Cascading into a swirling tornado, a small and fragile child is thrown apart violently. His body twirling and bending in ways no living thing should. The boy cannot scream for help, his voice locked inside by his pain, yet he still pleads for it to end. He pleads to the wind and yet, the wind cares not for the boy, for it is only wind. -Instantly a swirling spike caught in the debris the wind had picked up stabs straight through his heart. Seemingly on cue, as if his heart had been the only thing keeping him together so far, the boy instantly broke into pieces. Just one more piece of debris caught in this world’s natural disasters. And then the boy woke up.

“Oh Christ, that’s the last time I’m having Chinese food before sleepi- wait, what the hell?” the boy incredulously asked, more miffed than anything else at his current predicament. “What the hell is happening?!” Fear suddenly struck the boy, piercing his veil of sleep, as he noticed his surroundings for the first time since he woke up; Surrounding him was a lush, dense forest. The trees were forming a dense wall that obscured his vision from all sides.

“Fucking Chinese food...” he finally exclaimed after a minute of thought. He was probably having a particularly realistic nightmare because of the greasy pleasures he partook in last night. He didn’t even exercise before sleeping. He didn’t even change out of his dirty clothes, now that he thought about it. He was basically asking himself to get fat.

He looked down at his stomach, what used to show lean abdominal muscles were now covered in a thin layer of fat… a prospect of growing up lazy. He was still far too light, but he preferred if he’d fill that part of him with muscle rather than- "What the hell am I talking about while I’m in a forest? Wait, why the hell am I in a forest in the first place!?" Damn his thoughts… His habit of daydreaming about inane things always paved a path of ridicule amongst his peers. He would look as if he was deep in thought, brooding about problems, prompting his friends to worriedly ask him if everything was right. The best explanation they'd get was a rant about why different TVs had different locations for buttons.

And here he was doing it again. He almost wished he was back in the tornado dream, at least then the pain was only physical. He had no time to shame himself then. Whatever, if this was a lucid dream, he might as well have fun with it. Finally standing up, the boy stretched, ready to begin his trek through the dangerous and unforeseen forest! Or, at least he would have if the blood didn’t rush to his head from jumping to his feet so quickly, filling his vision with stars. “Oh, what the… how do dreams give you headaches?! I’m in my own head!” the boy shouted, only to then start deliriously laughing at his own joke.

Obviously, he wouldn’t be screaming such nonsense in the real world. His awareness that nothing was real caused him to lower his inhibitions a bit. Of course, that didn’t matter much to the village girl hiding behind the bushes with a basin of water. She was absolutely terrified at the spectacle unfolding before her. A raving loon with long black hair and deep and sharp eyes stood laughing in the clearing. he was also dressed in fancy clothes, like the merchants that pass through the village would,

Seeing what appeared to be either a sick or insane man sparked fear for her people’s lives, and her own. After all, only about a quarter of a mile south from here was her village, and she didn’t know if this boy was someone important enough to cause trouble for them or not. She slowly rose to her feet, seeking to warn her teacher, but in the process stepped on a dead branch at her feet. Its crack was like thunder to her ears. She cowered behind a tree, tipping the basin process. After spilling water all around her. The boy's raving stopped. She dared not speak, move, or even breath. Her racing heart didn't leave room to pay any mind to her now-filthy dress, soaked and muddy. A shrill “NOPE!” and a quick thudding of footsteps followed after a moment, heading directly away from her home, leaving her baffled. It seemed the crazy man had run away.

"NOPE NOPE NOPE, I knew it, this was a goddamn nightmare!" He ran for a good ten seconds before he even considered looking behind him. Nothing was there of course, and he spent a good while pretending to not be embarrassed by the whole ordeal. Of course, a fool does not only look to not learn from their mistakes but seek to repeat them. Following that advice, the idiot decided the best course of action was to go back and see what the commotion was all about.

