There is a young boy fording a black river. His mind is not fixated upon the rough bottom of the river where his feet tread, it is on getting to the marvelous green and yellow forest on the other side of the river.

He has brought his family with him and they surround him in the water, now up to his chest, his mother, his brother, his sister, and his father all follow him. Although they vocalize a constant concern of being able to reach the other side of the river the boy walks onwards without a word.

After a time, quicker than the boy expected, the group reaches the brilliant forest. The boy and his family had to leave their shoes on the other side of the river as they would have weighed them down during the crossing, so they walk bear feet crushing the countless dead leaves.

The family follows the boy deep into the wilderness and although they lose track of where they are the boy silently continues to lead them onwards. They walk until midday when they begin to complain endlessly of hunger and fatigue.

They come upon a clearing, the canopy of the trees is dense here and what little light that manages to penetrate the foliage is turned a deep yellow. In the center of the clearing is a mound of earth almost as tall as the boys father. The mound exudes a sweet smell that calls everyone but the boy over to it to engorge on the strange mushroom-like earth.

The boy sees, as if it were happening right in front of him, the past. The mound of earth is the corpse of a once mighty giant, now rotting.

And then the boy is alone. His family dead from the poisonous flesh of the rotting giant. He stands and stares at the mound.

-fin-

This is a dream that I had when I was a child living in Bristol, VT. I was prone to night terrors and this one of a bare few that I remember in great detail.