The Stone Dreams
Earth Day 2025 - The Future of Nature
Hello, Happy Earth Day!
If you’ve read my fiction you’ll know that nature and its power plays a huge part in many of my stories.
Today I have a short story for you to celebrate Earth Day 2025. Make yourself a drink, this is longer than my usual letters at around ten minutes reading time.
“The Future of Nature” is an Earth Day community writing project for fiction writers to explore the human-nature relationship in a short story or poem. It was organized by
and , and supported with brilliant advice from scientists and . The story you’re about to read is from this project. You can find all the stories as a special Disruption edition, with thanks to publisherI hope you enjoy!
The Stone Dreams
“The dream always begins with me in the chamber.”
Elara’s recorded voice plays back as researchers review the footage from her trial. She lies in a white pod, cold and smooth against her skin, electrodes adhering to her temples. Her eyes move rapidly beneath closed lids. She’s talking as she’s sleeping, part of a new method of keeping a section of the brain lit up whilst asleep. The steady hum of monitoring equipment fills the sterile room, a technological lullaby against the profound silence of her dream state.
Monitors display the readouts from her sessions, their blue-white light casting harsh shadows across the pristine laboratory surfaces. In her dreams, her brain creates stone sculptures with living fungal patterns flowing through them like water. The grey granite transforming into subtle blues and greens, colours bleeding through solid matter as if it were alive.
Shortly after, Elara wakes. She’s disoriented, blinking against the harsh fluorescent light that replaces the vibrant colours of her dreamscape. A mineral taste lingers on her tongue, as if she’s been licking stone. The researchers show her the renderings of what her brain created. She touches one image they’ve printed out on to paper, enjoying the subtle texture beneath her fingertips. They allow her to take this example home, even though paper is a rare commodity.
“I can’t remember the dream,” she says, “but I remember the experience of being with the stones.” She recalls the paradoxical sensation of hard stone yielding like clay beneath her dream-fingers.
A researcher brings in a small sample from one of her previous sessions. The stone sample displays minute changes—patterns that weren’t there before, faint colourations where the granite is altered. Transforming from slate grey to whispers of moss green and deep azure. The stone is strangely warm. She doesn’t remember creating this either. She’s confused. That the stone is physical and not just in her mind confuses her more. When did she do this?
Leaving the lab, she says goodbye to the researchers and goes home. She will return tomorrow for further tests and trials.
At home, there are more final notices on her doorstep. Bills must be paid. The only way to do that these days is to join medical trials. She knows somebody who has had a partial skin transplant for one of these trials. It’s been six months and they still haven’t left the lab. Elara thinks this one will be easier because it’s all internal. She thinks this one will be less likely to scar.
Inside Elara’s apartment, which is also her studio, there is stone dust everywhere, even on her bed. The fine, chalky particles coat every surface with a pale patina, the gritty texture between her fingers a constant reminder of her work. She lifts the sheets from her bed and shakes them outside on her balcony, dust filling the dark night air. The sharp, mineral scent rises as particles catch in the moonlight. There’s stone dust in the air all the time in the apartment, unless she opens the window. But when she opens the window or the doors, all the stone dust gets swept up and even further into the atmosphere, the particles swimming in air currents like microscopic fish. The dust coats her throat, leaving a chalky texture. It’s best to just let it settle, and then use a wet cloth to get up as much as possible when cleaning.
She looks at her bed, realising she’s been asleep all day. Despite her exhaustion, she delays rest. Instead, she stacks up the letters and bills and makes herself some food—instant noodles. In the sink, there are sections of stone that she has discarded because her methods don’t seem to work. What she creates in her dreams at the lab is what she wants to create in real life. She just can’t seem to do it. In dreams, everything seems so easy. She wishes she could talk to the dream version of herself and find out what her methods are.
She remembers when she signed up for the study; the researcher had told her she’d still maintain creative function while asleep, and that some artists report breakthrough ideas. She didn’t quite believe him, but she had little choice. She needs money to pay for materials and bills. There are no commissions. The rhythmic tap-tap-tap of her chisel on stone has been silent too long.
Elara examines one of the stone pieces in the sink. Her fingertips trace the contours, noting the cool smoothness broken by unexpected ridges. There are shifts in this—not ones that she’s created. There are textures here that she doesn’t remember carving, tiny whorls and undulations that remind her of the fungal patterns from her dreams. In the dim light of her apartment, she swears she can see faint blue-green traces beneath the surface, and when she brings the stone to her nose, there’s a subtle earthy scent, like a forest floor after rain.
The next day in the lab, the doctor explains the technology a bit more. The antiseptic atmosphere contrasts with the earthy scent of her studio, and the constant electronic hum of equipment creates a sonic barrier between her and true silence. Elara complains about the fact she seems to be losing her creativity in the outside world, but gaining more while she’s asleep.
“We’re mapping creative brain function during delta wave states,” he says, his voice competing with the rhythmic beeping of nearby machines. “The visualiser translates your neural patterns into imagery.”
This confuses her more. She runs her fingers along the cool metal edge of a nearby console, its unyielding surface so unlike the responsive stone of her dreams. She doesn’t know if she’s dreaming what the printouts show, or if the printouts are an interpretation of what she dreams. The doctor can’t answer her satisfactorily, his words are clinical and sterile, his meaning too abstract.
In the next dream session, she experiences the sensation of stone becoming malleable under her hands again. Resistance giving way, like ice melting beneath warm fingers. The cool, hard surface softens, responds to her touch. Fungi sprout in response to her emotions, their fruiting bodies unfurling in sped up time. She inhales their earthy, primal scent as the mycelial networks spread. The fungi are coming from her fingertips, microscopic spores releasing from her skin and embedding themselves into the stone, creating networks of living colour.
