For Nevermore Season 1

the gloom she’d just left. Aurora Falls was bleak and cold, but this world was warm and vibrant. The sky above was pure blue, a pure cerulean, cleaner and clearer than anything she’d ever seen. It seemed to stretch forever, save for a few puffs of marshmallow clouds dotting the farthest distance. The sun shined bright at the promise of spring, thawing Noella as a warm breeze washed over her, smelling of lilac, strawberry, and maybe vanilla, with a hundred other scents she had never smelled before.
    She wiped the tears from her cheeks and stood up, staring in awe as an overwhelming and unexplainable joy filled her heart. Though her knees still hurt, her headache had subsided. The world had never seemed more alive, or more beautiful, than at that very moment. Whether the world was real, or a figment of her imagination, it didn’t lessen the impact she felt in her soul.
    The road seemed to go on forever in either direction, and wasn’t asphalt, but instead neat rows of clay-colored bricks. There were thickets of trees on both sides of the road, much like Aurora Springs, but the woods seemed fuller and the trees had yet to surrender their color to fall. They also seemed different, somehow, in a way she couldn’t quite figure out, though she was certain the difference went deeper than color.
    She turned in a circle, fixed in amazement and staring at the incredible depth of details of her newest hallucination – the most vivid she’d ever had, by far. The characteristics of the world were far more complex — the construction of a fully fleshed dream world, not the passing fancy of a sudden hallucination.
    It seems so real.
    Noella bent to the ground, as if to prove she wasn’t walking through the air of her imagination, and ran her hands against the warm clay of the brick road. She noticed the imprint carved into some of the bricks: “Harrison & Sons 1811.”
    Wow, this road is old.
    Noella kept walking, seeing nothing but trees and road. None of the familiar landmarks from her world. Her prior hallucinations had been corrupted versions of her current locations, but this was something different entirely. She saw nothing to validate where she thought she should be — no water tower, no Fisher Manufacturing plant, no Berger and Briggman Nursery, none of the homes which should’ve lined either side of the street along the path between the school and her house.
    The world felt too different to share even a shadow of the one she knew on the other side.
    But what if she was wrong? Noella was nervous that maybe she hadn’t crossed over to the place where Dante was, but instead, had merely gotten lost. She knew the area well and was fairly certain that there were no old brick roads. And even if she had gotten lost, that wouldn’t account for the change of weather, the green trees, or the unfamiliar scents filling her nose.
    She wasn’t sure why, if it was irrational hope or gut instincts, but something compelled her forward, telling her that if she just kept going, she’d find Dante. It was the odd sort of logic that made sense in a dream, moving her forward, past four or so crossroads, until the road ended abruptly in a wide sea of dirt where everything ended, as trees and road gave way to endless desert of dark sand.
    Well, that’s weird.
    Noella turned around, then took the first connecting road to her right, which led into the woods, though they felt infinitely thicker than the ones near her home. She walked for maybe 10 minutes before she heard an odd sound behind her — galloping.
    Noella turned and saw the impossible, a half-man, half-horse, galloping toward her.
    Is that a . . . a centaur?!
    She stared in shock, as he quickly approached. The horse part of his body was large and reddish brown. He was human from the stomach up, the horse hair giving way to flesh. His chest and arms were muscular, and his jaw like granite, as if someone had taken an action hero’s body, then fused it to a large red horse.
    The centaur was 20 feet away when he slowed and approached her, eyes regarding her cautiously, perhaps suspiciously. He had a thick beard and long hair, both matching the red of the horse. His eyes were large and dark, much like a horse’s.
    “Not from around here, are you?” His voice had a lilt of an accent Noella couldn’t quite place, though it felt somehow familiar.
    She stared at the centaur in disbelief. Other than Dante, this was the first time her hallucinations had spoken to her. But