EIGHTEEN

The cave was crystalline, and twisting shapes, which might have been made of animate gauze, or oddly coherent sheets of fog, wandered within and around the entrance.  Those same shapes were the source of the light, which I want to say was green, or blue, or purple, but I think was some other shade entirely; something we don't have in the daytime world.  We climbed down from the jeep to get a better look.

Greetings to Ulla the Surefooted, Ulla the Younger, Ulla the Thrice-born, and greetings to your companion.  You are welcome here.

That's what I heard in my mind.  Gina and Ray, though, heard something entirely different; they looked to each other, and to me.  Not quite sure what had just happened, I shrugged.  Gina returned the gesture, turned to the jeep, and made a gesture like 'I'm blowing a fistful of dust away'.  The jeep greyed and cracked, then blew away as ashes.

They followed me in.

The twisting wisp-shapes of light gave us a wide berth as we walked, and the cavern widened, the floor glassy and gleaming, and then descending in steps to a wide pool of water.  It was impossible to tell what the depth of it was; it was only visible at all because where the fog-things touched it, they sent out tiny rings of ripples.

Do you come to share a drink of the wise waters, for sanctuary from the nightkind, or for some other purpose?

Gina stepped up with "All three.  Above us, there are pillars.  Memories, of some of our own people.  If you can help us reach them, or help us free them, we would be grateful. If that only means sanctuary from here to any exit near there, that will be enough.  And if there are waters that are wise, and drinks to share?  Then we totally want...  We would be in your debt."

Kneel, then, and drink, and listen.  

We did.  The water seemed to be water, and no more, but none of us were overly worried about it.

The nightkind above us are servants of Kether-Kinal, the crown of midnight.  It is our enemy, and has been so since a time before memory.  It wishes to climb the memories of your kind.  The world where you live your other lives, that realm is the wellspring - all that is in this world and those beyond came first from that blessed realm. 

I couldn't stop myself. "Do you mean that people - human people - dreamed all this before, and it just kind of lingers?"

It is a created place, yes.  But we created kinds still remake ourselves.  And not all the creators were human; you think only of the recent times.  Your world is older than you know.  This realm is older still.

"How can this world be older than ours, but be created by ours?" Gina couldn't help herself, either.

Consider that all this conversation here has taken only the space of a breath to the bodies you have above.  Dream again tomorrow night, and a month will have passed here.  In a hundred year of your time?  Far more.  So, your realm made ours, yet ours is the elder now.  And this same pattern repeats in all the deeper realms; time there speeds faster yet beyond time here.  Still, time passes.  The steps we would spin for you come swiftly.  Look!

Across the water, a crystalline staircase was taken shape, growing with graceful, fractal symmetries.  It arched only upward, out of sight among the mist-creatures.

We went up, to face the nightkind again.