Author’s Note: These Dream Sequence stories each start with an actual vivid dream I had. After I finish writing the details of each dream, I use Sudowrite artificial intelligence as a collaborator to continue the story in an attempt to connect all of the dream sequences somehow. Each story is a mix of human dreams, artificial intelligence, and conscious storytelling.
Previous dream sequence: The Homocide
“Amagaeru is ready. Are you?”
The oversized green frog sat in Tomo’s cupped hands, breathing rhythmically to the sound of the crashing waves. In the distance, dark clouds rolled and the churning sea roared. I grabbed a thin tree branch, yanked it, and let go for good luck. The rustle of the disturbed leaves as the branch snapped back reminded me of the surrealness of the situation.
We stepped off of the treehouse and onto the red sleigh that would take us across the Sea on the Treetops. Tomo went first, with Amagaeru cupped in his hands and his two bunnies, Ame and Arashi, bounding behind him. I followed, noting as I stepped aboard the impossibility of the sleigh. It sat atop the water and seemed to repel the oncoming waves. It floated when logically, it should have sunk. The sleigh wasn’t even shaped like a boat. It was merely a sheet of metal with the front curved upward, laid atop the water. Yet somehow it floated. But then again, a sea roiling over the canopy of a forest was also quite impossible.
Tomo leaned forward and gingerly set Amagaeru the frog over the water in front of the sleigh. Upon touching the water, he was off, leaping across the top of the water as the sleigh lurched forward. With each jump, the frog grew bigger in size. The sea waters also grew choppier as we headed out to sea toward the oncoming storm.
“Hold on tight, we cannot lose you,” Tomo said.
“There’s nothing to hold onto,” I replied.
“Still yourself with your mind.”
I didn’t quite understand what Tomo meant, yet he said it with such confidence that the advice comforted me. I fortified my stance and focused my gaze on Amagaeru, who continued to leap vigorously over the water. He was almost as big as the sleigh itself now.
Ahead, a massive wave formed, and it was coming toward us. Heavy drops of rain pelted my face, and my ears popped as the water swelled beneath us, lifting the sleigh high above sea level. Tomo stood steadfast at the bow as he shouted commands at Amagaeru into the raging wind.
The huge wave was closer now, and fear began to creep into my mind. Focus, I chanted to myself. My knees began to buckle.
Suddenly, the sleigh lurched to the right. Amagaeru was fleeing dangerously close to the edge of the sea, where the water abruptly transitioned to forest canopy, and the drop to the ground was over two hundred feet.
“We’re going to fall!” I shouted.
Tomo did not flinch. I don’t even know if he heard me through the scream of the storm. We skirted along the edge of the sea as the giant wave rolled past us. I turned my head to watch it crash into the treetops behind us. But when I looked in front again, the sight was even more frightening. Pitch black. The waters around the sleigh were foamy and popping with mist now. The loudness of the storm seemed to dissipate, but a new sound approached. It was a distant roar, coming from below us.
Tomo adjusted his stance and sternly said, “Brace yourself.”
Amagaeru made one final leap, into the void. Then came the drop. A freefall from the treetops, what seemed like more than two hundred feet into the blackness below.
***
My entire body was numb. I looked around wildly and tried to grasp onto something, anything that wasn’t blackness. My fingers caught wool. It was my vest. I ripped it off and looked around in the dark. An eerie light glimmered off the forest floor. Tomo’s voice echoed through the darkness.
“Your mind is like a balloon.”
It’s getting bigger, I thought.
“Hold your mind, don’t let it go.”
It’s getting bigger!
“Throw it up, as high as you can.”
It’s too big.
“Release!”
I flung my imaginary balloon into the air and propelled myself upward, following it. The balloon grew larger as I ascended. It carried me up into pitch black darkness, but eventually a little bit of light appeared above me and I could make out tree branches. A million eyes, hidden in the dark and reflecting the dim light, focused on me. I floated higher still, then my balloon burst.
I thought I was going to fall again, but my feet landed on a solid floor made up of intertwining branches and large, broad leaves. I heard a tinderbox strike, then a flare as a lantern was lit. Now I could see. Tomo sat in front of me with his staff by his side.
“Where are the bunnies? And Amagaeru?” I asked.
“Back in nature. Where they belong,” Tomo replied.
“What do we do now?”
Tomo sat back against the massive tree trunk that formed a wall behind him. “We rest. Then we go.”
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