Lisa' Dreams

The Garden Below

The rusted gate groaned as Lisa stepped through, vines brushing her shoulders like cautious fingers. She hesitated, expecting cold stone or flickering lights—some subterranean passage laced with mildew and iron. Instead, the light blinded her.

She stumbled forward, shielding her eyes with one arm.

Light.

Sky.

A garden.

She blinked again and again, trying to force her vision to make sense of it. Overhead, a vast expanse of brilliant blue stretched in every direction, scattered with clouds that shimmered faintly, like each was woven from strands of glass. The air was warm, tinged with a fragrance she couldn’t place—part honeysuckle, part something stranger. A breeze moved through her hair, carrying the scent of life.

Lisa took a trembling step forward.

Underfoot, the grass was a rich, luminous green that glowed faintly in the light. It wasn’t just healthy—it was impossibly so, as though each blade were its own tiny miracle. Massive leaves the size of dinner plates rustled along flowering trees that arched overhead in slow, swaying rhythms. Every leaf gleamed, lush and saturated with vitality, and sprouting from many of them were pale flowers—white and pink, with curling petals like lilies spun from pearl.

It was beautiful. Too beautiful.

But it was wrong.

She turned slowly in place. There was no sun she could see—only the feeling of light. There was no dome, no ceiling, no sign that she was still underground. But she knew—knew—that she was.

“This doesn’t make sense,” she murmured. “I was beneath the building. I went down. Not… out.”

She pressed her palm to a thick, curled leaf. It was cool to the touch, its texture more silk than plant. She shivered and stepped back.

Then something flickered in the corner of her vision.

Her head snapped toward it—a flash of color, movement among the leaves. Something had ducked behind one of the flowering shrubs. Heart pounding, Lisa crouched slightly, muscles tensing. She squinted.

It peeked out.

She gasped.

It was small—only two feet tall, if that. It had skin the shade of soft jade, smooth and faintly glowing. Its eyes were enormous, round and glossy, like polished obsidian. Wisps of fine silver-white hair curled around its cheeks, and from its back unfurled delicate pink wings, translucent and veined like those of a dragonfly.

The creature stared at her.

Then, it smiled.

“Welcome,” it said in a voice like wind chimes on glass.

Lisa’s breath caught. She tried to speak but found no words.

“You… you can talk,” she whispered.

“Yes,” said the creature, stepping out from behind the foliage. It moved with fluid grace, its feet making no sound on the soft ground. “We speak, when the time is right.”

Lisa straightened slowly, eyes wide. “What are you?”

The creature tilted its head. “I am called many things. But for now, you may call me Nya.”

“Nya,” Lisa echoed. “Where… am I?”

“You are where you chose to be,” Nya said, smiling gently. “The sign called. You listened.”

“The one above the stair?”

Nya nodded once. “Few see it. Fewer obey. But you paused. You heard the place. It showed you the other door.”

Lisa’s chest tightened. “And the people who left through the other door…?”

“They are gone,” Nya said simply. “Their path led them elsewhere.”

Lisa looked away, the image of people vanishing into the false daylight still raw in her memory.

“This place,” she said softly, looking back at the garden. “Is it real?”

Nya’s pink wings fluttered, catching light and throwing tiny reflections across the leaves.

“It is real,” Nya replied. “But not like the world you came from. You are beneath it, yes. But not below in the way you understand. You are in the place where the roots grow.”

Lisa frowned. “Roots?”

“This is the foundation,” Nya said. “The forgotten layer. The place they tried to seal.”

“Seal?” she echoed, throat dry.

Nya’s expression shifted, somber now.

“Truth was buried long ago,” it said...