Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story.

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Ingress had a brilliant birthday. She’s eleven. Eleven is nearly grown up! It’s also the year when children in the stories she’s read come into their own. Adventures begin, schooling starts, worlds are saved… she can hardly wait to see what will happen next.

Her party earlier was such fun. Door was almost nice to Puck; Ingress had worried a little about that after she invited him. But he was very nice and charming, and Tom was nice, too, and Puck helped Ingress steal lots of roses off the cake while Havelock talked to Tom and Door, and it was brilliant.

She ate far too much icing sugar, but Tom had the peppermint potion waiting for her when the party was over. She feels much better now. And she’s eleven!

It sounds so good in her head. Eleven, eleven, eleven.

She should have asked Mary to stay the night with her, she thinks, as she tosses and turns. She’s never going to fall asleep, even with staying up past her bedtime. Tom and Door insisted she go to bed after she started yawning. They can be so silly sometimes.

She tosses one more time, and she thinks, again, how impossible it will be to go to sleep tonight. Her eyelids flutter and close. It is not long before she’s deep in dreams.

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There once was a little girl who came to Milliways

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Ingress is in Milliways, but it’s not quite Milliways. It’s also the family room in their wing of the House of Arch with stacks of books and comfortable couches. There are board games scattered around the floor – chess, Exploding Snap cards, Snakes and Ladders (which she doesn’t even play anymore), and old toys. She laughs when she sees her dress up trunk by the fireplace. She runs to it and pulls out the tutu she always loved to wear best.

She hasn’t played dress up with tutus in a while. She shimmies into it, and it fits again! Her blue shoes glitter on her feet, and there are shiny beads around her neck. Her sword, however, remains in its scabbard attached to her belt. Some things don’t change.

Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.

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Ingress plops down onto a bale of hay in a stable. Sun shines upon her, warming her and making her sleepy. She could be in Valdemar or Ambergeldar or at Milliways. It doesn’t matter. This place stands for all places that smell of comforting horse flesh and tickly hay.

She does wonder where the horses are, but for right now, she is content to wait in this place of comfort and reassurance.

Not all is as it seems

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Out by the lake, Ingress scans the water for Mr. Julia. It’s hard to see because it’s dark. She hasn’t been out by the lake at dark before, so Tom must be close by. Or Door. Neither are. It’s quiet out here. Ominously so. She only hears the lap of water against the rocks. It’s not a good quiet, and she remembers the warnings she’s heard over the years – don’t talk to strangers, be careful, come home straight away, there are things in the dark that will take you away, take your mother, your father, your brother…

She is frightened, but Ingress, Lady of the House of Arch and soon-to-be Herald, does not let fear stop her. She lifts her head high, hefts her sword, and begins to walk towards the far-off lights in the distance, skirting the shore.

It seems a very far way to the safety of those lights.

Green grow the rushes, oh

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Ingress runs through a forest. The trees stretch high above her head, and golden sunlight filters down through the green leaves. It’s lovely here. Lovely and cool, and she’s not frightened any longer.

She’s never been in a forest quite like this before, but she knows the path to take, threading though the pine needles and crushed leaves, her hands reaching out to touch the rough bark of trunks as she passes.

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Her eyes open.

It's morning, and sun is streaming in through her bedroom window.

Ingress, Lady of the House of Arch, Opener, and future Herald, is awake. She stays still a moment, wisps and snippets of her dream whirling in her head. She'll never remember all of it, but she'll remember a surprising amount - enough to know that she is loved and she is strong, and she can do anything with a little help and a lot of bravery.

She hurtles out of bed, her feet hitting the cool wooden floor of her room.

::Megwyn! You won't believe the dream I had!:: she mindsends as she runs out the door to the stable.

It will be quite the story for an eleven-year-old to tell.