~
The toy she held fell slowly, yet fast. She screamed as it started to happen, the fall. Her body jolted through the floor, writhing and thrashing. Her head pressurized with such force that it blurred her vision, tears whipping from her firm-fixed eyes as speeding gusts of stale air flew about her face. The floor dissipated below her tiny pink sneakers, a great, dark nothing engulfing the air around her until she crashed into a solid something with a painful squeak.
At first, everything seemed to breathe darkness. There was silence enough to pierce the ears, accompanied by a rather frustrating disorientation. She could not find the miniature purple whale her hands once held, nor could she find her hands themselves.
As quickly as the darkness had come, it burst outward with a spear of blinding yellow light, shattering the murk into millions of glinting specks dancing before her eyes. When she removed a once-lost hand from over her squinting eyes, the scene before her shook her ribcage like a jailed animal.
It was nothing she had ever before experienced, this being, but she felt a strange recognition all the same. As the throb dripped from her aching limbs onto the now pure white floor, she peered upon a towering figure. It stood as though plucked from the pages of her coloring book, rising almost twice her size, with the stout, gray head of an elephant hanging heavy from its neck. It sat on the haunches of a beautifully peach-colored tiger, the quivering tail of a cow sprouting from its behind.
She gasped at its enormous form, finally recalling the childish caricature in her coloring book that held no candle to the beast before her. She realized she had gotten the colors all wrong. It's wild lion mane was definitely not green, but a deep copper color. She didn't think she had a crayon for that.
The brute pulled itself from the ground with some difficulty as the girl skittered to her feet. She clasped her hands behind her back and leaned forward with curious eyes.
"Who are you?" she said.
The girl failed to wonder at the question of what, and took the creature as though it were born of her own kind.
The elephant tiger cleared its throat -- or rather his throat -- and boomed a reply.
"I am called Baku, dream-destroyer."
He uttered no further words and swayed his massive trunk awkwardly.
"You're in my coloring book," the girl bubbled enthusiastically. "I colored your mane green." And then she added hastily, "Why are you here?"
She again had failed to assume that maybe she had stumbled upon the world of Baku, instead believing this world she now resided in was her own, which was very, very wrong.
The Baku looked at the little girl and his great tusks bobbled as he spoke.
"I am the destroyer of dreams, of nightmares that plague your rest."
He fell to silence yet again. The girl's voice filled the empty air with questions.
"Are you in my dream now? Am I dreaming? Where did you come from?"
The beast sighed heavily and sat upon his striped backside.
"You were having a nightmare. But I came to your aid and swallowed the dream whole before it could rouse your fear. I come from everywhere here and nowhere there," he said.
The Baku's bovine tail swished about his hind legs. The girl strode across the endless floor with tender steps, approaching the creature with wonderment.
"So you ate my dream?" she yelped, sending an echo off walls she could not see. She clapped one ethereal hand over her lips, cutting her parroting voice short.
The Baku smiled.
"Would you like to learn something new?" he asked, flapping his enormous pendulous ears. "I will tell you a little secret if you wish."
The girl gaped. The creature's voice tumbled off the invisible walls as boulders down a hillside. He was magnificent, bizarre, wicked. As she stared, the Baku stared.
When she gave no reply, he chuckled, for the little girl had failed to notice the equally magnificent landscape growing along the whitewashed walls, opening her dream world and scenting the air with dew. There were mountains and crevasses that yawned out among trees of emerald and flowers of bright fuchsia. Brilliant light bled from the newfound sun above. Vines and raucous animals spread through the room in which the little girl and the elephant tiger sat. But the little girl still ogled the Baku, reaching cautiously for his copper mane.
The beast lowered his massive head to meet the girl's wide, chocolate eyes.
"Do you mind lending an ear for a moment?" he said, wiggling the flaccid satellites on either side of his impressive noggin. "I think you would rather like to hear this."
The girl jerked alive with a small screech. Her hands fell to clasp behind her back as her mahogany braids flipped about her shoulders in bewilderment. She listened obediently then.
"I see you still have not noticed our scene has changed," the Baku hummed, looking about. "Behold. You do not see the beauty of the forest for the beast within it."
As the creature spoke, the girl gazed around her. The grass beneath her sneakers was thick and soft. It teemed with life, as did the zestful forest surrounding her. Tepid air stuck to her skin and sallied through her hair. Such fragrance could not possibly be a dream. She looked up at the Baku then, eyes wide.
"Use your imagination, young one, for even the smallest wonders can grow to become more magnificent than the greatest of marvels." The Baku pointed his colossal trunk in the direction of the powder blue sky. "Do not lose yourself to the lusts of those with trivial majesty. The Baku is watching."
The creature winked a crinkled eye before disappearing with the forest in a blink. Again, the girl stood among the endless white floors with eyebrows raised and mouth wide.
At her feet, there lay a tiny, wayward purple whale, its tail reaching skyward. She reached to clutch it with one delicate hand before the invisible walls began to crack. With a shudder and a resounding crash, the room with no end shattered, dipping her tiny, pink sneakers in blackness once again.
When she awoke, her eyes landing on all the colors of her world, there was only one thing left to do.
She dreamed.
