Fractured Magic

Date: 12/26/2017

This dream primarily focuses on a young... well, it’s less often her using magic in the dream and more frequently magic using her, so let’s just call her a “chosen one.” We’ll call her Rachel for consistency. Also, I remember a surprising amount about what she looks like. To start, this girl is black and/or mixed. Her skin is pretty light, so she sometimes “passes” for white, but her mom is black and her dad is probably mixed. She’s probably about 13-15, and definitely not any older. She’s pretty much flat-chested, and just barely has the beginnings of the curves that AFAB people tend to develop during puberty, so she really can’t be any older than 13 or 14. I’m pretty sure 15 is pushing it, tbh. Rachel and her family — which is a bit scattered, but tries it’s best to stay together — are aware of her magical abilities, and use her small degree of magical aptitude for things like making household chores very slightly easier and relying on Rachel herself to transport herself to places very quickly by either flight or teleportation. At this point, she can’t really do much more than this on her own. She can sense that she has other abilities, other fields of magic she could tap into, but she’s more or less satisfied with what she has going with her family. Besides, she’s certain that her magic has some degree of its own independent will; and she has the distinct feeling that the more powerful the magic she uses, the less control she’ll have as it exerts a more and more powerful will of its own and pushes her actions in the direction it pleases. She isn’t eager to try this out, though she doesn’t feel afraid of her magic using her. She just likes to keep things predictable. Her life doesn’t really change from this comfortable pattern of running the family deli with her mother and younger sister for some time. She uses minor magic to help keep things going smoothly, befriends regular customers, and runs errands or reads books when she’s bored. Her older brother calls sometimes, to report on the new life he’s recently started in the big city. His roommates chime in from time to time as well, being friendly and generally supportive people despite all their dumb ideas and generally reckless behavior. They’re good boys, really, all 5 of them. Her older sister seems to still live near the deli, but it’s never very clear to me what she does or why she visits so infrequently. All I know in-dream is that she’s sarcastic, prideful, lazy, about 23-25, and loves and respects her family despite all her sassiness. Rachel in particular holds her sister in high esteem, seeing her (accurately) as someone who knows what she wants in life and isn’t afraid of limitations. Rachel also runs out of patience quickly when dealing with her sarcasm and gossip-mongering. It’s an oddly stable, mutually supportive, yet somewhat strained relationship; and the sister I’m going to call Kit — for the faux fox fur lining in the leather jacket she tends to wear — is something of an enigma within the dream itself. Outside of the dream, for the purposes of actually writing this into a proper short story or novella one day, I’m going to infer based on her behavior and secrecy that she has a career she can’t really talk with her sisters about. She doesn’t seem like a criminal, though, so it’s probably a legal profession. Odds are, she’s a sex worker who likes her job but doesn’t want her impressionable siblings following her footsteps or getting the wrong ideas about what she does. It is a career path shrouded in misinformation and myth, after all. But, that’s just extrapolation for a future story based on the character’s personality. At no point is this ever confirmed or denied in-dream. The youngest sister switches between wearing glasses and contacts, and is basically always seen reading a book or studying. She doesn’t do much else. Ever. I’m going to call her Ella, short for Novella, because of how much she reads. The brother, I suppose, I’ll name Ethan — not for any particular reason, really, but just because he needs a name, too. To get back to the dream itself, Rachel is eventually confronted by a catalyst: a local private detective. He’s a skinny young man with short, blond hair, no older than 25 but no younger than 18, with a permanently pensive expression and hands that usually stay in his coat pockets. He’s noticed that the magic in this town may not be as small-scale and mundane as everyone believes. A few people can perform little, everyday magic like Rachel does. They can even do so right out in the open, without having to flee or make excuses. It’s not common, but not is it so unusual. Except... there is, in fact, an old incident — a case that either he alone or both he and his father before him could never solve (it’s unclear in-dream whether he’s merely young-looking and is actually very old or is actually young and simply comes from a line of detectives), and that the police don’t even want to acknowledge anymore, let alone re-open. Someone died in this incident, or almost died, and nobody ever figured out how it was done or who was responsible. It’s not even clear whether it was a murder or an accident. The detective, who I’m going to call Ian (short for Dorian), believes that the reason nobody can figure out what happened is because the event was never supposed to have happened in the first place — at least, not in a way that involved such a heavy concentration of magic. Time, Ian claims, has been altered. Something has messed with the flow of time, and this one event keeps fluctuating in and out of existence. Nobody can pin down what happened, after all, if the details of the event keep changing, keep altering to fit a broken and unpredictable timeline. He’s certain that this fracturing of time has been done by magic, and confesses to Rachel that he can feel the will of magic itself pulling him to have it fixed. Something must be done, and the will of magic insists that it cannot be done by Ian alone. He must have help, and it must be Rachel who helps him. Somehow, she — or her family or her family’s deli or SOMETHING related to her, he’s sure of it — is at the center of this temporal fracture and so she must be the one to try and stabilize these fluctuations. She must make it so that this event either happened in one distinct way, or didn’t happen at all. She must