Archie Smith suddenly awoke when a tiny voice asked, “Is he the one?”
“He has to be”, a different voice whispered. Dazed and drifting off,
“Who’s there?” no response. Dismissing what had just happened, he fell back to sleep. Fading in and out of a dream, Archie heard the voices again. He knew he heard them somewhere before, but couldn’t remember when or where. The voices still compelled Archie, their soft whispers lifting him out of his bed and making him float downstairs. The voices led him through the living room, past the kitchen and out the door into the empty poorly-lit streets. Wandering down the street, everything seeming to be normal until suddenly, he stopped in his tracks. Archie gazed down the dark street trying to figure out if what he saw was real; two tiny lights, the size of golf balls floating down the road into a thick cloud of fog. He heard the second voice say to the other, “I told you he was the one!”
Archie remembered. Two years ago the start of a dream looked exactly like what lied ahead of him: the long boulevard with perfectly maintained trees, shrubs, and grass. The dark black asphalt as smooth as glass. The old-fashioned, glass enclosed lantern-style streetlights lighting up its intricately molded metal pole, perfectly illuminating the boulevard. He knew he couldn’t be dreaming. He heard what the voices were saying this time. In the dream those voices were only sounds, not coherent words. Awed at what was happening, Archie found himself wandering aimlessly down the street, losing focus of reality.
“We don’t know that yet, he’s done nothing and is already questioning us.” the first voice harshly said to the other. Archie, now intrigued by what the voices had to say about him, ran down the street after the voices into the fog disregarding any possible danger.
The fog seemed to grow thicker and thicker, causing Archie to need to take slow deep breaths. Archie kept going, determined to find out who these voices were and what they wanted with him. Thirty feet into the fog Archie began to get dizzy, but he persisted through the fog. Within the next twenty feet the fog began to disperse and Archie saw it was beginning to get lighter. Five feet later, the fog cleared and Archie found himself surrounded by a garden. Being stopped by the beauty, he stood and stared, taking in everything as if it could disappear any moment.
The garden wasn’t just any regular vegetable or flower garden though. A great sense of euphoria consumed Archie as he weightlessly drifted through the flawless arrangement of Willow and Wisteria trees, Lilac bushes, Calla Lilies, Lillie of the Valley, Orchids, and Hibiscus flowers. Archie knew that this new place he was in could not possibly be dangerous, but at the same time nothing as perfect and peaceful as this could exist. He kept following the tiny lights until he came to a fork in the road. The lights stopped, waiting for Archie to catch up.
“So kid, what’ll it be?” one of the voices asked him. Looking to the right, Archie saw the Wisteria trail continued. But looking to the left, a dirt path led into a dark forest. Like any kid, Archie chose the dreamy white garden trail. Archie walked for hours down that path, noticing that the beautiful Wisteria and Willow trees started to fade away and turn into a wondrous fog forest covered with green trees, moss, mushrooms, and flowers he’d never seen before. The forest faded into a simple path with a large white and silver castle at the end. A beautiful women standing with perfect posture in an elegant white dress greeted him in front of the castle at the end of the path
“Hello Archie, we’ve been expecting you.” the beautiful woman said with a genuine smile.
“Why am I here? What’s going on?” Archie questioned the woman.
“My name is Alexandria, I am the queen of this land and I control your dreams. You left something very important the last time you were here and you’ve come back to get it before this whole world is gone.” the woman in the white dress told him.
“I’ve never been here before! How could I leave something here?” Archie frantically cried to Alexandria. Right then, a hologram of a diamond seed appeared and Archie knew why he ended up in this strange place. The seed, evaporating the land, needed to be taken out before it completely turned the rest of the land into the dense misty entrance Archie entered through.
“I’ll try and find this seed to save your world.” Archie said, finally understanding what needed to be done. Alexandria handed him a diamond layered watch, timed with forty minutes on it.
“You must find your way back to where you came in from with the seed by the time there is four zeroes left on this watch or this land will be wiped away with all of your dreams in it.” Alexandria warned Archie. Archie knew he had to try in order to save the place his dreams came from.
He ran down the path back into the fog forest, feeling it was much thicker than before. The fog began to grow too thick and Archie began to get dizzy again. After seven minutes of running, Archie could no longer breathe and collapsed to the forest floor. Lifelessly laying on the soft moss, his breath came back to him, allowing him to continue his journey.
The path through the forest had now been covered with that dark green slimy moss Archie appreciated so many minutes ago. Worried for the magical land and himself, Archie pushed himself for fifteen minutes before allowing himself to take another break. Sprawled across the soft ground, a tingling feeling entered Archie. Jolting up from the moss, Archie knew that wasn’t a safe spot to rest.
Archie jumped onto the tree branches and leapt through the trees, flinging himself from one tree to the next, hoping to avoid the moss. Getting ahead of himself, Archie stopped looking where he was going and jumped onto a thin branch. It snapped, Archie crashing to the poisonous moss covered ground.
His legs in pain and energy diminished, Archie picked himself up off the paralyzing floor and continued running, in order to keep the poison from creeping into his feet and through the rest of his body. He felt it entering his body faster and faster, as consuming him and turning him into a part of the path. Beginning to take over him, his mind went lifeless and his vision blurry. Just forty-five seconds of running on top of the moss proved to be too much for Archie to handle, but he could see the end of the forest in front of him.  He kept pushing himself, faster and faster, until he could no longer run. Archie jumped. He flew through the air and landed back onto the solid path of the Wisteria forest.
With only five minutes left, Archie knew he had to find the seed but no longer cared, only wanting to get himself out before it all evaporated. The Wisteria forest no longer fascinated him, allowing all of his focus on getting out. The once amazing forest whipped past Archie as he entered into the thick fog that led him here. With only fifteen seconds on the watch and the seed long out of his mind, the dimly lit boulevard began to show through the fog. The boulevard had a weird look to it, almost a sparkle. That sparkle concentrated to the center of Archie’s vision, taking on the shape of the seed shown to him by Alexandria.
Thinking of weather he cared enough to try and grab the seed or not, Archie launched himself into the air with seven seconds left and his street just feet in front of him. Slamming onto the solid asphalt, Archie picked up his head and looked around.
The empty boulevard; the dark, colorless boulevard. Except for a tiny sparkle.