13

You awake suddenly in the darkest depths of the night. You turn to look at your alarm clock, but the familiar red glow is gone. You glance towards the hallway where you should see the nightlight from the bathroom, but that is gone, too. You blink and rub your eyes, afraid for a fleeting moment you may have gone blind, but as you strain to see into the darkness, you realize it is not truly black. Far off in the distance, you see a flickering as if from a campfire. A breeze crosses your bed, and you shiver, not just from the cold but also because the breeze has made the leaves above your head rustle, and you definitely did not have any trees in your bedroom when you went to sleep.

Looking up, you can see the darkness of a canopy of leaves and as the breeze blows, the branches part and you can see patches of a star-studded sky. As a matter of fact, there are more stars than you have ever seen before and far more than you ever see from one of your city apartment's windows.

You pat your bed, assuring yourself that it is real, and it is. Your bed, however, is no longer in your cramped bedroom; it is now sitting in the middle of a forest. You take stock of yourself. You are in your pajamas: a pair of old workout pants and a t-shirt. You carefully lean over the side of the bed and reach down to find your slippers. Your slippers sit right where you left them, only not on your bedroom floor, but on this leaf-covered forest floor. You put them on, and you stand, pulling your fuzzy robe from the end of the bed. It is here that you hesitate.

If you crawl back into bed hoping this is simply a very vivid dream, go to page 5.

If you head off through the woods towards the campfire, go to page 25.