Chapter Four-- A Study in Contradictions

It is starting to drizzle lightly as I pull my old, dented Chrysler into the narrow parking spot before the antique book store. I fumble around beneath the passenger seat, looking for an umbrella, more out of fear of rain damage to the fragile item in my bag than for my own use. I then slide out of the car and step through the door of the shop, inhaling the musty scent of old paper and ink.

“Anton?” I call, peering around the labyrinthine shelves, trying to see the checkout desk. There is only one other customer in the store, a tall, slender man in a blue velvet suit with an almost Victorian cut, and a matching bowler hat. I can't see his face, as his back is to me. He is pouring over a yellowed, dusty volume. As I walk towards the desk, I glance his way again; his face is still hidden in the shadow of his hat, but I see his head tilt slightly and his lips upturn in what I can only call a sardonic smirk.

“I believe Anton is in the back... imbibing,” the man says in a clipped, Irish-sounding accent. I glance his way without responding, striding over to the counter and ringing the bell. “Anton?” I call. “You back there?”

I hear a shuffling and a harrumph, and a hawk-faced old man with shoulder-length white hair steps out of the back room. He sees me, and raises one eyebrow in mock outrage before breaking into a broad grin. “Evelyn! And for what purpose do you grace me with your presence today?”

“How are ya, Anton?” I say while pulling the book out of my bag. Anton pulls a pair of spectacles out of his pocket and puts them on, staring at the book in instantaneous rapt attention. This man loves old books, loves everything about them. He is also a cunning linguist, and has been a tremendous help to me as an information source when I am doing research for my books.

“I got my hands on this earlier today,” I say, carefully opening the book. “I was wondering if you could tell me what language it's written in.” I glance down at the writing and give a haphazard and somewhat joking guess. “It looks a bit like Arabic meets Tolkien Elvish.”

He chuckles. “It's not Arabic, though I suppose I could see the aesthetic similarity. And it isn't one of Tolkien's languages.” He glances at me over his spectacles. “And you just carry it around in your bag? You realize this book could be priceless? I do hope you're being careful with it.”

“I am,” I assure him. “I just picked it up at work and haven't gotten it home yet. I just wanted to see what you thought.”

He nods. “Picked it up at work. I see.” He harrumphs, and I chew my lower lip, wondering if he suspects I stole it. He studies the writing for a moment, then says, “Evelyn, I can honestly say that I have no idea what language this is written in. Would you consider sending it to the university for analysis?” Anton teaches a couple of classes over there in addition to running his bookstore, more because he enjoys it than because he needs to do so for the money. He was once a full time, tenured linguistics professor over there, but retired to the more leisurely business of bookselling.

I shake my head. “No, I'd rather not. I don't know. We'll see.” I return the book back to my bag. “Thank you for looking at it, Anton. I was just wondering what it might be.”

“You're quite welcome, Evelyn. If you do change your mind, let me know. I would love to look at it further.”

“I'll let you know,” I say. “I really ought to be going, though, before it really starts coming down out there.” He nods and waves me off.

I step onto the front sidewalk under the overhang and wrestle with my old umbrella-- it has indeed started truly raining. Someone steps up beside me; I see a flash of red from the corner of my eye. I turn to see the tall, slender man in the velvet suit and bowler hat, but his suit is now red. He looks at me and grins, flashing white teeth and intensely blue eyes. I stare at him for a moment, convinced I've seen him before, before I recognize him.

“Trick?” I venture.

“Got it in one,” he says, moving subtly towards me, close but not touching. His suit color shifts with him and

the play of light and shadow, blending itself slowly back into blue. His entire being resonates with song, the colors pulsing in my head so intensely that I quickly pull back. He raises an eyebrow at me. “Do I make you uncomfortable?”

“Such a thing as personal space,” I mumble. I've never actually met somebody who came to pay me a visit in my world before.

“Ah. Yes, of course.” He looks at me for a moment. “Evelyn Alvar. You should know that you won't find the language this book is written in. The language doesn't exist.”

“So, what, it's some sort of made up thing?”

“All languages are made up!” he laughs.

I shake my head. “No, I mean, it's a fictional language.

“It's not fictional.”

“But... you said it doesn't exist.”

“That is true.”

I'm getting tired of his cryptic responses. “Okay, then. It's a dead language? Something that was once spoken but no longer?”

“No. This language never existed.”

I sigh in exasperation. “You do like speaking in riddles.”

