Miss Andie's Dream Nursery
Draft Chapter 2: The Door of Dreams
The moment they stepped through the glowing doorway, everything changed.
Jesse, Mia, and Tommy blinked as the cottage behind them melted into mist and light, and before them stretched a vast and wondrous landscape that shimmered with hues they’d never seen before—colors that tingled on their skin and hummed quietly in their ears.
They stood at the threshold of a grand garden—part meadow, part sky, part memory. Petals floated gently on the breeze, each one glowing faintly with a child’s dream. The grass sang beneath their feet, soft and musical. Trees stretched impossibly high, their trunks spiraling like staircases and their branches holding glowing orbs that whispered.
Miss Andie let go of their hands, but her presence remained just as close. She gave them a look—half encouragement, half sacred mischief.
"This," she said, gesturing toward the horizon, "is the Dream Nursery. It lives beyond time, between stories. Everything you’ve ever imagined and everything you’ve yet to dream lives here. But it’s not just for seeing. It’s for growing."
"Growing what?" Tommy asked, bouncing on his toes.
"You," Miss Andie replied. "And your dreams."
They followed her down a path of softly glowing moss. As they walked, their footsteps left brief luminous traces before fading gently back into the ground.
The first clearing they entered was a garden made of memory-flowers. Each one bloomed from a forgotten moment—a laugh, a fear, a hope. Some shimmered in bright colors; others had wilted petals or were still buds.
"This is the Garden of Remembering," Miss Andie said. "Everyone has one. Jesse, would you like to try something?"
Jesse nodded.
"Close your eyes. Think of a moment that made you feel alive, but that you maybe forgot."
Jesse furrowed his brow, then smiled faintly.
One of the silent buds near him shivered and opened—revealing a tiny memory-image: Jesse and his grandmother, lying on the roof of a barn one summer night, naming stars. His eyes welled slightly.
"That’s beautiful," Miss Andie whispered.
Mia touched a bud that wouldn’t bloom. "What about these ones?"
"Sometimes, memories wait," Miss Andie said. "They bloom when you're ready."
In the next space, they encountered their dream creatures.
Tommy’s dragon stood tall and grinning, its green scales twinkling like emerald candy. But instead of breathing fire, it breathed warm laughter, like a friend who understood exactly when to lighten the moment.
"You're not scary at all," Tommy said, touching its snout.
"Only when you need me to be," the dragon replied, bowing with regal dignity.
Mia's singing flowers floated in the air around her, each one humming soft harmonies. But the quiet one hovered just outside her reach.
"I don’t know how to make it sing," Mia said softly.
Miss Andie knelt beside her. "You don’t make it. You listen. And when it’s ready, it will trust you."
Mia sat still, closing her eyes. The others moved on, but she remained, listening to the silence within the flower.
Jesse’s boat awaited him on a glassy lake that shimmered like star-water. It had no oars—only sails made of constellations. A rope of light trailed from its bow, leading off into the clouds.
"Where does it go?" Jesse asked.
"Only you can decide that," Miss Andie said. "But every journey begins with stepping in."
He turned to her, fear mingling with excitement. "What if I get lost?"
"Then we’ll come find you," Mia called, standing beside the singing flower that had just bloomed.
"And I’ll ride my dragon to rescue you," Tommy shouted from the back of his winged companion.
Miss Andie only smiled, eyes twinkling. "You’re never really lost in your own dream. You’re just exploring."
Jesse climbed into the boat. The wind caught his sail, and he began to drift slowly, the lake holding him like a lullaby.
As the day in the Dream Nursery unfolded, each child found a new piece of themselves:
Tommy discovered that his courage wasn’t just loud and wild—it was also tender and protective.
Mia learned that silence wasn’t empty. It was where the most sacred songs began.
Jesse understood that the feeling of searching was sometimes more important than the answer.
At sunset, the glowing door appeared once again.
Miss Andie gathered them gently. "You’ll come back here often," she said. "Whenever you close your eyes with wonder, or wake up with a memory that doesn’t belong to the day. The Dream Nursery is part of you now."
They stepped through the door together, returning to the warmth of the cottage. The cinnamon rolls were still warm. The tea, somehow, perfectly steeped.
Jesse looked at the others. They said nothing. They didn’t have to.
Their dreams were no longer just stories.
They were seedlings.
And the nursery had begun.
PART 1 BELOW:
I REALLY cannot not say more:
I believe you have (no doubt most painfully and painstakingly, as is the writer's way) developed and now express and obviously freely and joyfully share the most extraordinary creative literary genius gifts of the very sweetest kind and that, like J.R.R Tolkien or P.G. Wodehouse, for instances, both of whom created or cocreated or led us towards or truly simply reVEALED to us the most splendid and safest of unique universes and persuaded us by so doing that we human being are by no means perfect but rather that which is so much more than infinitely beyond the wildest imaginable notions of any human "perfection," being obviously endlessly perfectIBLE.
By doing so, you may have surpassed not only those two men and Chesterton, but also even John Steinbeck who, I believ, in the course of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech asserted that
"I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature."
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#:~:text=And%20this%20I%20believe%3A%20that,limits%20or%20destroys%20the%20individual.
I know of no higher or more sincere praise I can give you, and I thank you once again, now, as I, in turn, try to create such safe worlds for us all.
Wishing you mirth and much, much more,
Tom.
Just simply have to tell ytou that I find this a most incredibly powerfully inspiring piece of magical mystical writing of a unique kind and one which points to the presumably ay least infinite number of worlds within all our worlds which we can and must and will and do now access by trusting that they are there to be explored and can be instantly accessed just as quickly and effectively and fully as we open our hearts to ourselves and so to one anotherL
THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!
Tom.