help to realign time itself. Rachel doesn’t want to leave her simple, predictable life; but she doesn’t hesitate about joining Ian’s quest for long. She has sensed the will of magic all her life, and she’s known that one day she would leave her family and have to do something that wouldn’t make much sense to her. She’s known that this day was coming. She wishes she could say goodbye to her family, but the will of magic won’t allow any delays. She shakes Ian’s hand with a determined expression, and the two young vessels of magic vanish from the town they once called home. It is here that the plot I would follow as a writer, involving time travel and intrigue, is suddenly altered and begins to deteriorate into something even more unnecessarily complicated. Dreams are often fond of complicating things, after all. Rather than simply going back in time with Ian, the dream has Rachel appear in another dimension altogether. It’s a parallel version of her own reality, in which magic is either non-existent or such a well-kept secret that it may as well not exist. In this reality, the divorce between her parents ended with her father having ownership of the deli and custody of the girls, rather than her mother. Ethan chose to live with their mother in this reality and is now helping support her with the gaming company he runs with the guys who were merely his roommates in the other reality. He doesn’t call nearly as often and is always busy, and Rachel feels a little bad for wishing he was less successful so she could hear his voice and feel like friends with him again. That can’t happen here, not like it did where Rachel lived originally. The deli itself is less successful in this reality, but still has an endearing charm that keeps its regulars coming. Rachel's father may be less put-together and efficient than his ex-wife, but he tries his best and always has a smile — even if it usually looks strained and/or confused most of the time. Regulars chit-chat with him less than they did with her mother in Rachel's initial reality, preferring to swap town gossip with Kit (apparently her knowledge of hot gossip is a cross-universal constant) or ask Ella what she’s reading about. They come to the deli for the family atmosphere, same as they did in Rachel's reality, and she’d be a lot happier that this was the case if the magic in and around her wasn’t making her feel sick to her stomach at all times and filling in a strange, ethereal darkness around the edges of her vision. Something is wrong. She isn’t supposed to be here — not for long, anyway. She needs to figure out what her magic wants her to fix here, fix it, and find a way back home before the pressure of not belonging inevitably crushes and consumes her. She does her best to act natural while she works on achieving these goals, but her alt-family soon finds out that she’s from another reality. Everyone’s surprisingly okay with it. Her dad smiles, Kit shrugs and starts letting herself open up about things she would never have told her real sister, and Ella leaves her books aside to try and support Rachel because real magic is SO COOL and she KNEW it was real all along. Rachel smiles because Ella couldn’t have really known, she never had an ounce of magic in her veins and everyone in her original town sensed that, but she appreciates the sisterly support all the same. Even Ethan sends a letter saying he’s proud of Rachel for going outside of her comfort zone for a change. Rachel herself isn’t sure whether it comforts or kills her to read his oddly detached show of support. I’m not quite sure what happens after Rachel cries and talks to Kit about the letter. Kit asks something about the detective who brought Rachel to this reality, and our main character realizes that Ian has been missing this whole time. I recall mere flashes of scenes from this point on. The feeling of Rachel being violently pulled back and forth in time. The sight of her on the street beside her deli, with only the light of late-night Narnia-style lampposts, pressed down on by pouring buckets of rain, crumpled down on her knees with a pile of half-destroyed papers in one hand. The tears falling from her face are angry and desperate and hurt, and she doesn’t know if she can do this again. One more time. One more timeline. One more reality. There’s a reality where her mother died before the divorce could ever take place, and Ethan still lives in the apartments above the deli, with their dad, just across the hall from the girls. There’s a reality where both parents died, and the ghost of Rachel's mother runs the deli. There’s a reality where Ethan runs everything, and has a slightly confused smile just like his father. There’s more than one reality where Rachel is alone, and there’s nothing but the vortex of magic around her — which looks like the darkness that usually lives in her peripheral vision, except everywhere at once and constantly moving — and the crushing pressure of not belonging closing in on her, the weight of magic needing her to fulfill her duty and go home. She has gone home a few times, actually, but never manages to stay. She hasn’t completed her quest yet, and the will of magic will make her physically ill until she gets back on track to try and fix things. She’s seen Ian twice, maybe three times, and has only managed to speak to him for brief periods of time. He knew this would be hard on her. He knew this would be hard on him. He believes in her. Just a little longer. He always tells her it will just be a little longer. She is starting to lose her capacity to believe him. Still. She tries again. She goes back to that night in the rain, angry and exhausted and determined, and tries again. She goes back further, and ends up once again in the reality where her mother’s ghost directs Kit and Ella in the deli to keep things running smoothly. She goes back a bit closer to the present, and gets to tour Ethan’s gaming company. She can’t make saves on any of the games he lets her try out, but it’s a nice break to play competitive shooters and racing games with him for awhile. She goes back further, and everything she once knew vanishes. She ends up in a different town altogether this time, on a stormy island in the middle of a stormy sea. It has its share of clear, sunny days, of course. They’re just woefully infrequent, and feel torturously brief to residents