Carabas

I've been traveling through a dream, but now I've wrapped up my business here. I'd intended to leave the same way I entered, but I happen across a border area, an entrance to a place called Fa'Sun, which translates as the Shifting Dreams. Out of curiosity, I decide to check out that entrance. I'm familiar with Fa'Sun in general, but it's a very, very large place; it's like sticking up an entrance sign that just says "Earth," who knows where on Earth you'll end up.

It leads me onto a rocky path through a canyon, various rock columns and outcroppings around, a dark sky without stars overhead; a transitional space. A short distance away there's a group of small goblin-like creatures; they usually attack people in dreams but they don't pay any attention to me, and I didn't expect them to. But one of them is off to my right, sitting on a rock ledge and crying. This is very strange, I didn't think they were capable of crying - they shouldn't have the mental capacity for it. I speak with it, and it tells me it's not a (word for the goblin-like things) at all; it's been stuck in this form by the one who runs this region of Fa'Sun. The idea of being stuck in a single form here is horrifying to me.

I see a memory of the first time I came to Fa'Sun as a child. My sister and I were playing around with the portals in our mother's study while she was out. We didn't go far from the portal entrance, and I see the two of us hiding and watching while our mother comes through looking for us. Like the rest of us, she's dressed in clothes from the early 1900s; she's got a dark blue cape on, and her hair is this frazzled wiry black cloud sticking out in all directions. She looks about as close to frightened as I think of her as capable of.