- magic.
- In the other ashdown, it doesn't matter what your power in the real Ashdown is. Talk to cats? Set things on fire with your mind? Doesn't matter, in the other ashdown you can do anything. There's a thousand ways to skin a cat, whether that's through herbalism or chanting or prayers or tossing the oracle bones. If you want to get a Harry Potter-style wand and cast Alohamora, that's as likely to work as anything else.
Magic in the otherworld trades upon one thing and one thing only: belief. You have to really, sincerely believe that whatever you're doing will have the results you want. It all comes down to that: warding? Belief. Banishing the Other Things? Belief.
A coda upon the topic of dreamers:
A major touchstone and point of commonality among the Ashdown dreamers is that they dream. What separates an Ashdown dream from a regular dream is its logic; while there's magic and unbelievable things, there is a logical progression to them. A dreamer will be able to navigate the other ashdown from their memories of the real Ashdown, and whatever changes they make will appear in the otherworld.
It's astral projection, basically.