and visitors alike. Magic holds sway here. It is rarely, if ever, used within the town itself. It is spoken about in hushed whispers, if at all. The power of the will of magic is known to all in this town, and respected as a force nobody wants to challenge or mess with. Rachel is careful not to speak about her own magic, or her mission, even as she realizes that the illness which has afflicted her since leaving home is slightly weaker here. Perhaps it means she is on the right path. At last. Meanwhile, in a system of caves stretching far beneath the island, there are those who do indeed challenge the will of magic. They enter the caves from an opening in the coral reef which encircles their homeland, and in so doing they surrender themselves to the will of magic. They become different people here, different races and species with abilities surface-dwellers and even deep-sea divers can only dream about. They meet those who have lived in the caves all their lives, and those who have simply lived here long enough that they barely recall the world above. There is an elf here, who is somehow connected to Ian and Rachel and their quest to realign time and the forces of magic. He enters the depths of magic for their sake, whether he knows it or not. He seems to be one of Ethan’s old roommates, as well, which is implied by his innate recklessness and love of adventure. He relishes a challenge, and takes on a bet that he and the comrades he’s gathered in his time below the island can take on a group of creatures known only as death itself. They are shadows, dark manifestations of magic. They hold a mere fraction of the power of the will of magic itself, and still contain more magic than any human or elf or dwarf could ever handle. One purposeful touch from a creature like this, and any mortal being will die. Ethan’s roommate, who I’ll call Nate, manages to dodge them for awhile when he first encounters them. He intends to pass the vast area they patrol, and make it to another cave where there is said to be a treasure that glows with the light of time itself. He wants this treasure. Whether it’s for his own prestige or to help make things easier for Rachel and Ian, the dream never tells. Whatever his motive, he has fun on his journey to attain this wondrous treasure. He’s smiling and laughing right up until a shadow falls from a cliff and presses its non-existent weight on his body. Nate dies then and there, shocked to feel himself crushed by magic in a way that suffocates him and renders him helpless. Then he’s with a group of dwarves, well known for their love of betting and the seriousness with which they take any bet or wager that’s made with them. These 4 dwarves smile in the same reckless, life-loving way Nate himself smiles, and take their daggers to their shins as is their custom. They make a scar for every bet they take, to show that this wager has a consequence and will not be treated lightly. Their shins are simply easiest to reach. They bet that Nate will die again as they press forth to get this treasure, and he runs a dagger across one eyebrow to seal the wager. The no-nonsense human girl with them simply rolls her eyes, and leaps down the tunnel to the shadow’s area. Nate grins one last time, salutes, and follows. The dwarves grin at one another as well, and pursue their friends down further into the depths. Then we return to Rachel. Perhaps Nate has succeeded, because she looks healthier and less stressed than she had throughout the entirety of the dream. She’s petting baby dragons at an aquarium on the island, feeding them treats of lettuce and other things while she sings idly to them. Ella smiles behind her book. She can’t get nearly so close to the dragons, and she wonders if they sense what Ian told her about Rachel. Perhaps they know that her older sister has the blood of a dragon, herself. The magic within her somehow granted her some draconic essence while she was hopping between different times and different realities, and she is as close to them now as she is to Ella and Kit and Ethan. She is their sibling, and they are hers. The last scene in the dream involves a greedy young man and his lieutenant trying to gain magic power and prestige from a lake on the island. They sail out into the center and push several young, magically gifted, thoroughly tied and bound girls into the lake as “offerings to the will of magic.” They’re following a legend that says magic takes beautiful young girls to reinvigorate itself, and redistributes this energy into new bloodlines. Those who offered the girls, it is said, will be guaranteed a place in the new distribution, and may even attain enough magic power to challenge the depths themselves. One of the girls they attempt to offer is Rachel. She struggles against her bonds, and against the men themselves, and just barely manages to teleport out of her ropes. She’s too deep in the water by then, and hardly has the strength to make it to the surface. Her head pops up above the water, and the will of magic notices her presence. It is not happy that she was nearly eliminated, and tells the men who captured her as much. The lake rises up, and crashes down again on the men’s ship. It capsized the thing, and pulls the men down until they can no longer see the light of the surface. The girls who were presented as offerings are released, and Rachel is even teleported back to the aquarium where she can feel safe and whole for a time — at least until she is forced to hop realities once again. The men are held under the water until they’re certain they will die, and then shoved up onto shore again. The captain confesses to his lieutenant that the legend is never actually clear on the gender of the offerings, so maybe they’ll get magic after all since they were used as pseudo-offerings themselves? The lieutenant just glares, and collapses on the beach to regain his strength. I don’t know if Nate lives or dies beneath the island. I don’t know if Rachel ever gets home again, temporarily or permanently. I don’t know if Ian ever returns from the vortex of magic where last Rachel met him. I don’t know whether magic and time are ever repaired. I woke up before I could find out. If I ever write this into a story, of any length, these are the questions I will have to answer. I wonder how I’ll wrap up all these loose ends...? Until next I wander.