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I am searching for Doors. 

For gateways and pathways and any-ways between. I suppose you already know what I am referring to. I would not be surprised if you have found your own Doors or Inbetweens at some point. Likely when you were a child. Yes, that always seems to be the case. What was it that Picasso said? That every child is an Artist, but the problem is how to remain an Artist once we grow up? 

This inexplicably applies to finding Doors, too. I am curious by the existence of these Doors. Are they always there? Do they move? Do people create them, or manifest them? If I and somebody else walked through the same Door, would we see the same thing? How about the Doorways that are not arches in the woods or caves beneath a sea? 

What about the Doorways between periods in time? The thresholds between childhood and adulthood? How about the state of Waking? Where consciousness and unconsciousness meet? 

Perhaps Dreaming is the most accessible Door. 

* *

The walls of the cave stretched taller than any cavern Celaena had seen before. She took a tentative step forward, allowing the beauty of the cave to engulf her. Along the sloping walls were lines of amethyst. There were no gaps in the jagged ceiling, no crevices or cracks to allow for any kind of light to filter through. No. The crystals were glowing as if by their own magick. She had never seen such a thing. For crystals to emit their own luminescence, and so brightly, it seemed impossible. 

Beyond, the throat of the cave was as dark as obsidian and Celaena hugged herself at the menacing breeze that beckoned her to follow it into the darkness. The cave looked as though it had once been underwater, and now only half submerged. The dark mirror in the centre as if a portal to another realm. Its pool of water was motionless—ageless. 

“Where are we?” her brother asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered, touching the cool and damp stone. Pebbles shuffled beneath her feet. 

“Have you ever seen such a beautiful place?”

Before she could answer her father, a groan so ancient it raised every hair on her body, rumbled throughout the cavern. Silence. They waited, quiet and assessing. 

“What the hell was that?” her father asked. The pool of water shimmered and began to stir, and the groan returned louder this time, closer. Breaking from the surface of the inky black rose a beast, the tips of its bulbous head inches away from the eroding stalactites on the ceiling.  

“Run!” their father roared, but the beast had already set its large eyes upon them. 

* *

All was darkness and ice. And Celaena couldn’t remember how they had secured the wooden rowboat which now floated metres from the caves external entrance. 

“We have to row faster,” she screamed. But her tiny arms could not help her father, who already had a bead of sweat coating his forehead. Her brother, even smaller than her and four years younger, could do nothing but grip the edges of the boat. The beast was one from her nightmares. Its flesh had been a damp purple that faded into sickly grey, with giant tentacles that had begun flanking after years of ancient slumber. 

Whatever they had woken—and however they had woken it, was not happy. Celaena hadn’t noticed the frigidness of the Arctic sea breeze until the waves appeared to cease. The stillness around her was unnatural. Her stomach dropped a heartbeat before the beast appeared again, towering over their puny boat. It appeared even larger outside of the cave somehow. Droplets of the sea rained down upon them as the beast raised its tentacles above its head, poising to strike. 

All was darkness and Celaena couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t find her way back to the surface. The creature had grabbed hold of Celaena’s brother and pulled him beneath the depths of the sea. Her brother. Oh gods—oh gods, where was he? 

Celaena didn’t even think before she dove back under the water to find him. Didn’t inhale a deep breath. She was more likely to drown before finding him. And her father—where was her father? She remembered he had immediately jumped in to save him, despite his paralysing fear of the ocean. Had jumped in to retrieve her brother, had told her to make it to shore somewhere and—there, she found him. Bundled in the unforgiving tentacles of the Kraken. That’s what it was called, she remembered, a Kraken. 

Forced to come up for air, Celaena sputtered as she threw up salt and sea. She had to get back down there. She didn’t have time for the panic to freeze her. Render her useless. So, she dove, with a deeper breath this time and was met with the impossible. The Kraken had her father in one arm, her brother in the other. 

At least, it had. The space where her brother was held captive began to shiver and glow, and in his place appeared a large yellow fish with a piranha-like mouth. What had just happened? Without thinking, Celaena screamed and lunged for her father, and in doing so inhaled lungfuls of water. 

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe and her father was changing, too. He stopped thrashing, and his stare became blank. The eerie glow casted itself around him, and the arm around his waist gripped tighter as yellow scales replaced his flesh.  

All was darkness. And when Celaena opened her eyes, and found she was in her own bed, she couldn’t breathe. 

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