Ring of Dreams

Where Am I?

The sun in her eyes roused Jane from sleep. She lay quietly, her eyes still closed. I woke up before the alarm, she thought, and no wonder. How are those birds so loud?! She shifted, trying to get comfortable. There was something hard in the small of her back - she must have fallen asleep on a book again. Jane reached around to dislodge it, but her eyes flew open as her fingers registered the unmistakable rough texture of bark. Was that a - a tree overhead?

She bolted upright with eyes still bleary and tried to kick off her coverings, only to realize that what she had taken for a blanket was instead a very full skirt. Sh-she was wearing a dress? Okay, she was wearing a dress. Jane staggered to her feet, feeling lost inside so much fabric. The dress was a dark green, made of some kind of sturdy woven cloth, and it went from her collarbones to her ankles, broken up by a long embroidered belt looped twice across the middle. The sleeves were long, too, tight down to the elbow before flaring out into a bell that reached her wrist, with ends that trailed down far past that on the underside. Pulling one sleeve back, Jane discovered that there was another layer underneath - white and made of somewhat finer material, fitted close against her arm all the way up. 

As she pulled the outer sleeve back down, Jane's eye caught on the ring on her finger. It was the same ring she had placed on her finger last night - almost. It looked as though someone had made a very expensive copy of it. Instead of the cheap glass bauble that had been stuck on her ring, this one had a cloudy white gemstone the size of a dime that was polished into a smooth dome, and it had been set with care into a ring that Jane suspected might actually be solid gold.

Wait. If she was wearing the ring, and this weird stuff was happening, was she - was she sleeping? Did the ring actually work? Jane shoved back her sleeve and pinched herself, hard. Ow! Okay, maybe not sleeping, but she couldn't think of any explanation for her current situation but the magic ring. That she got from a crazy old man. Out by the trash cans. Well, anything sounds ridiculous when you say it with that attitude, she told herself. And how else did I get here?

Speaking of, where am I?

For the first time Jane looked around herself. She was in a forest - dense, old, and mossy. The lance of brilliant sunlight that had woken her up was an anomaly, punching through a break in the canopy where a large branch had fallen. The rest of the forest wasn't dark, but the sunlight was softer, diffused by and dappled through the leaves so that by the time it reached the forest floor it was a gentle blanket of soft, directionless green light. Birds called to each other from the trees, and Jane could hear their wings as they fluttered from branch to branch although she couldn't see them. 

She had been sleeping in the hollow between two massive roots at the base of a tree so thick that she doubted she could stretch her arms around it if there were three of her. Brilliant emerald moss carpeted the ground and anything that lay on it - rocks, dead branches, and debris - cushioning everything with a springy layer and softening their outlines. A breeze with a hint of chill rustled the leaves and whispered past her cheeks, and Jane realized that all of her layers were just right for the crisp weather.

This is so cool. Jane laughed out loud, extending her arms and spinning in sheer delight. Her skirts whirled out around her and she spun again just for the joy of it. As she slowed, she got thumped by her braid. Braid? She didn't braid her hair. She pulled it around to the front; her hair was indeed in a neat braid, and she couldn't be sure, but she thought it looked longer than usual. And perhaps it was a trick of the light, but she thought it looked lighter than usual, too. Dismissing it - after all, what's a few extra inches or blonder hair when you've been magically transported in your sleep - she flicked it back over her shoulder.

Well, now what do I do? she thought. I think it's time to explore and get to that adventure I was promised. You know, if this was an RPG I'd start out with a pack full of gear. Leather, she thought, with sturdy straps, and filled with useful things like food and a waterskin and weapons. The images flashed across her mind, clear as a bell, and suddenly she felt a little dizzy. Jane took a step to steady herself, and her toe nudged against something on the ground. She looked down and saw a pack, almost exactly like the one she had imagined. It was closed by some sort of lacing instead of buckles, but it looked as though it had what she needed.

Oh nice, she thought. I didn't notice that before. Jane opened the pack and began to rummage through the contents. Inside she found some very hard biscuits and what she thought was probably beef jerky, as well as a waterskin filled with water. There was also a burlap sack, a blanket, a rectangular piece of black stone, and a little dagger with a leather-wrapped handle. At the bottom of the pack was a little metal box, which proved to contain dead grass and wood chips along with a piece of sharp gray stone and an elongated metal 'C' three or four inches long. She puzzled over that for a while, but soon shrugged and stowed them back in their case. She'd figure that out later.

Jane carefully repacked her kit and rose, slinging the pack onto her back. Well, at least, she tried to. The long sleeves of her dress got tangled up in the straps and she had to take a few minutes to sort them out, but soon she was ready to go. She twisted the ring nervously. If she could trust the old man who had given it to her - and face it, it looked like he had been telling the truth - all she had to do to get home was go to sleep with the ring on her finger. That seemed simple enough, so she might as well enjoy being here. Now - which way should she go?

One direction looked pretty much the same as any other, so Jane chose the way that looked like it would be the easiest to walk and started going. At first it was fun just walking through the forest, clambering over downed logs and stray boulders, listening to the birds, and skirting around trees. Soon, though, she started to get a little frustrated. The little leather shoes she was wearing didn't have great traction, and her dress definitely wasn't made with climbing over rocks in mind. What she needed was a road - or at least a trail. With a forest this green, surely bigger animals than birds lived in it, and she knew that things like deer made trails that were big enough for a person to walk on. If she could find a game trail, worn flat by the feet of whatever animals lived here, she could have an easier time walking and maybe it would even lead her somewhere interesting. 

Almost as though it had been summoned, she stumbled across a thin brown track after she scaled the next boulder. I've probably passed like twenty of them, she thought, I just wasn't looking. She was relieved to get onto it, though, because deer traffic - or whatever - had made it much easier going than she had had so far and she was able to catch her breath. Although it was narrow it was flat and smooth and no underbrush encroached on it, and for the first time Jane could just sort of follow her feet and let her mind wander.

Now what? she thought. Don't get me wrong, it's been great. I'm walking through a forest out of a fairy tale dressed like a medieval lady, but this hardly qualifies as an adventure. If this were one of my books, I'd come upon a little town, or a village, or something, and in the tavern I'd meet a group of adventurers on a quest. That would really be something. 

Jane stopped, suddenly lightheaded. I should probably take a drink, she thought, I've been going for a while now. She leaned against a nearby tree and went through the whole rigamarole with the pack and the sleeves to get it off so she could extract her waterskin. The water was warmish and tasted a bit like leather, but she was thirstier than she had realized and drank quite a bit. After a few moments she felt better and was ready to move on. She hefted the waterskin thoughtfully, but decided against trying to attach it to her belt, which seemed more ornamental than functional. With a sigh, she put it back in the pack and laced it closed before once more maneuvering it past her sleeves and onto her back.

She walked on, still following the trail for lack of any better ideas, and after a while it seemed to her that the trees were thinning. After another fifteen minutes she was sure of it, and when the trail broke out of the trees completely into what appeared to be a field, Jane smiled triumphantly. Up ahead, past a pasture full of cows, sat a village.