Jenny blinked her eyes and found herself lying face down on a cold, cobblestone street, as if she'd just tripped over.
When she looked around, she saw that she was in a dark city with no visible sky. The buildings around her looked old and nothing like the modern architecture of the world she knew. Up above was no sky at all, but a distant rock ceiling. Was this city located underground? How and when did she get here?
Her hair-antenna alarm was going off, blinking red and spinning around like it did in the dark woods when she was surrounded by shadows. There was intermittent screaming coming from all around her, which could explain her antenna's behavior. Only few people screamed at any given time, but it sounded like the whole population eventually let one out, and each scream sounded like a different person.
Jenny got up and brushed the dirt off her knees, then looked around. The lack of sunlight made it impossible to tell whether it was day or night, but the deserted streets suggested it was nighttime and the screams were coming from inside people's homes.
When another scream came from a nearby house, Jenny approached it to investigate. When she came close enough, her hair-antenna stopped spinning and pointed straight at the house, which had no lights on.
Though it might've been an invasion of privacy, Jenny used her x-ray vision to take a peek inside. Through the walls, she saw one person lying in bed, looking asleep and otherwise perfectly okay. There was nothing suggesting there was anything strange going on in that room, no strange presence or anything of the sort. Jenny wondered if that meant that the people were having nightmares, and were screaming in their sleep.
Upon hearing another scream not too far away, Jenny turned her head and wondered if everyone in this dark city was having nightmares at the same time. She felt creeped out and powerless to help them.
Jenny walked while nervously tapping her index fingers together, heading towards the next thing that caught her attention: a light show in the distance. When she got a better look, she saw that it was a tall theater building with bright, festive lights.
Jenny levitated into the air, high enough to get a good look at the entire city. As she climbed in altitude, she saw that the city was indeed located inside an enormous, domed cavern, and that there was no visible light coming from anything other than the city itself. Even when looking down from here, and even with Jenny's incredible eyesight, she couldn't spot a single person out on the street. Floating in the sky like this made her feel less creeped out, because it made the strange city smaller.
Up here, her antenna spun again, but this time in a smaller radius, pointing generally at the city. And it was up here that Jenny could hear music coming from the theater down at the center of the dark city. It creeped her out, yet intrigued her at the same time, and Jenny slowly floated forward in the direction of the theater.
Then, when she blinked her eyes, she…
…
She saw the ceiling of her bedroom.
Jenny looked at her nightstand and saw that it was 4AM. All she remembered was going into hibernation mode some five hours ago, then waking up in that strange, dark city.
Did she dream?
Jenny sat upright and rubbed her head. She'd always been able to run simulations in her head, imagining fictitious things like everybody else, but not once in her ten years of life has she ever had a dream. Jenny felt a pressure in her chest when she considered the idea that there might be something wrong with her. If something inside of her was broken, she had no way of fixing it herself, now that her mother wasn't here anymore.
Jenny unplugged herself and got out of bed. Now that she'd entertained the idea of being broken, she was feeling all sorts of strange things going on inside of her, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. An anxious Jenny walked over to her oversized bedroom window and draped herself over the windowsill.
In the middle of the night, the streets were deserted, but Jenny stared anyway, trying to calm down.
Eventually, a familiar blond girl in a black cape appeared on one of the rooftops in the distance, making Jenny perk up and immediately forget about her worries. What was she doing out at this hour? The girl's arm was still in a cast, so she moved slower than Jenny expected, stopping every now and then to stare at the shadows for some reason.
Jenny hadn't had a proper conversation with Tatters at all since… maybe ever. The thought of going out there right now and talking to her made Jenny shudder. Why was that? She didn't feel that way talking to anybody else.
But Jenny knew better than to let this opportunity go to waste, so she pinched her eyes shut and got to her feet. It couldn't hurt to at least follow her and see what she was up to, maybe work up the courage to say hi. Jenny ran downstairs and slapped her own cheeks, nervous and excited to give her new friend an overdue welcome.