These kinds of dreams.

The Authoress awoke on the couch from a night of strange dreams, induced primarily by the visual and sensory input of watching science fiction, a raucous electromagnetically-charged thunderstorm, and drinking a little too much cheap white wine.

In the first dream, she saw an older man and an older woman climbing opposite sides of a mountain that looked eerily familiar. They both wore brown monk robes and carried small brown bags over their shoulders. A hawk followed the woman about a hundred feet up, and a large cat followed the man. They both looked extremely sad yet extremely determined. Down below, in an idyllic little town by the ocean, whitewashed houses and boatyards and grocery stores were slowly being covered in a thick, white mist.

In the second dream, she was at the circus. A small red haired woman rode a lion through the three rings, gracefully hopping over the partitions as if she were riding a pony. Suddenly, there was an explosion. The circus tent caught on fire at one end, people ran screaming and panicked, including the Authoress, who was a participant in this dream. But the red-haired woman kept on riding the lion until she walked straight into the flame and disappeared. Soon after, black helicopters showed up and arrested everyone who said they saw the woman riding the lion as they were clearly suspects in the terrorist attack that had ravaged the circus. The Authoress did not get arrested, but saw that those who did were marked with a big yellow five-pointed star, hooded, cuffed, and marched into black vans.

In the third dream, the Authoress had a child. Her pregnancy and labor were very quick, as though she’d thought the child into her belly and then proceeded to give birth to it. She laid down on her couch and opened her legs and gently pushed, and a tiny human being came out. It was not like real labor, she knew, but at this point, the Authoress was very aware that she was dreaming. She held the tiny child, who was only about the size of her large long-fingered hands, and nursed it. The child had blue eyes and no hair whatsoever and looked somewhat like an alien, as most babies do. After it fed, it started talking. It said that her name was Sarah and that she’d really like some more food soon. The Authoress, amused, asked her how the hell she learned to talk and where she’d come from. The baby said, in confused but clear English, “I come from someplace very far away.”

“Like, over the ocean?” said the dreamer.

“No, like a galaxy far, far, away. It’s called teleportation, Mommy.”

And with that, the Authoress shook herself awake.

Little did she know that her roommate, the canine-bodied yellow-eyed “dog” who was really an intelligence operative from the planet behind the Dog Star Sirius had recorded these dreams and sent them back to her home planet for analysis. Most dreams were useless, but sometimes a sliver of information from a Universe next door would slip in. The Sirians were very interested in these kinds of dreams.