This short story is to lay a quick and simple foundation setting the tone and theme for a world you can only dream.
It began, as such things often do, with fog on a still moonlit night. Not the sort that drifts lazily through a blooming meadow on a cold morning, nor the sea-born mist that drifted and slept upon raked shores. No, this was the kind that yawned and ached to be caressed, curling along lamp posts and swallowing alleys whole, until even familiar streets greet you as a stranger.
The traveler’s pace quickened, though they had no reason to hurry. Their satchel was light, pockets running empty. Their steps fell soft with building desperation. Yet with each turn, the fog seemed to lean closer, urging them onward.
And then, they saw it.
A doorway.
Standing alone at the edge of the cobblestones, having occupied the space of previous groomed hedges and bloomed tulips
The Everdoor.
A tall, crooked mass of wood, dark as midnight, and bound in marrow hinges that sighed as if alive, adorned in moss. Its curled ornate handle glowed faintly, not with flame, but with the memory of fire. The traveler came to a hesitant stop, slowly approaching then ceasing entirely. While strained breath was caught in the chilled air, the traveler stared ahead.
Behind them, the street had vanished. Only fog remained.
Ahead, the Everdoor waited, a faint ticking barely audible.
The traveler loosely held the handle. Warmth bloomed in their palm. Beckoning them through as if they finally arrived home after a long journey. Offering sweet release from that glacial fog. And with a breath they could not explain, they pushed.
The world burst into colour and laughter.
They stumbled into a marketplace that stretched beyond sight. Stalls stitched from patchwork cloth, scratchy quilts, and rugged burlap, swayed in a wind that smelled of cinnamon and tobacco. Paper lanterns painted with faces swung above, grinning and weeping all at once.
A sun which softly soothed the notes of a new dawn. Enveloping the sky in a blissful orange embrace. It bore an elden man’s face, wrinkled and old, everlasting in the sunrise.
Bottled shadows quivered on a vendor’s shelf. Another sold moths as bright as silver coins. An owl bartered away memories, plucking them from customers’ ears like ripe fruit. Clear as the sun was dawning did the traveler see mice and rats tall as they who ease the burden of possession from gleeful customers.
“Trade with us,” croaked a voice.
A Jackdaw, black-feathered, perched on the traveler’s shoulder. But where its face should be, donned a white mask with grin in ecstasy.
“A secret for a feather? A heartbeat for a dream?” It laughed, high and sharp, as the market joined with eruption. Soon all matter of patchwork folk, masked jackdaws, and ill-fated beast cackled, bartering truths in riddles the traveler could not follow.
Symphony pounded their mind. An over-stimulus of colour, sound, and what the locals call barter. They hurried on, their heart pounding simultaneous with awe and dread.
The laughter faded. The color drained. They had no matter of idea where they travel. Though they know they must.
Across the sky play another tune. Dimmed in moonlight blanketed in dark blues and sweet purples. She herself, lady moon, hung in the sky passing sorrow upon her lands.
The traveler found themselves in rolling fields of silver grass that hummed softly in the lowly wind. Glasswhisper trees dotted the edge of the fields. As the wind paid them visit did their shards echo lost memories. Lantern Beasts wandered there, a usually abominable sight of fox mashed together with an elk, gave a soft golden radiance about them from their bellies. As if the sun himself lay within.
One beast slowed, walking beside the traveler. Its light stretched long shadows, guiding them toward the overgrown path ahead. After a solemn stroll, and now beast-less, at the crossroads in the distance stood a small figure.
A child. Pale as wax. A flame flickered from their hair like a candlewick. Eyes hollow sucking in all emotion. Wearing a nightgown.
The Candleborn raised their face, eyes wide, voice harmonic.
“You may walk the path of longing,” they said, “or the path of dread. But know this, in the Wild, every choice may leave you dead.”
The traveler’s heart dropped. Silence screamed through the silver grass up onto the traveler. A cold sweat formed as Death pondered in the unseen. Strangely, the air smelled faintly of home to the left, faintly of rotting corpse to the right. They stepped toward the familiar, though their chest ached as though something precious was already slipping away.
The path ended at a lake.
Black as obsidian, perfectly still.
The traveler leaned close, hoping for respite, then gasped. Their reflection was not their own. It rose from the water. A twin, stitched from shadow and gleam, smiling wickedly. A Mirrorling. Every bit a copy yet vile, the brilliant light of hope made blindingly foul. Slowly with head titled, it stretched it’s offering hand.
Behind them, a song began.
The Hollow Choir. Figures cloaked in drab black drifted from behind the treeline, heads missing leaving only void. They sang, and the air itself shivered. The moon above bent lower, quivering at the sound.
The traveler clutched their ears in pain, but the song slipped through flesh and bone. It filled their marrow, carved words upon their very soul. “You may leave these lands, but they will never leave you.”
Once again, they ran. Whatever last droplets of life they had left were fading. “I must leave before I am consumed”, they thought.
Back, through fields, through laughter, through fog. Their vision spinning, lungs catching any air they could. A flurry of dizzying emotions flooded them. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, another doorway loomed. Glowing softly against a tingling mist. The faint ticking of a clockwork butterfly grazing on a patch of moss.
The traveler stumbled through. Allowing it all to settle.
They were home. The fog cleared. The cobblestones returned. The lamps glowed assuredly. Yet when the traveler looked down, they saw faint silver grass clinging to their boots, and a candle’s warmth flickered softly in their chest.
The Everdoor was gone.
But the Wonderful, Wild, and Wyrd had followed them back.