Pre-Decoration Decorating

It was a fantastic day. The clouds were scarce making the sky above me look picturesque and beautiful. It allured my eyes away from the ground.

I looked up at the beautiful skies as I sat in a barn milking a blue cow. The rhythmic motion of squeezing the utters up and down and hearing the sound of milk pouring into a bucket soothed my heart and soul.

"Shit, it happened again." Were the words that broke me out of my tranquillity.

I sharply turned around to locate the owner of the voice, but I began to panic when I couldn't find the owner of the voice. The disturbance of the voice had lifted a vile that had previously been clouding me.

'Who was that voice?', 'Where am I?' and 'Why am I milking a cow?' Were all thoughts running through my mind.

The once elegant and clear skies began to darken and the sound of the clouds crackling resonated in my ears. The once relaxed and friendly cow fell over and began violently kicking the ground whilst mooing.

"You need to calm down miss Wolf. It's me… You are just in a … Please calm down, you …" She tried to explain things to me to get me to calm down, but it didn't work because of the sound of the wind, thunder and the cow's desperate moos.

The same feeling I felt before transforming took over me, and I felt my heart nearly beat out of my chest. I could feel the wind about to blow me off my feet however before that happened I felt someone grab behind.

"Miss Wolf, could you please calm down?" I heard the person whisper in my ear. I recognised the voice as Barbara.

"Barbara is that you?" I asked as the storm began to settle and the skies began to brighten.

"Yes, it is." Barbara said relieved to see me calm again. "That was close. You nearly turned this dream into a nightmare."

"This is a dream?"

"Sure is. I hate to admit it but Coyle was right about me slipping into people's dreams. I promise this is totally by accident and not intentional at all."

"Am I really in a dream? It feels weirdly real."

"That's because any dream I enter becomes a lucid dream. It's quite fun when I do it on purpose because then I have a degree of control of what happens in the dream, but when it happens by accident I'm completely powerless."

"So what do we do now? Do I wake up?"

"I don't recommend it. It's best to let your body wake up on its own, if I force you awake in the dream then you might have sleep paralysis for a while. However, there are still a lot of things we can do here, and time passes faster, so it will be no time until you are awake again."

"What should we do then?"

Barbara began to think of things of things to do, and I could see her face strain as she thought about it. After a minute or two, she clapped her hands together and exclaimed her idea. "We can begin work early and begin choosing your furniture for your new house. I'm sure it would put a smile on Coyle's face if we had half the job done before we woke up. Wait, he probably wouldn't smile, but he might not scowl."

"How are we supposed to do that in a dream?" I asked looking at Barbara confused.

"Were in a lucid dream, remember?" Barbara said to me as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Anything you want can happen in a lucid dream, so just imagine we are in your new house and it's fully furnished."

I closed my eyes and thought back to looking around the house and the garden, and tried imagining the empty rooms being filled with things I wanted. When I opened my eyes the cow and the field we were in had vanished.

We were now in the house I had chosen, but other than the size and dimensions of the rooms it was completely different. We stood in the dining room, and it had almost been completely remodelled. I had always loved the aesthetic of Victorian England aristocracy and the room certainty matched that.

The small table in the corner of the room had been replaced with a grand one in the centre of the room, the once wooden flooring was now an embellished carpet and the walls were covered in various ornaments and decorations. The strangest was a previously non-existent family portrait of me, Kyle and mom.

Barbara smirched a little as she admired the room. "Whilst I do appreciate the style, can we turn it down a bit? We are working on a limited budget."

I blushed slightly at the grandeur of the room. 'I didn't mean to make it like this. It was just the first thing that popped into my head.' I thought as I closed my eyes and reimagined the room again. This time slightly more humble.

The room looked more similar to how it did originally now, but it was a lot less empty than it was before. The small corner table was back, and instead of a large table in the middle of the room, there was a sofa facing a tv mounted on the wall. There were also other things in the room like shelves and a coffee table.

"Great this all seems to be within our budget, so far." She said looking around and sitting on the sofa, testing the comfy-ness of it. "Let's check out the other rooms."

The next room we visited was the kitchen. It was filled with a lot more appliances and cooking equipment, but all the counters and the fridge were the same as the house before. Barbara began inspecting all the items for their quality and possible price, and I also notice she had started to make a list on a piece of paper.

"Why are you writing everything down? Won't it disappear when we wake up?" I asked curiously.

"No need to worry. I can create an illusion of anything I have seen in a dream in reality. It's part of my powers as a dream witch." Barbara answered me with a smile.

We headed upstairs next to see the bedroom and bathroom. The bedroom now had a bedded bed instead of just the frame of a bed and a desk with a computer. The bathroom wasn't much different from what we saw before, other than it being better decorated and cleaner. There were a lot of flowers and scented candles in the bathroom, I kind of like scented candle baths.

After checking a few other details and the garden, we were pretty much done. Barbara was tallying up the potential cost. "The cost might go a little over with the computer upstairs, but I think if it's for something that can help with your studies, then I don't think the council will mind increasing the budget a little."

"What is the council? I have heard you and Coyle mention it a lot." I asked curiously as I lead on my imaginary sofa.

"The council is mine and Coyle's employers. Whilst each island in the mystic isles has its laws and governing body, the council manages all affairs between the islands and all the external affairs. They make sure that nothing is leaked about magic to the outside, and agents like me and Coyle enforce that."

"Why do you and Coyle work for the council?"

"Well, I was chosen because I was gifted in creating illusions. Most other dream witches can't make illusions from other people's dreams and only their own. Making me perfect for interrogation because it is near impossible for people to hide things in their dreams." Barbara's explanation kind of made me a little scared. Being interrogated in a dream sounded like a 'nightmare.'

"I believe Coyle was chosen because of that notepad of his. He can take a person's memory and store it on the paper of the notepad, but he has to know what the memory is about before he takes it, so that's why we were put on a team together. The bulk of our job is wiping the memories of normal humans seeing magical things, but sometimes we get the fun jobs like hunting down rogue agents or helping people like you."

Barbara had a proud look on her face as she talked about her job and her time with Coyle, but just as she was telling me a story about breaking into a famous singer's house and getting their autograph in a dream, everything began to become misty and fade away.

"What's happening?!" I asked Barbara as she began to fade away.

"Don't worry, you're just waking up. Come and wake me up, when you are awake." That was the last thing I heard as I slowly opened my eyes to my room in the Blue Cow.