The Great Dreamer

"So, are you here?"

"Yup."

"Good, lets get started."

"And how do we do that?"

"Well, first, where are we?"

"I don't know, I can't see any thing."

"No no, sorry. I mean, try to imagine a place, once you have it firmly in your mind, describe it aloud."

"Ok, I see an island."

Waiting in dark silence, nothing happens.

"Was something supposed to happen?"

"Well, nothing happens if you leave it that simple," a new voice declared as a beautiful women appears from the nothingness, complete with long black hair and simple sapphire dress to match her eyes.

"Frainden, do you mind? Your form is disrupting my lesson."

Melting back into the darkness with a shrug, the women vanished without a trace. "So this is your new student, Greny? I was wondering why this area was empty. Is this her first Forming?"

"NO, I made a dragon last week."

"Yes, Frain, this is her first true Forming, the first intentional Forming." The last part directed more to his new apprentice, but in the nothingness, it was hard to tell. "Trith, I would like you to meet my friend, and fellow Mysticist of the Dreamer's Order, Frainden. She lives on one of the floating islands between Dir'ndal and Hwyple."

"She's not here on Prytis?" Trith questioned in amazement.

"No, she isn't, and neither are we at the moment. We have left our bodies back on Prytis, we are in the Nothingness, at least until you complete the first half of this lesson and make a place for us to be."

"Heh, right. I said it was an island, what else do I need?"

"Well that's the first lesson. You see, at the moment, you don't yet have the focus to will things into existence. You must concentrate, and describe the location in detail. What is on this island, what is around it? And remember, you are not limited by reality, but for this first time you want try to keep it simple and small. So an island is perfect."

"Ok, the island is about 50 feet from the center to each edge, but it's more of an oval then a circle. 120 feet from end to end. The edges are sandy with a few palm trees, but I don't see any water. The island is just floating in the air above nothing. There are beach chairs on the sand, the kind rich people from Vontrovor always bring with them."

"Good, now, can you see it?"

"Yeah, but, what is up with the center?"

"You never said what it was, so it was never created. You'll notice that there is no sky either. Nevertheless, this was a great first step.

"Oh, the center is a fine grassy field, and the sky is...green, with black stars. Yeah, the grass is blue, and the sand is red. Hey, why didn't the sand change to red?"

"Once you set something it is harder to change it, but you can with a little concentration."

"Oh, well, later then. I want to take a closer look at what I made. Can I go down there too?"

"Yes, once you have.... What do you mean by 'too'?"

"Well, Frainden already went down there. See, she is making a sand castle, though I don't know where she got those shovels and molds, or the water to make it all stay together."

"That Frain, she always loves to play around. Yeah, we can join her down on your new world once you Form a body for yourself. This plane of existence is to grand and broad for a mind to comprehend all at once, so we naturally section off the sense of our surroundings to one place at a time. That place is where we are "located" in the plane at that moment, but with a thought, you can be any other place. For further protection of our mind and sanity we must form a body around that locality if we want to interact with anything. It is usually best to try making your body at least somewhat like your real one until you are better at getting into details, that way your mind subconsciously fills it in. So just describe what you look like, including what you want to be wearing."

"Oh, that's simple. I am a red haired, skinny girl, some would say too skinny. I have light freckle spattered skin. I am about 4' 5", twelve system standard years old, and wearing simple fava leather overalls, and a white jerkin."

"Now, will yourself to lower until you can feel the sand in your toes. Very good. Now, open your eyes, and look straight ahead. And look at all this you have created."

Trith looked around in awe; it looked so real, exactly as she had imagined it to be. The rich chairs, the black stars, the blue grass. She felt the individual grains of sand as they passed between her toes the wind she had neglected to mention blew her hair like the heroin in a bard's tale. Before she knew it she was running across the beach and rolling in the grass. Reveling in the stability she had lost when she had left her village, and she knew that at any time, she could return to this place and it would be exactly as she wanted it to be.

"You where right. She really is powerful. Are you sure you can handle her?"

"Yes, but I would like it if you would keep dropping by, she is young, and I won't pretend to understand the mind of a young girl. Her family, her whole village died in her first Forming. She recreated the entire village in the Dreaming Lands and pulled all of the villager's minds into it. No one noticed until she accidentally created a dragon when some bullies where beating her up. So not only is she powerful, she is alone."

"I still have to get her to leave the Dreaming Lands before her body wastes away. She has been in here for almost three days, so it's been about two weeks for her. I found her body, but I don't think it will be easy to wake her. And the village, it's eerie, bodies everywhere, they just fell where they were, didn't die for over a day, when the dragon destroyed the dream village."

"Your going to have to inform her that dragon's aren't creatures of destruction, have her meet Charles. That would do her a world of good."

"Yes, but the matter at hand is her survival, even the most powerful Mysticist can't survive here once their body dies, and she can't even sense that her body is dying. The shock when she made that dragon disoriented her. I want you to stay with her while I care for her body. I will come back as often as I can, we need to wake her, she could be one of the Great Dreamers of legend."

Breaking out of her jovial tone, "One of the...? I hope you haven't mentioned that to her."

"No, I know better then that. She already knows she is special, I have no intention of further inflating her ego, just teaching her to use her capabilities, and hopefully saving her life in the process."

The old man and the beautiful woman looked on like parents from the beach as this girl, a girl who could be a Great Dreamer, played with the litter of siple kittens she had formed only seconds before. Convinced, the unspoken question on both minds, "how can one of the most powerful human creatures in the Systems be so innocent and unaware of what she is?"