Part 11 In which Jack has a bad dream

Players:

Marlot
A witch with a warm heart, although she prefers people to think her cold

Jinx
A lazy cat, who would spend all of his days sleeping if it was up to him

Jack
The golem who’s recent love of fairy tales has unexpected consequences


Marlot sat up with a start, in the other room someone was screaming like she had never heard someone scream before. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to get up when someone forced himself through the door and Jack fell face first onto her bed. Jinx jumped up with fright and Marlot assumed hid under the bed.

“What’s wrong dear, what happened, did someone get inside…” He was crying, his face now in Marlot’s lap and he was shaking with fear. “Jack, please what happened?”

He didn’t speak, but continued to cry and she realized that there must not be any immediate danger or he would be trying to get away, or would have been followed. Marlot smoothed the green hair on his hansom head, eventually he cried himself out. “There were giants Marlot.”

“Where Jack?” She was trying to be kind and although she had spent most of her life trying to make people fear her, she found being kind surprisingly easy, as long as it was only to her golem.

“While I was asleep, it’s like all of those stories I read yesterday were true, but I wasn’t brave or strong, and then I ended up inside of a pumpkin and one of the giants tried to smash it…”

“You had a dream Jack, none of those things can hurt you.”

“What is a dream, is it normal?”

“Perfectly normal my dear, everyone dreams. It’s like moving pictures in your mind, sometimes you will actually be in them and other times you are just watching. Actually it sounds like you had a nightmare, they are bad dreams, still nothing to be frightened of but they do leave you terrified when you wake up.”

“Do nightmares happen often?”

“Usually not, maybe once or twice every few months or so, they might happen more often, I hear tell that people dream every night, they just don’t always remember them.”

“Marlot, I’m too scared to go to sleep.”

“I could read you a story, but I think all of those tales you read yesterday are what caused your nightmare.”

“But I liked them Marlot, please read another, a nice one.”

“Alright,” she got up and looked at Jack sitting on her bed, still wearing the robes she had given him the day he came out of the cauldron. “I think you need something to wear to bed, I know for a fact that robes are not comfortable to sleep in.” she dug around in a drawer until she found an old pair of breaches and a long shirt that she sometimes wore when working out in the garden. “Put these on, I will go fine a story.”

Marlot danced her fingers along the spines of her beautifully illustrated fairy tales. “Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White…no they all have wicked witches and fairies, I don’t want him to be scared of me too. Cinderella, perfect, a bad childhood and fairy god mothers, no bad magic there, or anything to scary.”

When Marlot walked back into her room Jinx was back on the bed, and Jack, who was wearing the long shirt she had given him, seemed to be having difficulties with the breaches. Marlot laughed at her poor clueless golem and she buttoned and tied them around his waist. “Now sit down, and I will read Cinderella.” Marlot lit a candle as Jack curled up under the blankets. “Once there was a gentleman who married, for his second wife, the proudest and most haughty woman that was ever seen…”

As she read, Jack appeared to grow more and more tired, until at last he was snoring gently and she whispered, “And they all lived happily ever after. Good night Jack.” She couldn’t bring herself to wake him up and make him go back into the storage room where she had made a small bed for him, so she left him where he was, blew out the candle, and fell asleep next to him.