Chapter Text
I woke up in a cold sweat, the cheap motel bed under me doing nothing in terms of comfort. Nightmares. Oh, how they plague me. My eyes slowly come to focus and I have to stifle a shout so I didn’t wake my friend. My notebook, which I had fallen asleep with, was levitating in front of me, a small blue aura surrounding it. Impulsively, I reached out to touch it, but the moment I loved my hand it fell back onto my bed with a thud.
Immediately, my slightly sleep deprived mind goes to Gideon and his weird amulet, but then I’m reminded of the fact I had confiscated it from him shortly after he tried to murder Dipper. It still confuses me how a magical artifact such as that got into this world.
The springs of the bed protest as I shift to get up and check the drawer of my bedside table. Yep. It’s still in here, a pale blue emitting from it, not bright enough to indicate being active. I slide the drawer shut, the sound mildly piercing in the almost silence of the room.
I couldn’t have made my notebook levitate. Well, I guess I technically could, but I’ve never been able to make anything levitate while I was conscious. It wouldn’t make sense if I was suddenly able to do so while I was unconscious. Unless… I opened the drawer back up, peeking behind myself to make sure Bubblegum – that’s just a nickname, her real name is Maddie – is still sleeping. I plucked the amulet from its spot and almost laughed.
Of course.
This was a magic bank. Magic banks are all too common back in my mom Lily’s home dimension. They’re used to store a being’s magic if they have a surplus, and that magic can either be kept by the being to use later or it could be donated to a different being that struggled to accumulate it. To make a long explanation short, there’s a large variety of creatures at Mom’s home dimension, all with varying ways and efficiencies of channeling and obtaining magic, if any come up I’ll explain further.
Anyway, the significance of this being a magic bank was that when I used it to ensure Pinetree and Gideon didn’t die I must’ve absorbed some of the magic from within. That must’ve been why I was feeling so invigorated after using this thing, I got a shot of straight magic-
“Cadence, what on earth are you doing?” Bubblegum groggily mumbled. “It’s 3 in the morning.”
I looked behind myself to see Bubblegum needlessly fumbling for her glasses, she’d only see the amulet if she put them on. She’s never had as good night vision as I had. “Nightmares, small epiphanies, you know how it goes.” I placed the amulet back in the drawer and got to my feet so I could walk across the small aisle between beds and take her glasses from her. “What are you doing? I made extra sure to be quiet so you could sleep.”
Bubblegum made a quiet growling sound and squinted her eyes as she felt her glasses be stolen from her. “I sensed stupidity.” She reached for the lamp and clicked it on, causing both of us to recoil from the sudden light, I more so than she.
I shielded my eyes with my hand, crossing only one arm, which held the glasses. “Liar. I wasn’t being stupid.”
“You wanted to be. You always want to do something stupid.” She rubbed her eyes and held one hand out. “Can I have my glasses back, please? I need to use the bathroom.” When I returned her glasses she slipped them on her face, the circular lenses reflecting some of the lamp-light further into my eyes.
“You could’ve just said that,” I said as I shrunk back into bed and hid my watering eyes from the intrusive rays.
“I could’ve, but I like being nosey.” I heard as Bubblegum got up from her creaky bed and shuffled to the bathroom.
I was left curled under the covers, gradually acclimating my eyes to the brightness as I considered what I should do with the magic bank. Before I realized what it was, I had considered just destroying the thing so no other being could get their hands on it, but now I wasn’t so sure. Staring me in the face was an easy way to up my power level at least a little bit. Humans weren’t good at conducting or absorbing magic, they just weren’t built for it, so from the moment I was born I was bound to be… limited. And while I knew it wasn’t my fault, I also couldn’t help but feel a bit of shame at the fact I couldn’t do more than an illusion. I was a Cipher, damnit, I should’ve been able to tear universes apart if I felt the need, but as it was now, I just couldn’t.
I heard Bubblegum return from the bathroom and sit back in her bed, clicking the lamp off and granting my eyes sweet relief. “Good night, Cadence. I hope your nightmares are less severe when you fall back asleep.” She yawned and presumably fell asleep. I swear, that girl could find a way to sleep in the apocalypse.
Silence. My mind suddenly emptied as its train of thought was derailed by Bubblegum’s hoping I would suffer less when I fell back asleep. With nothing to distract me, I became very aware of every single thing my body did to keep me alive. I used to complain, but I’ve grown used to my heart contracting as it beat and my intestines shifting as they digested food, while I would give most anything to make those sensations stop if given the chance, it’s not like I want to claw my insides out at the moment.
I closed my eyes and forced myself to sleep.
***
My dreams did not welcome me with open arms, they never did. I was unceremoniously dropped face first into the dirt of a clearing. Some people think their dreams have meaning, but I think that’s a load of bull. I’ve only had one kind of sleepy hallucination, and that is Nightmares. I don’t know why my brain likes to torment me so much- oop. Hold that thought.
Dark shadows surrounded the clearing I was in. With a deep sigh, I dragged myself to my feet, starting the nightmare as I felt the shadows grow restless. It would be worse if I didn’t play along, trust me.
