Sweet Dreams / The Dreamcatcher
an excerpt

Chapter two — Reallity is an Illusion
He could exactly remember his dream, where normally he remembered only pieces of his dreams, making them seem even weirder than they normally where. It had really been a dream, but it was more real than any other dream he had ever had. And he had been awake the whole night it seemed, but he felt like he had just slept all of it. Which he actually had, but it didn't seem like he was resting at the time. He wanted to go back to the dream, who cared about going to school? They needed his help there, and that world was just so much better than this... He tried to fall asleep again, but it wouldn't come.
His mother called he should get out now, or he would be late for school. He decided to go, he couldn't sleep all the time anyway, and this world was more real than his dream, how real it might have seemed. He couldn't stay in bed all day, and this world was fun too sometimes. School was not always fun, but sometimes it was interesting, and his friends where there. He had only met Aurellia and [friend] today, or tonight actually, and it wás just a dream. Maybe it just was, nothing more than a dream, just a really good one. But it had to come again tonight, it had to, or it would be trapped. Or wouldn't it? Had he just dreamed that? Well, he had, but it was more than a dream, right? It was all to weird to get, he would have to wait untill tonight to see if it would come again...
That night he went to bed early, he wanted to be in the dream again. He was so excited and a bit afraid about finding out if the dream was more than a dream or not, that it took him a while to fall asleep.
He wasn't anywhere he remembered from his last dream. Was it really nothing more than a normal dream? He was standing on a sand path, there wheren't any hills, and he couldn't see the city. It also really seemed November here, it was cold and chilly. Maybe Somnes was somewhere here, and the reason he didn't see it was because he didn't see anything apart from the path he was standing on. He didn't dare to walk of the path, he didn't even now if there was an 'off the path.' It was pitch dark out there, really dark where you couldn't see a thing, but there wasn't a reason for that, he could see the path perfectly well. He sat down and carefully stretched his hand towards the edge of the path, wondering what would happen if he would touch the darkness. His fingers where only an inch from it when he heard something. A dark figure stood on the path before him, just as dark as the darkness all around the path. He couldn't see any features, only a slightly human—shaped darkness. It spoke, with a dark voice matching it's appearance.
'I wouldn't touch that if I where you.' Arthur couldn't see a mouth to move, but there came a sound from the thing. It scared him, but he ignored his legs that wanted to do nothing more than run away. 'What does it matter, it's only a dream after all. Dreams aren't real.' The thing said. Arthur didn't touch the darkness, but he didn't pull his fingers back either. The dream hadn't come again. It was just a dream, and dreams weren't real, they where illusions that you got when you slept. He had to stop being childish and acting like his dream was real, he was ten after all, and he was too old to believe in his dreams. There came a sound from the black thing again, which you could probably call speaking, even though it hadn't got a mouth as far as Arthur could see. 'I don't like you trying to find that dreamcatcher. If you fix it it'll trap nightmares, which is to say, it will trap me. I don't want to be trapped. So I'll make sure you can't have that dream you had yesternight anymore.' Arthur had stared at the black thing while it was talking, and suddenly realised that he wasn't talking just to be nice. Something had crept up behind him. He turned to look, and saw something he didn't recognise, but that looked very dangerous. Like a creature of his worst nightmare, which it probably was. He ran away as fast as he could, but he couldn't make much speed. The creature was just behind him when there suddenly was a hole in the ground. He fell down, down, endlessly it seemed, he couldn't tell time, and just when he thought he reached the bottom, he woke up.
It was dark here too, it was in the middle of the night. Arthur reached his lightswitch, and calmed down when he could see again. What was this nightmare thing about? What did it mean it couldn't dream the dream anymore? He had too dream it again, they needed his help. Which seemed ridiculous, they only excisted when he dreamt about them, so they didn't need his help at all if he didn't dream. But he wanted to dream it again, it had been a beautifull dream. He was scared to go to sleep again, what if it was this nightmare again? But after a while he felt so tired he fell asleep anyway.
It was his beautiful dream again. Only it wasn't all of it, he could see Aurellia standing next to the castle, but he saw it through thick, iron bars. He was standing on the path of his nightmare, behind a gate of some sort, barring his way into the dream. He couldn't see a way around it either, he couldn't see where the thing ended, and there was one behind him too. Maybe he could walk around it? But then he'd have to go through the blackness that was everywhere... He tried to call Aurellia to ask if she could help him, and realised only then she didn't move. She just stood there, frozen. Almost everything he saw stood perfectly silent, not even the clouds moved. The only thing that moved was a dark shape, somewhere behind Aurellia. It moved towards him.
