Do dreams commit suicide by allowing us to wake, or do we murder dreams by waking.
I hear far away booming, ominous, dire, and unknown, threatening what? I don’t know. Night drags on. Morning rain mists the dawn with reluctant rain that doesn’t plan to stop, or increase. The gentle rain mingles with brutish thunder in aural tapestry – oddly not threatening nor urgent, only persistent - and cold.
I shiver.
The booming stops. The rain doesn’t. The rain is determined now with steady, louder drumming. Days, and days, and days, of rain - endless days of rain.
The stream has become everywhere under the trees.
Smal fish splash between black tree trunks and endless water.
The Sun, no longer far away, but here, everywhere, throws long spears of light through the leaves. Anticipating Cathedral beams before there were Cathedrals.
The splashing fish make tiny rainbows in the wet blackness below.
The blackness erupts – scales, teeth, something furry, squirting red. Then silence, deep silence. The redness spreads across the blackness - then nothing more, until – A screaming crash of bushy savages run savagely this way.
From the safety of above, I watch them screech by, destroying all in their path. Sometimes they kill each other in their insane frenzy.
I shudder. Soon I forget. I move to higher branches.
All ‘round me the sweetness of ripe juice-fruit calls to my hunger. I eat my fill, then turn to drink from the pool of water collected in a hollow of branches. I climb higher. From high up, I see endless trees dance with the rhythm of the wind.
Higher yet, leatherwing soars, searching opportunity, but leatherwing dares not risk wings tangled in branches. I have no fear. Far away, smoke and fire rise in thumping booms and flashing light.
Another day.
The roars and screams everywhere blend callously with the whispering leaves; terrible and beautiful by turn; an argument in strange agreement, like Hell & Heaven before they went their separate ways.
If I ask how long, it has no meaning
An alluring smell, overwhelming, intoxicating, fills the air. A hand from beyond shakes my shoulder - “Wake up sleepyhead, coffee’s ready, time to get going.
Was it only a dream?
It seemed so real.