I closed my eyes and released a breath. “Let’s do this.” I opened my eyes and started sprinting in a random direction the moment I heard the sounds of paws running after me.
I’ve found the strategy for dealing with my nightmares is to just give up control to whatever ploy my head has come up with, similarly to how I deal with montages.
I took a left by this gnarly looking tree, like wow that’s one creative nightmare tree. It may as well have been the live oak’s pointier cousin. I’m pretty sure I had to jump over one of its roots like 5 minutes later, that thing was so huge.
Anyway, I don’t want to go into too much detail. You get the jist of it. I’m being chased by shadow creatures and I’m terrified. I know the general landscape like the back of my hand, things just change shape every once and a while, like that tree I just saw.
You might think my dreams being mostly scripted would make them less scary on principle, I mean once you watch a scary movie enough times it stops being nearly as scary as it was the first time. That would be the case if it wasn’t for the fact that about midway through the laws of the montage stop working and I have to take the wheel as my brain completely shuffles the environment. So all of a sudden I was dropped from autopilot, and stumbled onto my face. Odd. It usually took longer for me to be forced back in control.
It took a moment for my vision to sync back up with my body. I had fallen into a river, a freezing one at that. “What the-? It’s the middle of summer!”I hate when my dreams do that, it throws my internal temperature all out of whack.
I stood and willed my clothing dry, I only had minimal control over my dreams. I heard footsteps behind me, slow and solitary. A terrified chill ran down my spine as I whipped around to see what was behind me, a foolish move, I’m aware, but sometimes I've got to revel in what horrors my mind comes up with.
I was sorely disappointed.
Now, what I saw might scare some people. A pair of glowing yellow cat-like eyes attached to a humanoid silhouette might have been able to be slipped into some horror movie. However, I was completely used to the sight of such eyes, they were the eyes of my Mom and Grandmother, the latter of which preferred to be called by her real name Katherine.
Point being, I was confused. My first thought was that maybe they were coming for a spontaneous visit, but that didn’t make sense. Katherine usually punctuated her dream visits by critiquing the things that should make this nightmare less scary before destroying the nightmare altogether. Mom usually just snapped her fingers and made everything cuter before she even said anything. Why don’t they do that every night? They have a life, you know, I can’t expect them to save me from ultimately inconsequential nightmares.
Maybe this was my mind just being weird again. Sometimes the part of my brain that loved to torture me mixed up the things I found familiar and the things I found terrifying.
I didn’t get much longer to dwell on it, though. I saw as my nightmare unraveled, the figure didn’t seem too pleased, going off the fact the eyes went red and it tried to say something before I was thrust back into the waking world.
***
My alarm clock was blaring its annoying wake-up sounds as my eye cracked open and I groaned. I had slept another 4 hours but I didn’t feel any more rested than I did when I woke up earlier.
“Cadence, why didn't you turn off your alarm? It’s summer.” Bubblegum sounded far away as my senses were slowly readjusting to the waking world. I scarcely heard her grumble under her breadth and get out of bed to turn off the alarm. She snapped in my face. “Hey, I know you’re awake.”
I blinked a couple times, the snap having helped bring me back to the present. “Sorry, B.” I yawned. “I just need help getting out of the realm of sleep sometimes.”
“Can’t you find any better way to do it?” Bubblegum picked up the alarm clock and squinted as she tried to figure out how to make it quieter or less annoying.
I reached to get the clock from her but my arm felt like a noodle and I only flopped it in her general direction. “Eh?” Closing my eyes, I concentrated on my arm and forced the last bits of sleep out of it. I attempted to get the clock again and was successful this time. “Come on, you know we’d both just sleep the summer away if we didn’t have this.”
“Maybe I want to sleep the summer away.” Bubblegum shuffled back to her side of the room and put her glasses on.
“How boring.” I placed the clock back in its place and stretched. “I thought I taught you better.” I must’ve made this cheap old bed look comfy because Bubblegum got back into her own and bundled back up like it was winter despite it being 60 degrees out.
“You didn’t teach me nothin’.” Bubblegum looked over at me.
“Liar.” I sat up and looked down at my pajamas that looked like they could’ve come straight from the 16th century. Bubblegum tended to tease me about them, but I personally found them quite comfortable. “I teach you plenty of things. Such as the acceptable amount of aggressive eye contact and just how long you should think about that one thing you did that one time. Correct answer is 20 seconds.”
“I feel like 20 seconds of eye contact is too long, and 20 seconds isn’t nearly enough time to-”
“Ah!” I pointed at Bubblegum. “No. Listen to auntie Elisee-”
“We’re the same age.”
“Shh. You’re fine. The juice incident wasn’t even that bad.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed. Bubblegum was giving me an unamused expression.
“I spilled pomegranate juice all over your mother’s nice dress. How is that not-”
“Shh. She forgave you. It was no big deal. Mom just magicked it out. It took 5 seconds.” I shrugged and rose to my feet. “Let’s get something to eat. You’re always more anxious when you’re hungry.”