Only In Dreams [closed]

[Naiara Vevier]

(September 29th 510 [the Vevier home])

I knew this feeling – the feeling of floating in the sweet uninterrupted darkness of unconsciousness, a splendid reprieve from anything else save for lulling comforts. Now alone in my quiet room, twilight hung above my head and filled me. I had felt the soft sinewy threads of my pillow stuffed comfortably just for my liking, and the embracing warm cocoon of my blanket snuggly around my body keeping away the stray draft that might creep in even long after I had fallen under the folds of sleep. It was amazing how weary a day out could be for me, how utterly exhausted I could become after what some would consider ordinary, maybe even boring. It made me wonder, on more then just this particular night, if I was fit for further; though even if I was suddenly thrust into a life of something more exuberant and fast pace would I be carried along with its tide? Or would I be consumed abruptly. There would always be a level of uncertainty that others missed that I didn’t. As infuriating as that little self-revelation was.

For now, it seemed something on a hidden level didn’t want to stay on those restless stirring thoughts as I drifted on the gently shifting waves closer to dreams and further from anything else. And as it so often was – or was here lately – my peace was shattered by a tremulous rift that seized a hold of me, striking a (by now) familiar, great and terrible fear. It started low in me and like any ugly thing such as dread - it climbed its way up. Like a real corporeal monster it created a void as it chewed its way through my being, eating at any available space to make itself at home in me, and I am drowning again…in almost every sense of the word. I can’t scream though I feel my lips parting to do just that, but it seems to only fuel this thing in me. Just as greedily this overwhelming sense that seems want to take over does, I am no longer where I know myself to be – in bed asleep safe under my mothers roof in my childhood home.

But I feel the hard compact earth of a place I know I have never stepped foot. I smell the rich dirt slightly damp with plush growth, feel it against my cheek, rough and harsh, digging into the yielding flesh with perfect clarity of any waking experience. I know I will never have such an understanding as I do now – so detached in my analytical observation yet so personally real. However, I feel the deep thundering beat of my own heart in my chest hear the deafening pound in my own ears, obscuring that sense to me making it useless to utilize. I realize that I have others, other then touch or smell, at my disposal in the few more intoxicatingly rushed beats of my pulse. As cruel as it is, I know if I force my eyes open I will see – and against the wrenching instinct not to I do. The pale lids flutter up unveiling light blue orbs, clouded with so much to be distinct in that moment, to many unnamable things that feel to real to cast aside – beyond any rationale to do so.

I see a blur of green and brown amidst other colors (so teasing is this sight when I can’t really see it) and know I am in a forest – where I have no clue, but it is no where near my much-loved home, in fact a feeling in me creeping along underneath the dark dismay tells me that Mura is far, far away. Then it comes to me that amongst everything else there is a clattering, a scuffling, some gruff words and the bone chilling noise- shhhnk – of sharp metal sliding against sharpened metal. The sort of thin delicate slicing that sets an ache in ones teeth. It makes me clamp my own together down hard to fight against the twinge in the back of my jaw, and I am paralyzed…unable to move, probably from my own confounding weaknesses, but not from anything physically being wrong with me. I don’t feel pain at least, perhaps a little aching in my limps from a brief skirmish I don’t recall having, though the adrenaline-lined fatigue is recognizable. (Which makes the reason for this dream – this vision – all the more puzzling. Why drop me off, or rather, show me this particular part of it? And why so tantalizingly out of my reach of comprehension?)

Oh, so many questions, so many unanswerable ones.

It feels like no time at all that the sudden clear outline of pair of strong sturdy legs come in my range of vision, bound in hand crafted dark leather. With such a fine quality to them marking the mastery in which they were made, both boots and breeches. And how spiteful in that moment when I feel a strong hand wrap around my upper arm – firmly yet some how carefully gentle, if the word be permissible to describe it, urges me to stand with a reassuring stability to lean on, that my world all but goes dark again. I am able to catch the broad plateau of this man’s chest, also similarly matching the same material I had spied covering his lower half, and my eyes are able to soak in the distinguished outline of his jaw and chin, but no more. It feels as though with one sweeping gesture of the back of his slightly roughened fingers against my cheek and neck that rearing fiend is pushed away. Now the fluttering unsteady pulse that had been carried in a rushed halting way in me, warmed. Skipping in a whole different way, though it was still tapping out a tune of flighty insecurity. But I couldn’t deny the fact that…I knew, innately it seemed, that something was different, because how many times have I been through this now? And how many more times in the future will I until whatever message I am meant to know is conveyed or understood?

And like that, when I lifted my own hand so my slender pale fingers could catch the side of his face…as quickly as the whole vision had been conjured up to torment me, it was clamped off again, hurling me back with such a force I have no choice but to awaken. It felt like being given a bolt of electricity, even though I don’t cry out or suddenly sit up in some dramatic fashion…my body was conscious once more with the slightest of twitches. I can hear the calling push and pull of the waves outside my window, breaking against the rocks and shore, and I smell the delicious salted air blowing inland. I feel my own bed, molding against my form all with such a cherished familiarity that my throat knots up and warmth blooms behind unseeing eyes. Except…it is out of frustration, longing, want and unease that those hot kissing rivulets making their way out of the corner of my eyes down my temples as I lay on my back, now completely awake. Knowing that sleep…will not come back to me tonight.