IV. Chapter 2
Beginning Ends
Reb walked into the kitchen and made herself a drink. It was an ice cold latte. She filled it with cream from the decanter and walked into the classroom to begin to make her bed. She was still dreaming. She was wide awake when she got home. But, her mother was not there. Her father was still out in the back garden somewhere. She was telling people she was working from home. But the person at home was not her, it was Mr. Dudley. She called to him and he disappeared and reappeared right in front of her. She told people she was actually the author, not Tiffany, or Uncle Scrooge. She woke up and screamed, and held a flashlight under her covers. Her mom and dad were asleep. She was sure the book had been sold out when she got there. She got in her car and ran, then drove, to the store and picked it up again and again as she told the executive how much she loved her. The author was none of these people. She was spooked, and scared stiff, as she climbed into the attic and walked to the window far across the creaking boards. There was a trunk here. Inside was a gold locket, and a medallion looking piece of paper, it was called the Chronoglass. It allowed her to see into the dreamworld. She used it to look into the future. But it would not tell her that. Only her dreams would. She asked her dad if he could help her tie her shoe laces. She was 17, but she was also not sure how she should do it. They could be bunny tied or through the loop, but she wanted them done perfectly, or better than that. He helped her and even did both, he perfect went through the loop, then bunny tied them as well. She remembered that he had taught her this trick. He told her he'd teach her how to do it if she ever wanted to really know in the future and forget. He kissed her on the head and then left for work that day, but he was at home as well when she got out of bed, she said to her cat, her mom and her parrot. The animals were actually her dear neighbor and friends. They were returned to her and she was sad they had to go. She wanted a pet so badly. But her friends didn't have any pet food. She had to go into the dreamworld to see if she'd have any chance to get paid today. She thought she was already strong enough to use the Chronoglass and see the things she wanted to see, even though it was bright inside and out of her head were her thoughts. The King Alexander was meant to become was fading away. He was taking her to the stagecoach and the wagon, which was made out of wood, and had some pretty nice wheels, was still sorely not what she needed. It was sticking to her feet, the mud, which turned into mudmen, and dragged her down into its muddy depths. The mudmen got up and King Alexander fought them off for her. But he could not find a way to escape them, not yet. They were just puddles of mud. She remembered that they were there for a reason, but she and her best friend Tiffany hadn't been that close to finding out what that was before she had to leave the dreamworld and go back to her own world. She was at school, but not, and saw her friends, and her teacher, Mrs. Cromley, through the veil. But they were not able to see her. She watched King Alexander fight the palace guards and the new Queen, who loved him so, distraughtfully pace about her bedchambers, which were nicely lit and garnished, Reb thought. She and the Queen were both certain that Alexander would be alright in the end, but it was a worry, and a hope, and a deep seated terror that her sword and his would not be enough, and Reb's would be needed, once again. She exhaled and made her way out of the catacombs of denial and on into the forest of retreat. She used her cunning and her tied shoelaces to uncover the hidden tome of awesome. In it were the words she needed to speak to unveil the chilled shoelace of denial. Using it, she used some dreamworld magic and know how to turn it into the dove of false denial, and using it, after tying a note around its leg that she dreamt up, the Queen received her letter and invited her to her palace in somewhere else, where Reb did not know the time nor the place, but did know the language and the spells with which she had to cast in the right order to convince the Queen that she was who she bespoke of. In her letter to the Queen of Somewhere Else, she convinced the Queen that Alexander was in deep peril, and needed her to send 4 guards, not 3 or less, lest they be caught by the mudmen who could only count in numbers less than three or more than four, but could not handle 4 or 5, but 5 was not the true word they needed to hear, so she woke up and told the Queen that she needed to only send 4 guards to handle the mudmen, and not anymore, or else it would spook the pee potter into pee poodling away, which meant running in the Queen's terms, but not hers as well, because they became one and the same to give the order, but not to see it played out. While it was true that magic in the dreamworld was scary, and tough to use, you could use it too. You could run through walls, or see other people, or even speak to the living from the other world, where if you were not, you could always come back again because it was safer to believe than not to, in a certain sense, and not in others to believe at all, when it could come back to haunt you. She believed that it was true that Alexander was in danger, so it was not true that he could not be saved. She used her magic brush to paint a portrait that was so beautiful that the Queen had to realize that she needed to go where Reb had said Alexander was fighting for his very life and stumbled upon the reason why quite unnaturally, in the way the dreamworld said it would, when the words of the book spoke about the freeform nature of such folly and were trite about such needless circumstances as tying one's shoelaces before bedtime became. The Queen read Reb's letter and understood her incantations, so she believed her, and in her belief, became aware that such circumstances needed to be met with caution, and pee poodling along was not something she needed to do. She sent exactly 4, not 3, 4 and a half, or 5 gentleman with long swords and terrible armor to confront the mudmen, and they succeeded and survived where other many numbers may fail, like 42 1/2, which was the secret of life in another universe, or if the world failed, and would it be recounted again, like it was so long ago with her? She remembered that Alexander hated peach and cream sundaes. He preferred raisin glass stiletto high heel bootlets, not that he would turn any kind of bootlet away, because he liked to dress up as stylishly positive as possible, no pootlet would be turned away. A pootlet or pootilet was the term for a certain type of boot buckle that was made out of gold or silver, usually, and not brass or copper or steel or even iron sometimes, or rough hewn dogleather, which meant they were usually made by extremely proficient dwarves in the dreamworld. They didn't exist in the real world. She used dreamworld and real world logic to figure out the reason but not the toad. She used the boot clasp, that was the term for the part of the boot that locked in on a leather boot that a certain Alexander, King Alexander if you feel like giving him some aplomb, would wear in her dreams. The clasp was made out of steel. It was one part chotzi acid, and two parts rotting balm, each made from the stem of the Woodwem tree which was native to South Egloria, which was far to the north, actually, of where Alexander was now, which was to the south of her dreamworld entry point, the Sea of Time. In the Sea of Time, which was next to the Sea of Sands that if she dreamt about, she'd plummet right into the center of it, and end up a tumbleweedy mess and need to restart her dream chronologically from the beginning, which was not a fun thing to do when time was of the essence, and it was now. She dreamt that Alexander had a sword, and it was made of steel, like from the Woodwem tree, but not bent like a curly rod. This he used to fight off the mudmen, but before the Queen's guards could arrive, he had to use this sword to defend himself first. The Queen's guards did arrive and save him in the nick of time. She dreamt that it didn't need to happen that he had to walk back home with them. He was instantly teleported back to his starting point, which was deep in the castle quarter's where he had been dreaming of her.