Sky Castles

The war for human souls

Image created on Midjourney

Caitriona, like any good wisp, inhabited the light realm. She sometimes wondered, though, what life was like for mortal folk. She had only ever lived within the confines of her parents’ cloud castle. Because she was an insubstantial being, made of the nebulous dreams of the ground dwellers who trudged through life below, she had never been able to experience their world directly.

Part of her dreamed of becoming human, even for a day. Of sharing their lives and learning what it was to be mortal. Some had managed it, but that required dark magic, delving into spells not meant for dream folk.

Cait shuddered at the thought of what she might become if she engaged in such sorcery. The noir realm touched on her own, though thankfully it had thus far not managed to invade. Wisps who had gone bad inhabited that dark castle, both living off and fueling the nightmares of humans. They drove the evil gaining ever stronger footholds in the mortal realm. Even the hints of what seethed within that cesspool were enough to warn her off.

So, she didn’t enter the human world, instead, peeking into dreams of kittens, puppies, and sandcastles, nudging dreamers deeper into worlds of goodness. The light realm fought a desperate war not of their making against the noir realm. Dreams of light versus dreams of darkness. All for the hearts and souls of mortals.

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In this case, the image came first and the story second. It had started out as a fluff piece (pun intended) but morphed into something darker as I wrote it. I started to imagine beings that could guide us, through our dreams, to goodness or evil. That we created these beings ourselves through the very dreams they seek to influence was just icing on the cake!