Short Story: Her Grandfather’s Old Shed

In the dreamscape, anything’s possible, so it’s only natural for lucid dreamers to dream of all the impossible things that can’t exist in real life.

Her grandfather is no exception. He has created roller coasters made out of jelly worms, sprawling underwater mansions, a world of giant insects, ice animals that sparkle in all colours of the rainbow, but no matter how much everything changes, the one thing that always remains is an ordinary shed.

The old shed is a replica of the one her grandfather grew up with. In the real world, it burned to cinders in the same freak firestorm that almost took her grandmother too. Even though she has never seen the actual structure, she’s visited it in her grandfather’s dreamscape that it’s more familiar to her than her own room.

Seeing it is both a source of comfort and worry. One day, just like the real shed, her grandfather will be gone, and his dreamscape will go with him. What will she do then?

A wet fish to the face slaps her out of her thoughts.

“What are you daydreaming about? Come on. I’m growing old here,” her grandfather teases, youthful eyes bright under his dark hair.

The dreamscape is so much more interesting than the real world. Why waste her time worrying about something she can worry about when she’s awake?

She grabs the fish and tosses it back at him. The slippery thing turns into a flying disc that her grandfather catches neatly between his fingers.

He grins, showing off his long canine teeth that he’s lost in the real world with age. “That’s more like it.”

~End~

Genre: fantasy, family