It turned out to be pretty easy to locate, his footprints were clearly seen in the soft loamy earth and he'd broken plenty of branches in his flight. “There was something behind those bushes… “maybe there are people around this forest?” he wondered, looking to the fauna that was covering the front of a rather indiscriminate-looking tree. He circled the area around it and found something unexpected. Mud… and within it were the little footprints of a person. Aiming directly opposite of where he ran. “Damn, I think I scared them... “ he anxiously said. "Well, no time like the present!" He jubilantly exclaimed as he started marching off toward the direction the footprints led.

Perhaps they would help him after he'd apologize. Then again, this was all a dream anyway, so he could forgive himself for being an idiot, just this once!

At least, that’s what he was telling himself… this all felt too real. Usually, he didn’t have this amount of perception in a dream. Before this one, he had never really had any lucid dreams. It was an ability he deeply wished he had; he knew blaming cheap takeout was just an excuse. In reality, the constant nightmares were always gnawing at his psyche. For the past few years, he had daily night terrors that he shared with no one. They'd involve him most of the time, running and dying in plenty of terrible ways. It came to the point where he developed insomnia just to keep away from sleep. Occasionally he’d have a dreamless night in which he would close his eyes and wake up, but those days were almost worse than the others, as he always woke up covered in sweat gripping his frantically beating heart. He knew he was being shielded from those nightmares, so he never actually went and thought too hard about it. Whatever he was keeping bottled up he made sure would never see the light of day.

Despite this, he took relatively good care of his body, making sure to run almost every day. He would have looked almost normal if his troubled sleep didn’t harden and darken his eyes way above those his age. He’d fit right in a grim action movie if it wasn’t for his horribly tacky pink button-up shirt and dark green jeans (where he got them, no one knows). From the neck down, He looked like he belonged in a show directed at 4-year-olds. It was not a good look for someone who was 19. Of course, his personality was more portrayed through his outfit than his face, even his long hair was just due to laziness in finding someone to cut it.

While he was busy talking to himself, he slowly made his path to where the unknown person went. They seemed to know how to cover their tracks, but that didn’t stop him, he merely just started walking in a straight path to where the footprints in the mud earlier pointed. Now, there were plenty of reasons why this would be considered idiotic.; First of all, there were only a few footprints, so they might have just walked out of the mud and went a different way, and the way she didn’t disturb the fauna could also mean she just didn’t pass through here. It could have also been as simple as they had been as lost as he was. Of course, it wasn’t that he was just that confident in his decision-making, he just never even thought about the chance that he was wrong. His idiocy was only surpassed by his indomitable luck. Thus, the youth headed directly towards the village, while the girl ran to warn them.

About 20 minutes later he finally came across a clearing, and from it, he could spot the glorious rise of modern civilization! Or at least, what the Amish would consider modern. Why did this place look like it’s never seen a phone line before? At this point, he had accepted the fact that this was the real world, and that he was thrown into the woods for some reason. No dream felt like this, and the fact that it wasn’t a nightmare had him facing the facts. This also meant that he was now a lot more self-conscious about the fact that someone saw him insanely rambling in the woods. That had him wanting to dig a hole, jump in, and cover it with a big rock. He was desperate to explain the situation to the people the villager no doubt told. The last thing he needed was to be ridiculed by strangers.

As he neared the village he saw that his earlier assumption on it wasn’t so clear cut. It certainly was primitive but it seemed much more advanced than he first assumed.; The houses seemed to be connected by cobblestone roads, each cleanly paved and detailed. The houses themselves were built sturdy and neatly, almost looking like a suburb made of rather large log cabins. Some were even made of brick. Derb was sitting on top of a particularly high and sturdy branch, allowing him to see the place better. He was still unsure of the area so he decided to scope out the general vicinity. He heard of rural areas devoid of outside contact being full of Dangerous people and whatnot. He didn’t feel right about becoming someone’s next ritualistic meal. Speaking of which, it seemed that night was about to descend soon, and he was getting hungry... Maybe he was just being silly; there's no way the village could be that bad, right?