Gamleon's Tail ~ Welcome to the worlds of : Within ~

With a head still heavy with dreams vivid, lingering. Visions and words from another time. Figures from the puppet shows battled in her mind, flickering in the firelight, acting out courage and choices that shaped the legends. The lessons.

Dreema wasn't the sort of girl who told lies. But some of the things she'd seen lately? The few details she dared let slip had earned her withering responses from the grown-ups , still better than the cruel mockery from her siblings. Still, it was clear the fairies were agitated the whole forest was on edge. Why couldn't the others sense it ? All of them. They were up to something.

And now, these sounds. Not only the sounds of fairies. But something else. Something heavy not only frightening, but strange. A long groaning, more like creaking wood. Then a rattle. The snap of heavy branches.

She sat up, clutching the blanket to her chest. Then there it was again, just at the edge of her vision.

She pressed her face to the cold glass. Cold and sapping, what a bad idea. One hand wiped away the fog of her breath from the farmhouse window; the other pushed back a tangle of long, wavy hair.

There it was again. Clearer this time. Closer

If Daddy hadn't been working so hard to bring in the harvest, she might've gone to wake him. But then what? She paused, trying to think like he would. Would he even believe her?

She lay back down. "Make yourself comfortable and count," Nanna had said.

One, two, three...

That's when the other lights came. The different colored ones, the ones like lightning flickering. Not fireflies. She'd seen enough of those to know their glow was never that bright, never that steady. This was more. She could feel it. Certainty. Something was out there and it wasn't happy or alone.

Enough rough straw and linen. With wobbly legs she rubbed hard at her eyes—but the lights remained. They shifted and danced, not scattered random bugs, but in arcs and spirals. Flashing in patterns. Signals. Responses.

It looked like a meeting. A conversation.

Whatever it was, it wasn't deer or birds poking at the fence. It had intent.

And it was happening too close. Too near where Daddy's parents were buried. That place near the old blackberry grove. She wouldn't go there, not even to look. That was where their ancestors rested.

Not that they'd hurt her. Never. They'd always been kind even bloodied and exhausted. Her grandmother's hard old hand had been raw but steady, her voice soft whispers that recounted the old legends: the Will o' the Wisp dances, the Windego's mourning cry. Tales of clever children and hungry things in the dark that laughed like goats or sobbed like babies. Uneasy bone things. Spirits that didn't stay in the ground, not if they had work left to do.

Dreema didn't believe all of it. Not really. Gramma had been a storyteller. And her Daddy had been a bard (whatever that was). They say he'd done the puppet shows before the accident.

Still, she avoided the grove. That was the agreement the one they reinforced in dreams.

But the stories sparked something more powerful than fear. A deep seated need to understand. To be with the strange creatures. To watch and learn how they move, to hear their voices, if they had voices. A hope that, if she could explain things to the monsters, maybe things could get better.