FM Flash Friday #9: Where Dreams Are Made

 

Where Dreams Are Made

By

Lazette Gifford

Copyright 2012, Lazette Gifford

Thomas Fairbright stood before the double doors leading to the office of a talented, powerful and rich man.  He was also not human, but that wasn't the problem since neither was Thomas.

 The real problem was that sometimes the doors led to somewhere else.

He never knew what he would find when he went to see Silvanus.  On this bright Monday morning, he took a deep breath and pulled the door open to green and the smell of spring.  A gentle breeze brushed against his face and he smiled, finding himself home in the fae lands.

"There you are," Silvanus Moore said, looking up from the log where he'd been resting.  Pixies flew off into the trees, a sparkle of movement.  "We have a problem.  The Queen has made her announcement.  We're losing them."

"We can't -" He stopped, his breath catching in his throat.  He had never thought the rumors could be true.

"Once we lose the link to their dreams, we have lost our link to this reality."  Silvanus stared straight at Thomas.  "You would not like that to happen."

Thomas didn't dare speak.  He'd made no pretense about how he loved the human world.  He moved to the log, too stunned and afraid.  He loved the fae lands, too, but he'd become attached to the humans.

"What can we do?"

"Right now even the Queen is open to suggestions."

The Queen never asked for advice, and the idea she might need ideas  to fix this problem was like . . . like the end of the world.

"We've tried everything we can." Thomas settled onto the log and looked around, already missing his high-rise office in the building where he and Silvanus worked.  He liked computers and cell phones, cars and DVDs and everything that made magic in a magic-less world.

"They're slipping away from us." Silvanus leaned back, his head resting against the moss of the tree.  Thomas did not; moss gave him hives.  "Maybe it's time we let go."

"You can't believe this world -- or any world -- is better without magic," Thomas said.  "They may have lost touch in the waking world, but if they lose the magic in their dreams, what would be left?"

"The worst of all worlds; a hectic life without the hope of better, and most people cut off from healing balm of nature.  A world without hopes for the future and with no real love of the present."  Silvanus gave a bleak shake of his head.  "I think we lost them long ago, Thomas."

"We didn't lose them." Thomas felt his mind snap into sudden clarity.  "We didn't lose them; we tried to move with them."

"I don't understand," he said.

"The Industrial Revolution.  We saw how they loved technology, and we began to give them the dreams to go with those wishes.  We stopped giving them dreams of things only magic can provide.  Of course we're losing them, Silvanus.  We were losing ourselves.  We stopped dreaming about magic."

Silvanus stood, hope in his face.  "We need to step back and give them the sorts of dreams and hopes that came in another age.  Dreams of things to imagine beyond their steel and concrete walls."

"Exactly."

Silvanus waved his hand and a table appeared, complete with papers and quill pens.  Comfortable plush chairs settled into the grass.  Birds sang.

They began to work out a new plan for dreams, hopes, and whispers of magic in the night. . . .

 

Thomas Fairbright stopped at the doors on a bright Tuesday morning.  No one missed him the day before.  Magic covered such things when they needed.  He feared what he would find beyond the door today, but waiting wouldn't make this better.  He opened the door to find Silvanus in his lovely high-rise office, with the wonderful windows looking off toward the sea.  He could see a ship on the far horizon.

"Just in time," Silvanus said.  "Stewart Roberts called a morning meeting and we barely have time to get there."

They went up three flights to the penthouse office, and though the last to arrive, but no one noticed.  The other half dozen stood around a covered board, staring as though a venomous snake hid under the cloth.  Stewart crossed the room as they did, looking tired. Thomas had never seen him worn by the work before.

"I went home last night, fearing we had lost the Parsons account.  Nothing we had come up with pleased them."  People moaned and looked half sick with worry, but Stewart lifted his hand.  "I went to bed early, knowing this was going to be a long day.  And I had a dream --"

Thomas stood up straighter.  Gods and Goddess!  Had the Queen gone along with the plan Silvanus took her last night after they had finished?  Had she already agreed?  Even Silvanus looked shocked.  He would have expected months, at the very least --

"I dreamed an entire new outlook on the building complex.  I came in at four this morning and sketched this out." He waved towards the board, "I called the Parsons group and talked with them at eight this morning, sending scans.  I think we finally have the start of a plan."

He pulled the cloth from the board to show precise drawings of multilayered buildings, gardens off of every other floor, a park in the center with fountains -- Thomas could almost see the place real and alive already.

"We're going to bring some nature into the city, people.  We're going to step away from the modern world and create something where people will want to go to do business, and where they will linger even afterwards, increasing their feelings of contentment.  Thomas, I'm going to need you working closely with me on this one."

"I'd be delighted to," he said with a bright smile.

They were about to take the first step into shaping a new and better world world.

 The End

998 Words

 

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