The Pharmacist and The Prince

Lucid Dream

lucid dream/ˈluːsɪd driːm/ : a dream in which the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming and can sometimes influence the course of the dream.

A scream tore out of Ebony as she fell through a void. She flailed her arms as she fell, trying to hold on to something. But there was nothing to grab. Except the pitch black darkness that had formed a cloak around her and threatened to consume her.

Vaguely, she could hear the fluttering of the pages of a book but the sound was soon drowned out by the wind that blew past her ears as she exited the dark void. She looked around her and saw the sky. She was falling through the sky.

A dazzling sight met her as she fell through the clouds. The sun gleamed through the water droplets and reflected off the roof of the most magnificent building Ebony had ever seen. The scene was so picturesque that she was temporarily distracted from the fact she was falling from the sky.

Drifting, she realized. She was drifting from the sky as the speed of her descent reduced drastically. As she slowly approached the ground, she stared at the world around her and decided that she must be dreaming.

For a variety of reasons.

One, she was flying. Or floating. Or drifting. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was that she was in the air and last she knew, humans couldn’t survive in the air. At least on their own. But at this rate, she was sure she would hit the ground whole and uninjured. That helped calm her down.

And two, there was no place on earth like this. A bold statement for someone who had never left her country. But she was certain that such a place could only exist in someone’s imagination. It was painfully beautiful. Even the air seemed to be glittering with gold and diamond dust. It just seemed impossible that such a place could exist on earth.

It was on this train of thought that she finally drifted to the solid ground. Hands and knees on the earth, she panted and tried to slow her heart rate down. At least, when next someone asked her if it hurt when she fell from the sky, she could emphatically say no. Hysterical laughter bubbled out of her as the thought crossed her mind.

She just fell through the sky. She just fell through the freaking sky. How’s that for a lucid dream?

Ebony felt the hard ground beneath her. Rough grains of sand scratched her palms and knees. She was aware she was dreaming but it still felt ridiculously real. She raised her head and took a lungful of the crisp, cool air. Yes, ridiculously real.

Where was this? Why did it feel so real? Was that a real castle? Different many questions raced through Ebony’s mind so much so she didn’t hear the sound of various articles falling through the air.

She looked up in time to see her backpack, the sweet box, her pillow and her water bottle hurtling in the air. Directly towards her.

Bam! She couldn’t dodge in time and they all landed on different parts of her body, creating aches and bruises in each spot.

“Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. That was seriously painful. What’s going on?” Ebony began picking up the things that fell, feeling her stomach sink as she examined each of them.

Ebony ran her hands across the backpack. This was her backpack. She had been using it for the past two years. There was no way she could mistake it. The backpack, the sweets, the sweet box, the water bottle, the soft pillow. These were all the things that she had been using and had been around her at the library.

The worst part was how real they felt. The fabric of the bag, the wrinkling sound the sweet wrapper made when touched, the cool metal of the water bottle. It all felt so real.

“What is happening here?” Ebony began to panic. It was becoming more and more obvious she wasn’t dreaming. The sensations were just too real. But if she took her surroundings as reality, then a bigger problem arose.

“How did I get here? The last thing I remember is the library. I was sitting there and reading. So how did I get here?” Ebony muttered to herself. She had to defeat the panic with reason. There must be a rational and logical explanation for her sudden appearance in a strange place.

“Did I faint? Was I kidnapped?” She thought of all the possible reasons but each one seemed more implausible than the last. There was something she was overlooking, a detail she couldn’t quite remember, flitting in the back of her mind somewhere.

She stood up sharply and began pacing.

“I was in the library. I was in the library,” she repeated to herself. “I was reading, yes. But reading what? I was reading a book.” Ebony searched through her backpack and saw her pharmacology textbook and jotter. Her mind flashed back to early in the morning when she packed her bag to head to the library.

Yes, she had planned to study eventually, but that was not the main reason she decided to visit the library today. Why did she go to the library today?

“The book! That nameless book!” Ebony exclaimed. “That’s what I was reading. I just flipped the page and I landed here.”

She spun around, looking for the cryptic book. “Where is it? Where did it go? Every other thing is here. So where did it go?” She quickly realized her priorities where misplaced. “Forget the book. Where am I?”

Terrified beyond measure, Ebony began to look at her surroundings a little more carefully. She was currently in a plain and directly opposite her, on a hill, was the grand castle she had seen while falling. It looked like something out of the 18th century with the towers and spires.

She turned in the opposite direction. In the distance stood a cluster of buildings which looked like the entrance to a town or village. She put all her items inside her backpack and slung it over her shoulder and thought carefully about where she should head to next.

She was really regretting not bringing her phone along with her when she visited the library. It was a personal rule but now she was cursing it intensely.

She decided it would be best to head into the town. The castle looked like someone important lived there. And she didn’t want to cause any trouble. Ebony started to outline her plan. She would head to the town, find a phone, call home and then call the police.

Hopefully, this whole ordeal would be done before dinner and whoever did this to her would pay for it.

The sound of galloping horses alerted her to the entrance of a whole new variable in her troublesome equation. She spun around and saw five horses, three of which were galloping towards her with full speed. The remaining two maintained some distance behind.

“Maybe they can help.” She said to herself. She started walking towards the horses when the foremost rider brandished a large rope, whipping it in an arc over his head.

Her first thought was “Why is he doing that?” The second was “Run” And so she ran. She didn’t get far before she felt the bristly rope strike her, coil around her tightly and throw her harshly into the ground.

For the second time that morning, she lost consciousness.