The Written Works: The Potential Dream

When she awoke, she was in a completely different place than she had been before. It was not that the plants around her had grown overnight, because the clay box had disappeared. She sat directly in the middle of a forest so bright that if it were nighttime, she would not be able to tell. Mushrooms around her glowed a healthy blue, and the trees bent and turned like willow trees.

The first question on her mind was, “Where am I?”

It was a perfectly reasonable question, so she decided to find out. She walked around the sanguine forests, looking for something that was familiar to her, but she found none. Instead, she saw a ginormous tree. She was considering climbing it to reach a vantage point, when she noticed that there were windows inside of it, and a door at the front. There was a garden to the side of the tree, growing all manner of beautiful flowers.

She stood in front of the door for a long time, questioning if she should go inside. She knocked once, twice, thrice. There was a large rustling within the house, and she heard whoever was inside stand by the door, trying to see who she was as well. After a long and uncomfortable silence, she decided to introduce herself.

“Uhm… hello? I’m Jordini Harrell… I was just wondering if you know where I am?”

The door opened just a crack, and two eyes peered out at her. They looked at each other for a long while, before the door opened more and a young elf with flowing blonde hair and black pupils that seemed to have no life to them emerged.

“Why, hello!” the elf cheered. “I’m Doctor Xan. I apologize for keeping you waiting but I was not expecting visitors at this hour.”
“It’s… alright.” she responded, taking a sneak peek into the house.

“I was preparing to set out, but I have quite a lot of work to get done before the morning. If you so please, could you harvest the ingredients I need for me?”

“Oh, for your dinner?”

The elf was silent.

“Okay… so, uhm, if I get the ingredients you’ll tell me where I am?”

The elf turned back to the house and grabbed a piece of paper, setting it in Jordini’s palm. It was a drawing of a mushroom, of course, most likely the type that she needed.

“If you get them to me quickly, I will find a way to get you back to Euthawal too.”
Jordini jumped, knowing for certain that she’d never told Doctor Xan where she came from. She now shivered in fright.

“How do you know that?”

Doctor Xan smiled wanly, before closing the door and continuing to work. Jordini stood outside the house for a long time, but then remembered that she must hurry. She scurried away, ducking inbetween trees and jumping over mushrooms like hurdles.

Soon she arrived in a small alcove, surrounded by trees with showing roots and spores floating around the clearing like tiny sprites who had been startled by an airhorn. Underneath one of the trees’ roots, she saw a whole colony of the mushrooms, in all sizes and shapes.

She took a step to them, slightly worried that they might be poisonous and she had no gloves, but if Doctor Xan could touch them, then so could she? She grabbed one of the largest ones, inspecting it before taking her poncho off and using it as a sack to carry them in. She hadn’t been told how many she needed, so she took five, hoping that would be enough.

And now, she set out, looking above the canopies to find Doctor Xan again, because her tree grew far above the others. She ran like a mad woman, having regained her strength from the previous day. She hoped that however long she had taken qualified as quick.

She nearly slammed into the door with the speed she was going, screeching to a halt and knocking on the door again. Doctor Xan opened the door, seemingly shocked. Jordini handed her the mushrooms along with her poncho. After counting, Doctor Xan seemed even more shocked.

“How did you find so many so quickly? Where did you find them?”
“There’s a whole colony of them…” Jordini panted and supported herself on her knees, pointing to her right.
Doctor Xan hummed an approval and turned around, looking back at Jordini as if to offer her to come inside. Inside the tree was completely stripped and barked, with carvings on the walls and stuff scattered all over the floors. There were many workbenches, all with projects on them, and in the middle of the room, there was a large cauldron with many stains on it.

She looked back at Doctor Xan after looking around, but in the corner of her eye, she looked different. How different, she didn’t know, because it was only for a split second. But her hair seemed off, and there were what looked like horns on her forehead, and she had a… tail? But when Jordini turned back to her, she seemed normal again.

Doctor Xan grabbed more ingredients and set them to the side on one of the workbenches. Honestly, it was a wonder this woman could get any work done in this mess. Doctor Xan turned around to Jordini, looked her up and down, and noticed her still cut up legs.

“Are your legs cut?” she asked, turning back around and grabbing leather pouches of powders and leaves and dried flowers.

“Yeah,” Jordini said, “I cut them yesterday in the forests.”
Doctor Xan returned to the cauldron and put every ingredient in one by one in what looked like an order and pattern, but it was hard to tell. Jordini sat there for a couple minutes, the fumes burning her eyes, watching Doctor Xan closely. Soon, she grabbed a glass flask, filled it with the liquid, and gave it to Jordini with a large smile.

“Uhm… thanks?”

“That should help.”

She drank it cautiously. It tasted like strawberry soda. After she was finished, she handed the flask back to Doctor Xan, who had been waiting for her to finish the whole time. Her legs hurt slightly less, so that was good, but she didn’t think that it was from the liquid until much later.

“Now,” Doctor Xan said, “I should reward you by helping you get back to Euthawal.”
“Uhm, Doctor?”

“Yes?”

“Since you know where I come from already, do you know where MEAKS would be?”

Doctor Xan shook her head.

“I can return you to where you were, but I do not know where they are. I wish I did know. It would be worth you helping me locate a new colony.”

“Alright… are you gonna do it?”
The next thing she knew, she was back, sitting in the same place she had been before, sleeping next to the clay box. The slime was still inside. She sat up and thought that she had just been dreaming, when she looked down and saw that her poncho was covered with glowing spores from the mushrooms. At length, she stood up, looked around one more time, and started walking again.