“Riddles are rather boring. One question, faceted descriptions all alluding to a single, lonely, overly simplistic answer. Carved in stone. So dreadfully dull. I speak in opposites. In contradictions.” He flicks a finger under the lapel of his suit. “You see? My suit is blue. It is also red. It is completely blue and completely red, both, at the same time.” He inclines his head slowly to one side, his eyes on my face. “You don't need a translator, Evelyn.”

And then he steps back and vanishes, but it isn't like a magic trick. It is like he was never there in the first place. My mind struggles to remember, to hold on to the encounter, but it fades until I am half convinced it was a dream I had once.

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Chapter Three-- The Path of Language

It's nearly one in the afternoon before Alice finally gets back to the shop. She is carrying two large plastic bags, and the scent of fried chicken wafts in the air around them. “I brought lunch,” she announces in her subtly accented voice. I could never quite determine what that accent is. “I hope you weren't too particularly attached to your Lean Cuisines.”

She sets the bags on the counter and smooths a lock of long ebony hair behind one subtly pointed ear. Alice

is tall and statuesque, always dresses with a dark, understated elegance, and has some sort of genetic condition that left her with white fingernails and oddly shaped ears. She never really said what the condition is, but it makes her look exotic and elfin, a stark contrast to my petite curves and mousy brown, choppy-layered hair. “Have we had much store traffic this morning?” she asks as she starts digging through the bags and opening styrofoam containers before passing them out. “Vi, this one's yours. Evie, for you. And this one for me. I trust these meals are what you wanted?”

“You know me too well,” I say, though I am a bit annoyed that she didn't consult me about it first. Alice has a habit of making these sorts of decisions for me, probably because of the role she played in my life when I was a child. She was never really a mother to me, but definitely like an older sister who often had to play surrogate parent. I love her and chafe at her in equal measure. “Um, yeah. It's been dead here. We've had one customer, and she didn't buy anything.” This isn't very unusual; I often wonder how Alice can afford to even stay open, let alone give us our paychecks every week. We'd probably do better if we were in New Orleans proper, but we're hidden off in suburbia, and quite frankly, the word “hidden” is rather appropriate. Even I have difficulty seeing the store sometimes, have actually passed it up more than once while driving here, and I'm here every day.

Alice nods, looking unsurprised, then says, “Okay, I can take over the register for a little while if you two want to take lunch.”

Violet and I grab our respective food cartons-- I also sling my bag containing the mysterious book over my shoulder-- and head for the break room.

I close the door and look at Violet for a minute. She raises one pierced eyebrow at me and says, “Whaaaaat?”

“Can I trust you, Vi?”

“Um. Why?”

“Because I did something, and am continuing to do something, which I really don't want Alice to know about.”

Violet sighs. “Right. This wouldn't have anything to do with that package you klepto'd from her office, would it?”

“Um--”

“I saw you put it in your bag. Big, old-looking book that looks like it came from a museum? Not exactly your usual behind-the-register reading material. And seriously, I just hope the thing doesn't fall apart in your bag. The thing looks like it needs climate control or something just to stay together.”

I shake my head. “You win an Oscar.”

She takes a bow. “Why, thank you. So. Mind telling me why I'm lying to my boss for you?”

“I'm your boss too.”

“And she's your boss,” she enunciates slowly, exaggeratedly.

“Oh, she is not. She's not my boss! We're equal partners.”

“Try telling her that!”

I sigh. “Look. I just... I had a very good reason for taking it. I need to figure some stuff out, and I don't want her to know I've seen it.”

She crosses her fishnetted arms over her chest. “Why?”

“Because... because. Because! I can't tell you. But I need to do this.”

“Why? Whywhywhy? You want me to stick my neck out without so much as an explanation?”

I pull a chair out and slump down in it. “It's complicated, Vi. I just... somehow. For some reason that I don't understand, this book that she received somehow... pertains to me.”

Violet looks at me for a moment, then reaches for my bag. I quickly pull it out of her reach. “Let me see it,” she growls.

“No! No, I'm not gonna show you. You wouldn't really understand why it's got me worked up anyway. There are... things you don't know about me. And I thought Alice didn't know either, but now... Well. I'm not so sure now.”

Violet plops into another chair and rests her chin on both hands, elbows on the table, staring at me. “You are so incredibly cryptic. It's kinda sexy. And yet ridiculously annoying.”

“Are you gonna help me out or not?”

She sighs. “You're trying to split my loyalties, Eve. Got me in a tight spot here. It's not exactly fair to me.”

I nod. “I know. And I'm sorry. I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it was absolutely necessary.”

She considers it for a moment, and is about to speak, but before she can utter a word, the door to the break room opens, and Alice steps through. I look at her for an instant, wondering if she had heard us talking.

