dream
I was in a small town, with big pine forests surrounding it. If you went through one forest you'd end up on an isolated and small rocky shore of a massive lake. Me and some other people, about four or five of us all together, went down to that isolated shore. There was me, maybe one or two other people who I couldn't quite identify, and a girl about the same age I was in the dream. I was a teenager.
No one really went to that lake, because decades ago a young girl drowned in the lake. It was really foggy, but we made it to the shore, where we found a dilapidated shed hidden in the treeline. Inside the shed we discovered that the girl had died in a ritual, one that would repeat every X years. And wouldn't you know it, apparently it was our turn to die.
We tried to run back to the town, but when we exited the shed that path through the trees was gone. Invisible hands, cold and impossible to break out of, grabbed us. We tried not to look towards the lake, but we were forced to. One guy was forced to look at a tree that had been put together by more invisible forces. It was not a tree, but it was, and it was deeply unsettling.
I got dragged over to a couple flat rocks on the edge of the lake. It wasn't a slope into the lake like I had thought, but a steep cliff under the water. I was forced to kneel and look into the lake, where my reflection was looking at me. My reflection had something wrong with its eyes. It smiled at me, and came out of the water and grabbed my wrists. It pulled me into the lake.
As I was being dragged down into the lake, at some point my reflection turned into my childhood friend, Ter (from CAS.) We could both breathe somehow, and she had apparently been coming to this location for a couple days beforehand to set some things up. We sank to a rocky outcrop, holding hands. Ter had set up some different clothes (all old fashioned shirts & skirts, like the ones we were already wearing) and a small rowboat. I started to change skirts, but Ter stopped me. We didn't have time. I somehow knew that there was an evil seal after us, and that seal had been the one who tried to drown me for its ritual. We piled the clothes in the rowboat, and set off in it across a lake underneath the lake.
It became very dark, very quickly. It was already twilight at the bottom of the lake, and once we had sailed a couple feet it went almost pitch black. There was a heavy curtain hanging in front of us, I could see the folds in the fabric but I couldn't see the opening. Eventually we managed to part it and sail through. Now we were in complete darkness. The lake was still, the only ripples we could hear came from our boat. I don't know how long we were on that lake, but after however long it was, we came across another heavy curtain.
Parting it and heading through, we found ourselves in an underground cavern. It was a huge natural tunnel, with small outcrops on the sides, some of them with light coming through an opening at the top. I knew that we were in an in between place, and each opening would lead us into another world. There were a couple seals, some swimming and some basking, but we knew that they were the guardians of this place. If we wanted to go to a different world, we'd need to get past or get the approval of the guardian seal first.
Seeing as the last seal was evil, we put our boat to shore on a larger outcropping that didn't have a seal instead. It was large enough to have a few small, brightly painted, wooden houses that wouldn't look out of place on the coast. Ter stayed in the boat while I went into the first building. It was a small shop, with four adults inside, but I only had attention for two. I asked them if they were [name I can't remember.] They looked at each other, before turning back to me. They weren't the people I was looking for. The people with that last name were in the house behind them. I thanked them and began to leave, when they asked me my name. I could remember my name, but I didn't want to share it. Somehow I knew that normally when people entered this in between place, they forgot theirs. I didn't want to be too strange, so I said I couldn't remember, but that I'd tell them as soon as I did. They looked sad but unsurprised.
In the second house, it was only one room with a bunkbed in it. There were two children sleeping, and I woke them up. The top bunk had a small girl who immediately got up and started making her bed. The bottom had a younger boy, who was quite sleepy. I pulled him out and held him. The girl was the same one who had been drowned years ago.
Then I woke up.
