water I drew from the well by my house could turn black so quickly.
Nor did I think the broom I found to sweep out about three hundred thousand billion cobwebs—I counted—could manage such feats while being entirely constructed of four straws.
