What Dreams May Come

The darkness suffused paw and foot alike, and there was a deep cold with it, like the breath from the lungs of a high mountain pass on a black winter night. But although Penny Rose expected the squelch of wetness beneath her sole, none came. It wasn't wet at all. Lucif trode on deeper into it, and Penny Rose followed suit. Soon the darkness came to her nose, and Lucif's eyes. A calm in the mirror-silver, and the reassuring grip she had on its ruff, kept Penny Rose from turning about, though her heart had sank deep into fear. Was the land they traveled to under all of this?
The darkness encompassed her, like the thickest of smokes.
Only her grasp on Lucif's fur and the soft yet reassuring ground beneath her feet oriented her, as the slope continued downwards for some time. They must have passed on for fifteen minutes before the deep of black seemed to lessen to the smoke of a dour gray, and then thinned to a haze and finally opened up clear, if still dark. There was a great cavern in which they stood, looking as if it sloped away to nothing before them, like there was some deep hole into which it fell, some hundreds of yards ahead. Great pointed rocks surrounded them, jagged, torn, and dark gray, some black, fallen, or rising, throughout the earth on which they stood. It was lit dully by an other-worldly light that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, but it was a chill light, unearthly, gray. The world was without shadow, and seemed flat, two-dimensional, and very dim. The ground continued down beneath her feet, and Lucif turned to her.
"You must follow me carefully here, my dear," it said calmly, and started to pick its way through the thick, tired, silent light and jagged boulders. Penny Rose followed behind, hand out to keep her fingers to the fur of Lucif's back. It's tail twitched here and there, sometimes hitting Penny Rose in the nose, or swishing her ear, but Lucif seemed undisturbed and Penny Rose found it oddly reassuring. They continued to slope down. They sloped until it seemed as if they could not possibly slope more... The perfectly round edge of the cliff, shaped like the curve of a hill, seemed to spread right before their feet. "Close your eyes," said Lucif with great sureness and aplomb. Penny Rose bit her lip, took a firmer grip into Lucif's fur - she felt it flinch slightly under her fingers - and closed them resolutely.
They walked forward.
It was like walking up a very smooth hill.
They continued to walk.
The hill continued to climb under them.
Penny Rose dared not open her eyes for fear of something going terribly, terribly wrong.

After some long, blind minutes, the ground was flat again, and her toes hit the small pebbles of a more uneven earth. Lucif seemed to breathe more easily beside her. It stopped. "You may open your eyes, child," it said briefly. Penny Rose opened them and carefully turned to look behind her, frightened everything could reverse and she would fall down, up... Fall to her death. Sloping down to a great hole was the soft, smooth grassy side of a rounded hill. They had walked not through, or over, but AROUND it, as if it was the side of a perfect ball. Her head swam, and she blinked as her stomach revolted at such a thought. Lucif stared limpidly at her. "This is not the gate, my dear, only the path to it. Come with me to that far stone there." Penny Rose sighted what it indicated: a great stone placed at the side of the cavern wall. Except here it was not a cavern wall. It was the dark branches of dark, dark, trees. Trees crowded with branches and fir needles.
They walked together to the huge, whitish stone, shaped roughly like some sort of obelisk. Lucif turned to her slowly. It looked long into her wondering eyes. "And here I must leave you, my dearest," it said, particularly kindly. "No one can enter through the gate together; for you are not in my dreams-not as you are anyways-and I am not in yours." Penny Rose's heart seemed to sink to her feet.
"What do you mean?" she queried, forlorn. "Dreams?"
"You must walk through the dreams you dream to get to the other land," replied Lucif simply. "These great arbors guard the way. Beyond them lies... for me, a cloudy mist, and then the annals of my mind." Lucif paused momentarily, as if thinking back upon the thousand thoughts before. It seemed to recall itself quickly, though, and turning back to her said, "and we cannot tarry. Remember, always remember," it brought its head close to hers, its gaze almost unbearably deep and cloudy, "it is only a dream."
Penny Rose shuddered. Dreams were especially cruel to her.