We were tiny gnomes

Date: 5/8/2022

I had a dream that I was a gnome. I was tiny and made of porcelan— at first, I worked in the Creation Factory. I watched as little lumps of clay were dumped into machines and carefully sculpted by acidic liquids, then helped to paint my fellow gnomes before sending them off to the next room, where they would be brought to life. My brother worked as a clay packager, carrying loads to and from the trucks and machines. My youngest sibling and my mom helped keep the machinery and my friends painted with me. But soon, the factory was shut down. There was a disaster: an attack! Our gnomes’ natural predators, baby dragons, attacked the factory. They destroyed the vat of magic acid that created us and sent everyone scattered. Thus began our life on the run. We lived across the feilds and forests nearby, the gnome population scarce, nearly extinct; humans began hunting us to keep the dragons away because with gnomes came baby dragons to hunt us, and we were doubly screwed. We ended up living in shoes, little cottages we built hidden away in nature, and I ended up living inside of a boot in a plant guard chain fence, making myself a little wooden home inside. But it wasn’t good enough, and soon, we were found. It began with the screeching of the baby dragon, its calls as it stumbled through the trees above, sniffing us out. Me, my sibling and J all hurried inside, locking the little wooden doors and closing the chainlink fencing around us. We hushed down real quiet and I kept guard by the window, peeking through the curtains; and that’s when I saw them— the hunters. Now, gnome hunters weren’t just any old humans. They were nasty and mean as could be, with thin, oversized scrappy jackets, dirty stubbled faces and curled lips that sneered when they caught you. They prowled through forests as if it was their greatest joy to scare you, torture you, watch you scream in horror. I spotted three of them through the window, headed straight for us. They split last minute and the meanest one, an ugly, scraggly younger man with a twice broken nose and mean, beady little green eyes that were ever so slightly too far apart. His mouth opened in a cruel smile to reveal yellow and black teeth when he spotted our boot, and I could swear (as my heart dropped in terror) that he looked me directly in the eye when he started half-limping, half running towards our home, cackling evilly as he ran. I hid quickly behind the curtain, with the dragon and the hunter closing in, my heart thudding in my ears and my hands shaking. Then, just as the hunter reached us, I woke up.