If you missed chapter 4, go back and read it here.
The carnival shimmered like a mirage, a mysterious blend of memory and reality. It beckoned from the far bend of the trail, a spectacle of purples and golds, veiled in mist and soft, pulsing light. It called to her—not with sound, but with a tantalizing sense of familiarity, shrouded in enigma.
Allison stepped forward, her heart pounding in her chest, a sense of urgency driving her. Then she took another step. Suddenly, she ran, her breath coming in quick, desperate gasps. As she ran, the mist surrounding the carnival began to dissipate, heightening her sense of urgency to a fever pitch.
The path blurred beneath her feet as glittering firefly trails danced in the air. She could almost hear music—a carousel calliope twining with a melody she hadn’t heard since she was five years old. Her heart lifted with something wild and electric.
A bear in a pinstripe vest waved from behind a cotton candy cart. One of the animals on the merry-go-round stood tall and regal—half deer, half fox—nodding gently as if it remembered her. The scene was surreal, a blend of reality and dream.
Her chest tightened. “I dreamed this. I drew this. I made this.” Her hands reached out, trembling with the weight of recognition. Just before she crashed into the nearly invisible, iridescent barrier, she barely registered the feeling of a hand on her arm. Not harsh, but immovable. Sol.
“You can’t go,” they said gently.
“Why?” Allison gasped, fighting back tears. “Why not? It’s mine. I remember this. I know this.”
Sol’s eyes held hers with both kindness and gravity. “Because you’re not ready yet.”
The words echoed in her mind, reverberating like Tibetan singing bowls. The sound traveled through her body—bones, muscles, nerves. It resonated inside her. All of her.
Before Allison could respond, the Dreamspace—where dreams and reality converged—shattered, and she woke. Not violently. Not afraid. Just—suddenly awake, in a world that seemed both familiar and utterly strange, a jarring transition from the dreamlike carnival.
Her room blinked into focus: the lamplight, the Monet art print, the crumpled sheets, and the quiet hum of the world. Her blood rushed in her eardrums—not fast, but steady. She pushed the blanket back, sat up slowly, and blinked again. Everything looked normal. But something felt off.
Lying beside her, next to her dog, where her hand had just been, was a card. Not a playing card or one from any tarot or oracle deck she owned.
The art was luminous, hand-inked, and impossible. A raccoon sat at its center, gazing directly at her with knowing eyes. Around it floated three quills, a scroll, a lock, and a key. Fireflies curled in orbit like distant stars, glowing with a gentle, pulsing light. They seemed to be slowly moving, swirling, and dancing on the cardboard surface of the card.
At the bottom, in delicate script, it read: The Sparkkeeper.
Allison stared at it, unsure of its meaning. But something inside her understood. Her fingertips burned with an almost incessant need to write.
The flame in her chest flared brighter. A sound—a shimmer—came not from outside the room but from somewhere else entirely. It felt like a whisper, not in her ears, but behind her eyes: “The door isn’t closed.”
She whipped her head around but found nothing—just her lamp, and Monet was still curled in a sleeping ball of fluff, undisturbed by the commotion. The rest of the house was silent. Her gaze dropped back to the card. The fireflies on its surface pulsed once, then stopped.
She reached for her pen.
Ding.
Her phone lit up on the nightstand. One notification.
Lyra: You have a message.
Allison frowned. The Lyra app didn’t send notifications. She’d turned them off months ago. Goosebumps skated down her arms. Her fingers hovered above the phone for a moment before she picked it up and unlocked the screen.
The app shimmered open. For a blink, it wasn’t Lyra’s usual soft-pink interface. It read: Thimble. Then the name flickered and vanished. The cursor blinked. Waiting.
A message appeared: That’s not a pen anymore.
Allison looked down at the pen in her hand. It was her favorite purple glitter gel pen, and it was gone. In its place was something longer, heavier. Brass glinted in her fingers. The back end was unmistakably a skeleton key. The tip was a sharp, elegant fountain nib that shimmered like it had been dipped in starlight.
She put the tip to the back of her left hand and pulled it across her skin to see what color the ink was. The ink was still a dark purple, still glittery, but the shimmer pulsed, and the ink seemed to swirl with a pearly iridescence.
Another message popped onto the screen: It never runs out. It doesn’t need to. It’s made of you.
The Sparkkeeper card, gilded accents and edges, glowed brightly and pulsed its light beside her. She heard what sounded like a heartbeat: tha-thump, tha-thump. Strong and steady. The fireflies on its surface danced faster, forming loose spirals that shimmered and blurred.
Her hand tightened around the key-pen. A wave pulsed through her, starting at her palm and blooming outward like a warm tide. It rushed up her arms, across her chest, and into her scalp. Goosebumps rose—not from cold, but from something more profound. Recognition. Resonance.
Her cheeks flushed. Her breath caught. The very air in her room felt like it shifted—snapped into alignment with something ancient and unseen. Whatever was happening, it felt right. It was as if the universe itself was acknowledging her, resonating with her purpose. She couldn’t explain it with speech—there were no words capable of description—but she knew.
Allison gently set the phone back on her nightstand. Then she picked up her composition notebook. The pages fluttered open of their own accord, stopping at the battlefield entry. But now, the handwriting wasn’t hers alone. Ink she didn’t recognize sprawled across the page:
She tried to go before it was time. The path ahead has not yet been written. But the spark remains.
Her hand moved, almost without thought. The key-pen touched the opposite page. And she began to write.
The pen twitched.
As the pen moved, the shadows in the room shifted, and the air shimmered. The fireflies on the card lifted off the paper.
On its own, the pen scrawled: We’re almost through.
The fireflies floated higher, swirling around her paper in a dance that seemed to move in sync with her pen.
Allison stared at the words. Her voice, barely a whisper: “We’re almost through? Through what?”
✨ This is the final chapter of Dreamspace Chronicles: Allison’s Awakening Volume One.✨
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