Dark Tales From Dandelion

The Daisy trees towered overhead, their white pedals like the branches of trees, their green stems like tree trunks. Jakeereeds buzzed around the giant cat called Daisy, mentally asking her if they could share in the movies of her mind. She had already allowed access to some of these naked, pale-skinned flying creatures, and they sat below on the red grass that covered Svargaloka.

“Dreams are … all there is. All thoughts are dreams, all perceptions dreams layered over dreams,” Daisy drawled to her small congregation of Jakeereeds. “You think I am a cat. And while I know it is not true, it is true to you.” Daisy licked a paw which was striped black and gray like the rest of her body. She had two pointed ears on each side of her head. “Even me thinking and knowing I am not a cat is but another dream.”

“Faw! Why don’t you ever speak clearly? There are objective truths, Daisy,” said the Bonjean Beatle, his enormous wire-like triangle of a head sticking into the clearing of Daisy trees just to argue. His sixty Legs, Daisy knew, were all pushing down Daisy trees outside of the clearing, bending them to the point where they would soon die.

“And why don’t you fuck off, Bonjean? Do you live just to argue?” Daisy said.

“Well that, and to eat Daisy trees,” The Bonjean Beetle said. Daisy knew all too well of the creature’s diet: eating her Daisy trees. The forest had patches all over it from the Bonjean beetle.

She couldn’t believe the audacity of this thing as it put its triangular head over the top of a group of the Daisy trees on the edge of the clearing and slowly lowered, making them disappear through the area within. It couldn’t be called a mouth, not really; Daisy could see through it like there was nothing there, but she knew that whatever passed through that invisible barrier disappeared from this realm to she knew not where.

“Besides,” Bonjean went on, “by your logic, it’s only your dream of me that makes me argumentative. I myself am not argumentative, I’m only the Bonjean Beetle, but you label me ‘argumentative’ because you dream it so.” He had a tone that always made Daisy feel that the beetle was pleased with hearing the sound of its own voice.

“Too true, Bonjean. It is important that we are able to dream our own dreams while knowing they are but dreams. Not all dreams align though, in fact most don’t,” Daisy said.

“But there are things, Daisy, that are universally true to all. Facts.”

“Elaborate, please,” Daisy said like an impatient school instructor.

The Bonjean Beetle gladly went on. “For example, stealing is morally wrong.”

Voids, but does he have to start with an area in which he is morally bankrupt? Daisy thought.

“To the thief? Or the one being stolen from?” Daisy said.

“To both, it is an immoral act,” said Bonjean.

“I would call this a shared dream, Bonjean. Most would agree that stealing is wrong, so therefore most experience a similar dream when it comes to such things. But there are those that do not share in this dream; those who do not dream it to be wrong at all.”

The Jakeereeds at Daisy’s feet chittered excitedly, their thick curly hair bouncing up and down on top of their heads.

“Their dreams are wrong,” the Bonjean Beetle said with a huff.

“Ah. But this is where things get tricky, Bonjean. To label a dreamer’s dream as ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ is to say that there is a One Dream that all should be dreaming.”

“Daisy. Stealing is wrong. It’s a universal truth.”

Daisy twitched two ears on the right side of her head. “Alright. So it is wrong for you to eat all of my Daisies then?”

“Who said they were your Daisies?”

“Why, I planted them, Bonjean. Does that make them mine?”

“Well. They stretch across all of this land. Miles and miles! Do you own the land?”

“At what point do the flowers become mine? Or, rather, at what point do they become yours?” Daisy said.

The Bonjean Beetle twisted its head around, ruffling some of the petals of a nearby Daisy tree, then jerking its head back self-consciously. “Daisy … I am in no mood for this conversation. I’ll come back when you’re less …divisive. Good day,” said the Bonjean Beetle, then he turned his massive head around, his long body and sixty legs trailing behind him sinuously as he made a new trail through the Daisy trees.

“They become mine only to me, when I dream them to me, but to you it is the same,” Daisy continued, speaking only to the Jakeereeds now that Bonjean had gone. “We can both dream them to be ours individually, but what makes them ours in truth? Nothing. Nothing but the One Dream. Do we truly want that? For One to say ‘this is the only dream’ and discontinue our autonomy? That is what the Necrolore is for, little ones. The Necrolore, the story-taker, would make Bonjean believe these flowers are mine, thus controlling his dreaming. He has come before, and I fear that with the Merrilore, the dream-keeper, being alive for so long, helping to allow the autonomy of stories, of dreams, that the Necrolore is but a waiting doom hanging above the Daisies. When the Necrolore comes, there are no dreams, no stories—only His stories. And that is the One Dream you will be able to watch, little Jakeereeds. Now, I ask you; wouldn’t it be so dull?”

The Jakeereeds chittered. Some griped. Some whined. Some even wooped in approbation. But there were those select few who remained silent; those who did not think it would be so dull at all, but wondrous. As there always would be.