The Troll on Porridge Island

There is nothing quite as confusing as traveling across the world seeking other cultures, casually telling the people there about a childhood dream you had, and them claiming to have had that exact dream as well. And as you’re about to go to bed for the night after a long day of sharing strange stories, one of your traveling companions approaches, confiding that they have also had that dream. As rumors of this dream spreads, more and more people open up to you, all of them saying they have had that dream too. Some have even experienced it twice, three times, or more. Are they all playing a prank on you? Does this sound familiar to you?

It is estimated (and actually 100% true) that as many as one in ten people, regardless of origin, has dreamt about the troll on Porridge Island once or more as a child. All documented accounts have an extreme degree of similarity to them, from descriptions of the point of view, to every little visible detail.

The dream

The dream occurs like this, in a first person point of view: You are submerged to your chest in thick, warm porridge, with your hands and arms resting upon its surface. You can hear the crackling of a fire. In the dim light you see naught but the tall edges of what must be a giant’s cauldron surrounding you, rising far too high above for you to have any chance of climbing out.

But salvation is found in the middle of this sea of porridge, where half of a gargantuan, blanched almond is floating. Firm ground, an island. You sink down to your shoulders as you begin to swim towards it. It is a struggle, but one that seems manageable at first.

Then a cloaked figure appears on the island, a body unnaturally wide, and with a foot-long nose poking out from underneath its hood. Two arms the length of its entire body stretches out, reaching for a wooden ladle the size of a shovel. And the creature begins to stir the porridge, eerily moving the ladle in big circles. It is not visible on the surface of the ocean, but you can feel the currents from the stirring is pulling you down. Hope is lost as you try to fight it, muscles pounding from the strain you have put on them. And as your head inevitably goes under, darkness consumes you, and you wake up.

A divine explanation

Unbeknownst to the populace of the universe, this dream is part of an automatically occurring phenomenon put in place by Silence, god of sleep, silence, and dreams. It works as a sort of defense system to protect the dream realm, the Quiet World, from outside influences.

All dreams are stored within this realm, and every dream has a very small chance of manifesting itself as reality. While most dreams are mundane, harmless, or witty, some are horrid nightmares best left unexplored. The best way of ending such a nightmare before it has a chance to manifest is for the person having said nightmare to wake up.

When the system first takes notice of a particularly bad nightmare, it tries to overwrite it with “the Troll on Porridge Island”, a tame, tried and true series of events that quickly wakes the dreamer by exhausting their mind and instilling the sensation of drowning. While this method has a high rate of success, repeating it lowers its effectiveness. Therefore, the majority of people experiencing foul dreams will at most swim in the sea of porridge only once. People predisposed to having poor memory may vaguely remember experiencing this dream several times.

by Midjourney

Type

Metaphysical, Divine