'See? You can't enter the dream, so you can't fix this dreamcatcher. You don't even need to bother to save this stupid dream, as you can see now, it's just an illusion. It only excists when you're there, because you think it excists. But it doesn't. Only to the dreambeings, such as them and me, but not to you.' The shape said in its dark voice, before dissapearing.
Arhur looked at the neverending fence in panick. He needed to find a way through it, he knew the dream excisted. Maybe it was an illusion, but it was a good one. But if this dream was an illusion, this gate must be an illusion too, for it was part of it. Arthur tried to run through it, and found out that illusions could be very solid if they wanted to. How could he possibly get througt it? He couldn't climb it, it was way too high, it reached all the way to the clouds. And he couldn't walk past it either, as far as he could see. But this was his dream! How could something like a nightmare change that? Aurellia had said he was the only one who could influence things in this dream, and he didn't put that gate there, the nightmare probably had. But the nightmare couldn't have done that, so that gate couldn't be there... It wasn't part of his dream because he hadn't been there before, but he didn't really know how this influencing thing worked, things happened without him influencing it, like things everyone did, he didn't make them do it. He couldn't influence things like that, if he wanted a cookie it wouldn't just appear in front of him. Or maybe it would. He tried, but nothing happened. There wasn't even an illusion of a cookie in front of him. What Aurellia had said couldn't be true, she could influence things too, he didn't make her say or do things. But at least he knew that nightmare couldn't influence things here, he wasn't part of this dream, he was a sort of dream on his own.
That the fence was there, meant Arthur was dreaming it. So he needed to stop dreaming it, but how? It was there, and he couldn't control what he was dreaming. He was the only one who could control what happened in his dreams, but he didn't do it himself. It happened because he dreamt it did, so he was the one controlling it, but how could he control what he dreamt? There must be a reason he dreamt that fence, and the nightmare must have had something to do with it. He couldn't see him anywhere now, but he did see the place the nightmare came to it, for he was standing on that road. It ende just before the fence. There was blackness all around the path, just like before. What would happen if he touched it? Did he dare to touch it? It looked scary, and maybe the path was actually so high above something he just saw blackness of it, so falling of the path meant falling really far down. That would mean this path was actually a really high place. The idea of it alone made him dizzy, and he quickly sat down so he wouldn't fall.
He gazed at his dream beyond the fence, and tried to climb it, which didn't work. It was to high to climb anyway, and he couldn't walk past it without touching the darkness either, there was only about an inch of grass on his side of the fence. Nothing would happen if he didn't do something, and the only thing he could do was go into the darkness, or at least touch it. His hand reached out to it again, he wondered what would happen. What if it made the whole dream dissapear or something? But he could at least try, this situation didn't seem to become better anytime soon. He put his fingers into the blackness. Nothing happened. He decided to take the risk, and dived into the unknown.
The path must indeed have been high, he was falling... Weird that he didn't find this scary, while he was terrified of standing on something high he might fall of. He wasn't really falling, it was more like floating, for he couldn't see a bottom of this black. He hoped he would end up in Somnes this way, although it would hurt if he fell down on it after he had fallen for so long...
The moment he thought of Somnes he stopped falling, or actually he didn't stop falling, he changed his directions of falling. But could you consider moving to the right falling? So, he didn't fall, but he moved towards the right, slower and slower, and the blackness became less black. He saw Somnes, and he fell, or moved towards the right, out of the blackness, and bumped into the castle.
Aurellia looked around in surprise, and walked slowly towards him. 'How come you're here? You where over there a second ago.' 'Yeah I know... But I didn't know it was just a second ago! I woke up...' He scrambled up, rubbing his head that had smacked against the wall of the castle. 'Do you know anything about nightmares?' he asked Aurellia. 'Not really...' she said, while gazing at the clouds again. 'Why?' 'Oh, I met one... And it placed a fence before this dream, I could see you all standing here, frozen. It said this is just an illusion, and I think it was right... This isn't real...' Arhur said. 'Of course this is an illusion, why do you think it wouldn't be?' 'What? So this really isn't real?' he asked. 'Depends on what you consider real...' Aurellia still hadn't looked away from the clouds. 'Everything is an illusion, isn't it? It's just how your senses tell you it is...' Aurellia finally looked at him. 'Didn't you know? You sound so surprised.' 'No, I didn't know... I mean, there's this thing they call reality... It's what's really happening, like, in the world... This isn't part of it, right?' 'Reality? Never heard of the word, it sounds funny... But this isn't happening in your world, if you mean that... They say dreams are happening inside peoples heads, so we're actually all in you head now! Funny, right? I can see your head right in front of me, but I'm in it too!'