the witch under the stairs

When Azalea woke up this morning she began describing in great detail her dream with fervor. She asked me in a rapid and urgent tone, "What lives under our stairs, mom? Is there a bad witch under the stairs??" I told here that nothing could live under our stairs because there was nothing but dirt under there. (After The Flood many a year ago our basement was filled with silt and there are still closed off portions that have yet to be dug clear.) She proceeded to tell me that in her dream a bad witch had taken her friend Beth and that she lived under the stairs. She went on and on with details that were hard to decipher because she was talking so fast and sometimes her speech is still hard to understand, especially in the morning when my brain is still foggy. She wanted to go across the street to make sure that Beth was okay and I had to reassure her that dreams were not real, that Beth was probably still sound asleep and that we should go back to sleep too because it was 6am and it was much too early to be awake on a Sunday. Thankfully she took my advice and we snuggled until sleep returned for us both. When we woke up to face the day at 9 she continued to talk about the same dream as if there had been no break in the conversation from three hours earlier. It was the strangest thing. She's talked about her dreams for awhile now but this was so much more detailed and serious than she had ever been before. It's so interesting to watch her try and decipher reality from fantasy. I marvel at how powerful the imagination is for her. She has a dream of a bad witch under the stairs and it's as real to her as I am. She goes outside to call out to the Care Bears that she is so certain live in the clouds and gets really upset when they don't answer her. She begs to go visit Edward Scissorhands or Dorothy and Toto because she is so convinced that they are really out there somewhere. Four year olds are amazing.