Once Upon Tomorrow 

   A long, long time from now, in a world where the past, present and future blend, lived the children of lost dreaming. 

 

   Lost Dreaming is a sad, dark, cold world, a world very different from the world you play in, for the sun, moon and stars never ever shine in this sorrowful land. There is neither grass nor sky, wind nor rain in the damp, cavernous underground where a handful of little grey children once dwelled.

 

   Timmy Tatters a little boy, just your age, lived in this cold sad world. Like the others, Timmy is orphaned for children never grew old in Lost Dreaming. The only memory Timmy has of his mother is the soft warm touch of her hands. He cannot remember his father’s face at all but he still remembers the stories his father told, tales of a magical fantastical world filled with colour, winged creatures, rainbows, sunbeams and star littered nights. At night when the others fell asleep Timmy would lie awake in his dirt floor bunker and dream of the old world, your world, the world Timmy ached with all his soul to live in. Eventually when the tears dried on his face he would fall asleep, certain that he would never see the story book world. 

 

    Meanwhile far away on the northern star of the southern cross, the Ghost of The Dreamchild had been watching 

over Timmy. It had been many, many years since the Dreamchild had witnessed a child so pure of heart and spirit. He felt sorry for Timmy, and so carried on the tail of starlight, ]flew across the universe,  to Timmy’s world. 

 

 

    Disguised as an old wizard The Dreamchild entered Timmy’s underground and found Timmy sleeping. Quietly he knelt beside Timmy and lay a single rose beside his head. The sleeping Timmy smelt the beautiful, strange perfume. He had never experienced anything so lovely and believing himself dreaming kept his eyes shut tight for he did not want to wake and see the dirt. 

 

    “Timmy wake up,” whispered the Dreamchild softly. When Timmy heard the strange voice he instantly opened his eyes and was immediately frightened of the old man beside him, for he had never seen anyone old before. The old man’s  skin was wrinkled and dark. His scalp was covered in hair and he was tall, much taller than anyone he had ever seen. Timmy wanted to run and scream but the old man’s eyes were kind and Timmy knew he was from another world, a better world and Timmy’s curiosity was stronger than his fear.

 

   “Don’t be afraid,” began the Dreamchild. I am not here to hurt you. I come to tell you of the old world, the world a generation before you lost. Here see for yourself.” The 

 

stranger handed Timmy a beautiful crystal cylinder. “That     

is a piece of starlight,” explained The Dreamchild, “If you hold it to your eye you will see through time. It is there that you will find the old world.” 

 

Timmy held the crystal to his left eye on an angle just as The Dreamchild had directed and was amazed with all he saw. The world he was viewing was far more magical than he’d even imagined. 

 

     “What happened, where is it now?” questioned Timmy. 

 

     “Keep looking through the crystal, and all will be revealed,” whispered the Dreamchild 

 

       Timmy peered once more into the elegant crystal time piece and this time began to cry. The beautiful crystal waters had turned a sludgy, swampish black and the once lush green banks were now littered with rubbish and dead and dying pelicans. The once brilliant sky had turned a greyish red and was filled with smoke and terror. Forests which had been homes to spectacular trees some over one hundred feet high were now burnt skeletons in a desert wasteland and the people who dwelled there were running to  huge cement holes which led to dirt tunnels just like the ones Timmy and his friends  lived in.”

 

    “So it’s gone. They didn’t take care of  the beautiful old world and now it is lost forever,” sobbed Timmy.

   

 “Not forever Timmy for the old world still exists in the 

 

past and there is a way in which you may enter,” answered the Dreamchild. Timmy immediately became full of hope.

 

     “Oh anything, anything!” promised Timmy. “I would do anything to live in the old world. We all would.”

   

 

 “Well,” began the Dreamchild, “Nature is really quite powerful and wonderful. Your father’s fathers took generations to destroy your future and nature herself has fought back and given you hope. But she is frightened, frightened that you will harm all that is left of my old world playground.”

 

    “ But we never never would promised Timmy.”

 

    “But what about your children’s children? They will forget, they may destroy, for unlike me your kind has not yet learnt to appreciate beauty and Nature’s treasures.”

 

  Timmy listened carefully to the old wizard speak. He felt deep down that the Dreamchild was speaking the truth and knew that he could never promise that others would not again destroy as his fathers before him had so carelessly done.

 

     “Don’t be sad Timmy I have spoken to Nature and she has forgiven for the sake of you children. Nature hopes that somehow you may be able to change the future by 

influencing your past so that the new world never comes 

into existence. She has told me to inform you and the children of the new world that you can once again enter the old on one condition.”

 

    “Anything, oh anything,” cried Timmy in gratitude.  

 

     “As a guarantee that you and your kind will never destroy all that is left of the old world you and any others who decide to enter it must give up your physical bodies and live as  ghosts. Never shall you be able to run through the grass, or play with the rabbits, climb the trees or swim in the oceans but you will be able to breath the ocean air and move through her wonder as a ghost, a ghost of the children of Lost Dreaming. Then and only then shall you and the other little grey children of the underground be permitted to enter the old world.”

 

    “Oh yes,” cried Timmy, “anything!”. Timmy gathered the children from their sleep and explained to them the Dreamchild’s  offer. All thirteen children accepted and drank the Dreamchild’s potion. A warm calming sensation washed over them and they felt themselves lifted high into another dimension. The new world began  to fade and the old world  the world we know and love became a reality. 

    

     Today winged on the breeze they float hand in hand above  our free flowing streams filled with water lillies, fish and rainbow birds. They slide down our rainbows and 

skip on our moonbeams, bathe in the sunlight and breathe the perfume of roses, wildflowers  and lavender which grow in masses along our banks. How much they long to 

ride on the backs of brumbies and splash in the cool clear waters below, but though they are now in a far better world than the new world they have left behind, their little grey bodies are gone forever.

 

     Without  bodies it is difficult for the ghosts of Lost Dreaming to warn us of the new world, but they try. If you listen very carefully to the wind, at times you will hear their spirits crying out for you to help them speak up, and stop progress if it leads us into the new world.