Image by Jackie Allen on Flickr
All night, the dream weaver spun, rich fabrics—some golden pink and purple like a sunset, others jungle-green or blood-red—bubbling in his cauldron. He smiled as he watched his creations form, some sleek and sinuous like satin panthers creeping through the stars while others emerged as lumpy clouds that would split apart and then congeal together again. Sleepers tossed and turned below.
The dream weaver saw all, but from a million degrees removed. World travel happened in the blink of an eye as he floated on his cloud of stardust.
One night, he felt a lurch from within, tugging at his throat. It was like a family of feral cats had taken hold of each of his fingers and toes, each pulling in different directions.
All at once, his breath quickened as a thousand bank accounts were drained before his eyes, his heart got pummeled as he saw lovers leaving never to come back, parents cursing at their own children, puppies and kittens getting separated from their owners and thrown in the pound.
His whole body burned with the sting of humiliation as locks on adolescent diaries were ripped open, the pages torn out and pasted on the walls of the school hallways for all the world to see.
The link between him and his creations had been stripped of its protective membrane, and now here he was, crawling around in the muck. He tried to reach for something solid to grab onto, but the muck was growing deeper by the second.
Now it was at his neck, creeping into his nostrils. Before long, it would swallow him whole.
"Help is coming," said a voice.
The voice came from a rubber ducky floating past him. He grabbed onto it, and both of them began to sink.
"Not me, you dummy!" said the rubber ducky.
"Then who?"
"You!"
"What is this, nursery school?" He shook his head. "I don't have time for riddles."
The rubber ducky turned into a real duckling, the wings and beak stabbing his hand. As he let go, the duckling flew off.
A flash of silver danced across the surface of the muck. Two blades came into view. A pair of scissors.
The scissors drifted toward him, the handle naturally coming to rest in his fingers. Ahead of him, an iceberg glimmered.
As he came closer, he saw that the iceberg was in fact composed entirely of yarn, radiant and luminous.
His heart ached as he considered the task before him. But the muck was growing thicker and hotter, tugging at his feet, burning his skin.
It is worth it, he told himself. You can always start again.
And so he cut. Slicing the many layers of yarn was like trying to dismantle a skyscraper made of wax using only a toothpick. But as he cut at the yarn, the muck, too, began to part ways, dissolving around him.
The yarn fell away in heaps, until, suspended before him, was a single, glowing seed. His very first dream.
This is my entry for @mariannewest's Weekend Freewrite. I decided to incorporate all of the suggested prompts (highlighted in bold) as an extra challenge!
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