It arrived in the early hours of the morning, when the night was deepest and few were awake.

With the Grim Fayre came a new visitor and carnival barker. The lady Elspeth, a handsome woman with a crooked smile, set up shop just north of the usual festivities in a tall tent with rich purple canvas and a host of oddities inside. A healer and clearer of minds, she promised curious fayregoers a cure for their ills at no cost to themselves. All they needed was to speak the source of their deepest fear, and she would catch it and drag it from their psyche, freeing them from its burden.

Each night that she sat with her clients before the divining table, a preponderance of terrors and concerns were shared with hushed candour. Each night the lady listened, waved her hand, and drew out the shadow, transmuting it with her peculiar gift into a gleaming silver coin. Her fee.

"But isn't fear healthy?" asked one astute Targossian. Wasn't it sensible to be afraid of some things? Just as it was to know that no matter how bold or brave one was, there was always something that lurked in the dark of the mind and the pit of the earth that could not be forgotten or escaped. Elspeth agreed that was true, and so some clients left with their fears intact, grateful for their soul's own forewarning.

Others started to die in increasingly strange and bizarre ways. Robbed of their reluctance and misgivings, they forgot that fear often kept one alive.

By mid-Valnuary and in spite of these suspicious deaths, the lady Elspeth had amassed a small fortune of coins. She was counting them when her tent collapsed around her, her scream of fury heard across the fayregrounds. As a few well-meaning Achaeans ran to help, a terrible feeling of foreboding descended upon them. Panic was thick in the air as Cur, the spirit of Fear, appeared in the guise of a small child, her empty stare fixed on the woman.

Certain the spirit had come to judge her, Elspeth too began to bubble and change, her teeth and limbs growing rapidly as she unmasked herself to reveal a creature of the Dreamrealm.

But before the two horrors could tear into one another, the long-silent voice of the Goddess of Sleep and Dreams arose from the darkness, the skein of reality shivering with Her ingress. "Enough."

Long had the Dream hungered for more than the paltry earnings of spotted sleep. The creatures within were just as ravenous. Some were even hungry enough to cross the boundary into the Wake, churning the inky waters of the beyond as they hunted for something or someone to feed upon. This would not do, said Valnurana. The boundary existed for a reason, and the unseen was Hers to tend.

Once more would She bestow the gift of Sleep unto the waking world. Thus would it await all those who wander in dreams. The nightmare spirits who attended Her would confer Her judgement, for they were the crawling angels of slumber and sufferance. Gathering up the child spirit Cur in Her arms, the Lady Sleep took hold of Elspeth and bid her come with. Together they dissipated into the last hours of the morning, leaving no more than a cold dew upon the grass.

The Dream was awake.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Summary: A mysterious woman offered a remedy for fright at the Grim Fayre, which resulted in a series of strange deaths. Roused by fear, the nightmare spirit Cur appeared to levy her judgement. She was calmed by the return of the Goddess Valnurana, who decreed that Sleep had been too long neglected.

Penned by My hand on the 17th of Lupar, in the year 930 AF.