Dream: The Egg

The Dreamer dreamed of an ocean that swelled with tides unknown. Of stars falling gold and silver, settling against the dark waters as flower petals tremble in the wind. Of a night blue sky filled with glittering jewels. Two moons full and bright, one haloed with paleness. Silver dancing on the water. Wetness between the toes, and the roughness of stone.

The Dreamer extended a hand towards the falling stars, and cupped one within the palm. A baby sparrow, its innocent eyes gleaming with question. With a slight tilting of the head, the Dreamer smiled softly. The sparrow spread its wings and became an albatross flying away towards the east, trailing golden fairy dust.

Then rising, falling upward into that sky filled with the dust of diamonds. Feet losing touch with ground, gravity losing its hold. The bright stars fading away. Up and up and up...

Darkness.

Sensation in darkness.

Breath. Slow, in and out, in and out. Lying cradled within an egg-like nest, curled over on one side. Limbs distant, half imaginary things at the back of the brain. A stroking feeling against the head. Movement, gentle and slow.

The Dreamer opens an eye with deliberate, groggy care.

Soft white light pours in through the crevasse of reality. Shadow move against the light, passing unfocused through the crack of minute awareness.

Voices pass through the Dreamer's head, falling through as water through open fingers. Soft sounds. Comforting sounds.

The Dreamer smiles softly, and makes a whispering squeak of a noise, barely audible. An involuntary, weak curl of a hand that may have held a bird in some other place.

Pressure on some faraway, half-imagined limb, encircling it. A pinprick, barely felt.

Darkness creeps in on the Dreamer's vision, and invisible fingers pull a heavy eyelid shut. Low murmurs seem both voices and the gentle lap of the ocean waves against some lonesome rock, far out at sea.

The cackling of gulls, and a slowly rising sun, yellow and gold in the east. Warm water with little swimming motes of light pass between the Dreamers fingers, fleeing to shadowed crevasses in the rocks. Following them with one relaxed hand, the Dreamer picks a shell out of the rock, an oyster, still shut. Careful fingers pry open the little box, and find within an iridescent pearl, shimmering with the hues of the rainbow.

Peering closer at the glimmering colours, the Dreamer sees, reflected as if on a mirror surface, an eggshell pod, opened halfway. Figures in white robes walk around the pod, performing almost sacred seeming acts. Lights flash along the outside edges, flickering like the light of a candles flame. A frail, emaciated figure wrapped in metallic coils about its bony limbs, curled on one side, seeming asleep, its head buried in a nest of slowly undulating golden strands connected to the pod itself.

The shifting colours change, and once more, the pearl is a pearl. A seagull chatters loudly from nearby. The Dreamer drops the inert sphere into the swirling warm ocean water, and turns to look at the suddenly scintillatingly coloured creature.