My nightmare started like this.
I was standing on a deserted street in some little beach town. It was the middle of the night. A storm was blowing. Wind and rain ripped at the palm trees along the sidewalk. Pink and yellow stucco building lined the street, their windows boarded up. A block away, past a line of hibiscus bushes, the ocean churned.Florida, I thought. Though I wasn't sure how I knew that. I'd never been to Florida.
Then I heard hooves clattering against the pavement. I turned and saw my friend Grover running for his life.
Yeah, I said hooves.
Grover is a satyr. From the waist up, he looks like a typical gangly teenager with a peach-fuzz goatee and a bad case of acne. He walks with a strange limp, but unless you happen to catch him without his pants on (which I don't recommend), you'd never know there was anything un-human about him. Baggy jeans and fake feet hides the fact that he's got furry hindquarters and hooves.
Grover had been my best friend in sixth grade. He'd gone on this adventure with me and a girl named Annabeth to save the world, but I hadn't seen him since last July, when he set off alone on a dangerous quest- a quest no satyr had ever returned from.
Anyway, in my dream, Grover was hauling goat tail, holding his human shoes in his hands the way he does when he needs to move fast. He clopped past the little tourist shops and surfboard rental places. The wind bent the palm trees almost to the ground.
Grover was terrified of something behind him. He must've just come from the beach. Wet sand was caked in his fur. He'd escaped from somewhere. He was trying to get away from... something.
A bone-rattling growl cut through the storm. Behind Grover, at the far end of the block, a shadowy figure loomed. It swatted aside a street lamp, which burst in a shower of sparks.
Grover stumbled, whimpering in fear. He muttered to himself, Have to get away, Have to warn them!
I couldn't see what was chasing him, but I could hear it muttering and cursing. The ground shook as it got closer. Grover dashed around a street corner and faltered. He'd run into a dead-end courtyard full of shops. no time to back up. The nearest door had been blown open by the storm. The sign above the darkened display window read: ST. AUGUSTINE BRIDAL BOUTIQUE.
Grover dashed inside. He dove behind a rack of wedding dresses.
The monster's shadow passed in front of the shop. I could smell the thing- a sickening combination of wet sheep wool and rotten meat and that weird sour body odor only monsters have, like a skunk that's been living off Mexican food.
Grover trembled behind the wedding dresses. The monster's shadow passed on.
Silence except for the rain. Grover took a deep breath. Maybe the thing was gone.
Then lightning flashed. The entire front of the store exploded, and monstrous voice bellowed: "MIIIIINE!"
I sat bolt upright, shivering in my bed.
There was no storm. No monster.
A Novel by Rick Riordan
Reflection
... In this excerpt of the book Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan the main character has a dream and uses a real person that he knows in his life. Just like in the story "The Dream of Little Tuk " he uses real life aspects and they are created in his dream. This also tells us about dreams throughout the novel because Percy, the main character has many. Even though this is a fictional story it stills shows us that dreams relate to what is going on in real life just like in my flash fiction, when she has her goal to be an art professor. Maybe not as exact as his dreams are but in our dreams they reflect our emotions and our inner problems. In the story Percy's dreams help him on his quest, just as ours do on our quest of life. Percy's quest is a life or death quest to save his friend Grover from the monster that has captured him. Our quest may not be as life-threatening but our quest is to capture those dreams in which we would like to achieve...