In the dream world, sound disappears. The only noise is the stone transforming at a molecular level. The grey granite blushes with blues and greens. She feels alive, her senses heightened in the dreamscape. She insists to herself that she will not forget this dream, focusing on the unique tactile memory of stone yielding to flesh, but when she wakes, she does forget and must wait for the staff to explain her visions.
The researchers seem more excited than in previous sessions. They have made some kind of breakthrough. They say there are unusual patterns in the brain waves this time. The imaging shows colour.
They say that the patterns they found match those found in mycelial networks. The doctor makes notes about “cross-species neural mimicry.” Elara wrings her hands, still not understanding. She still doesn’t remember either. It’s frustrating. What is the point? What benefit is she getting, other than money? She wants to leave the trial. Return to crafting physical objects. She wants to be an artist with gallery exhibitions. She wants to be making things with her hands, not in her dreams.
Next time she is in session with the researchers, she brings in some stones that she’s worked on in her home studio. They are small, the size of palm pebbles. She’s carved into them. Their weight is comforting in her hand, cool and substantial. The deliberate grooves she’s made with her chisel are so tactile; her tools memorialised in texture. The stones carry the scent of her studio. The dust and minerals and faint traces of the coffee she drinks while working.
She places them in the pockets of the scrubs she has to wear, feeling their weight tugging at the fabric. A secret, comforting gravity. The researchers never check. It’s a test, a quiet rebellion, for herself. She needs to understand herself again, and perhaps the stones can help her remember what she does in the dream. As she settles into the chamber, the icy surface envelops her like a technological cocoon, so different from her dust-filled studio. The steady hum of machines replaces the silence of stone.
On waking, she reaches into her pockets for the two stones she brought with her. They aren’t there. Her stomach drops and she panics. Did she even bring them? She’s not sure now. How can she know?
The doctor appears at the window of the lab. He’s holding the stones in his hand.
“Elara, we asked you not to bring anything in with you. Why did you do this?”
“I just wanted to test something,” she says. “I’m an artist. You know this is what I do. I push the boundaries. I apologise if it caused any problems with your machines.”
“No,” he says. “In fact, I’m glad of it. There’s something here. We scanned the stones while you were sleeping. There are structures forming that shouldn’t be possible. There are fungal spores embedding themselves into the solid stone. What treatment have these stones received?”
She doesn’t know what to say. A breeze washes over her like she’s outside. But that’s impossible. This isn’t right. He doesn’t seem real. He’s becoming transparent. She is still dreaming.
“Elara. Elara, are you there? Wake up.”
She wakes up. The stones are still in her pocket. The researchers say nothing. She packs up and says her goodbyes, hurrying back home, exhausted again. She looks at her bed, having stripped the sheet off to keep the stone dust from the pillow. Again, she eats noodles in front of the TV and goes to bed.
This time is different; she dreams and remembers it. She understands that the patterns forming on the stones in her dreams are a type of communication. The fungi are trying to reach human consciousness through her art.
On waking, she writes it down as fast as she can so she doesn’t forget. She’s kept a dream diary for a while, but lately the pages have been empty.
She packs her stuff ready to go to the clinic. As she gets there, the doctor is there to greet her, so she explains her discovery and her dream, but something is wrong. He’s listening to her, but it’s like he’s looking through her. She sees his hand pass through the edge of the computer keyboard. The lights flicker in the lab. Something is glitching.
Elara steps back and touches a wall, leaning on it, needing the support. She sinks into it. The laboratory dissolves around her. She’s stuck. What’s happening?
Elara is lying in the chamber. She’s been there all along. She’s never left. The real researchers begin the process of waking her up. They explain that she’s been in continuous, monitored sleep, hooked up to a drip. She’s been in a virtual coma for five days.
Their equipment detected unusual patterns. Her brain was communicating with something else. She has not been home and had no dreams of her own, beyond those in the lab.
Later, back home in her workshop, she looks at the stone sculptures with new understanding. She prepares for a new exhibition. She leaves spaces in the unfinished stone for fungal growth. A time-lapse video showing fungi growing into her stonework and completing the pieces in ways she guides but doesn’t control, is shown in the gallery.
As she’s installing her show, she sees her own hand flicker. She ignores it.
Six months later, Elara prepares to return to the sleep chamber at the lab. The familiar antiseptic aroma greets her, a counterpoint to the earthy scent of fungi that now permeates her successful studio. She runs her fingers along the smooth edge of the chamber, remembering the cool embrace of its surface. This time, she’s not here for money, she doesn’t need it, she’s here for collaboration. Thanks to her discovery, the research team have gained more funding. The world wants to know what the fungi have to say.
The steady hum of machinery welcomes her like an old friend as she settles in. On a nearby table sits a piece of her artwork—stone transformed by fungal patterns, grey granite now marbled with veins of living blue-green that respond to touch with subtle warmth.
The dream always starts with me in the chamber again, she thinks, as the electrodes sit against her temples. It was never about waking up, but about learning to dream together. Human consciousness and fungal networks communicating through me, the translator.
She drifts off to sleep.
Thanks to literary shepherds,
and who gathered a group of us together to write on the theme of The Future of Nature.If you enjoyed this story you might be interested in my forthcoming novel The Dark Beneath Us, the prequal to Earthly Bodies (2021). Click the banner below to join the waiting list.
Bravo, Susan! The story kept me in suspense. As many have already said, I Loved the blurred line between reality and the dream world.
Thanks. I enjoyed this. The vivid descriptions… making me desperate to go out side and hold stones, examine them, smell them. I could totally see the blue-green under the granite too!