“Violet,” she says, “Do you remember that package delivered by private messenger yesterday? The one I put in my office? Any idea where it got to? It seems to be missing.” She looks at me for an instant, before looking away again, and I suddenly get the overwhelming sense that she knows more about me than I know about myself. I shiver a little.

Violet shrugs. “Nope, haven't seen it since you took it back to your office, Boss. Evie, you seen it?”

“Nope,” I confirm, shooting Violet a look of gratitude.

Alice nods thoughtfully, glancing between us. “If either of you happen to see it, please let me know. It's a very important package.”

We nod, and she leaves.

“I feel like I'm fourteen years old and lying to my mother,” Violet says. “You owe me, Eve.”

“I do, I know,” I say. “Thank you, Violet.” I squeeze her in a one-armed hug. “You're good people.”

“Yeah, whatever you say,” she says, and digs her cigarette pack out of her pocket. “Smoke time. Touch my food and die.”

“It's gonna get cold!”

“And how will I ever warm it up, considering we don't have a big ol' Panasonic microwave in dire need of a cleaning sitting on the counter over there? I'm doomed to eat lukewarm chicken. Oh, fate, I curse thee.”

I shake my head and shoo her off with my hand, waiting for her to wrestle the door closed behind her before sliding the book out of my bag. I know I should probably wait until I get home to prevent Alice from walking in and seeing me with the book, but patience has never been one of my virtues. I need to know what's going on here.

Slowly and carefully, I turn the first brittle page, and look at the script. Instead of flipping through the book like I did before, I scrutinize the elegant black ink lines and flourishes on the aging paper, and once again I am filled with that bizarre sense of almost being able to understand the language, as if I saw it a very long time ago.

As I stare at the writing, words begin to shimmer into existence in my mind, not English. I won't write them here, not as they sounded to me (I don't know that I could do so if I tried), but I will attempt an approximate translation.

In the beginning, were the Twins. There was All That Is, and there was the Emptiness. They existed in the same space and in the same time, but never did touch, never once, for if they touched, a devastation like to which no one had ever seen would befall the Real.

In time, though, the equilibrium of the Real began to shift off balance, and the Emptiness began to seep into the All, and the All into the Emptiness, like water pouring out of a tilting vessel. And this happened slowly, subtly, and no one noticed at first. No one noticed until the first Unmakers were loosed...

The outside door scrapes as Violet pulls it open to come back into the break room, and I snap out of the trance, feeling as though I have been punched. I look down at the text in front of me with a shudder, and then close the book, sliding it back into my bag.

“That must be some riveting reading,” Violet says as she puts her lunch in the microwave. “Someday you're gonna tell me what this is about.”

I can't think of a single way to answer her.

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Chapter Two-- The Book

I step through the door of the curio shop that my friend Alice and I run together, and the little bell jangles. Shelves are full of strange, unique, and eccentric bits and baubles, herbs for the pagan practicioner, crystals and handmade wands, and other items that Alice found lord knows where. Some of my own prints hang on the walls. They don't sell very well.

“Alice's Wonderland” is painted in elegant, filigreed script on the glass door. I did the lettering and the illustration several years ago in glass paints, of a dark-haired, midnight-blue-and-black-frocked Lewis Carroll's Alice with dark and exotic makeup, black and blue striped armbands and tights, and black combat boots walking through a bizarre garden.

I look towards the checkout table that graces the center of the room and see that Violet is manning the station. Violet is eighteen years old, with spiky black hair tipped with vivid pink, pale with a light smattering of freckles over her face. She is pierced and tattooed, and her clothing makes her look like she stepped straight out of a goth club, all black corsetry, fingerless elbow-length gloves made of fishnet, and knee-high boots with what must be a dozen buckles. Violet is sarcastic, sassy, blunt, ridiculously compassionate and curiously wise for her age, and one of my favorite people in all the world, aside from maybe Alice, who is like a sister to me.

“Yo, Evie. What's up?” she says, as I approach the counter, sliding my bag across it and letting it drop down to the other side.

“Hey, Violet,” I say. “Not much. Where's Alice?”

“No clue. She said she had a meeting and ran off. You know how she is.”

I nod. “You want a break?”

“Sure.” She fishes a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of her pocket and slides off the stool. “Oh, hey, Alice got a new shipment in. She said you'd be able to catalog it and everything. Oh, and stuff fell off the shelves sometime in the night again.” She pauses. “I still think this place is haunted. You know, my mom sees all that shit. Says I do too, but I've never actually seen anything. I can feel the fuck out of it, though.” She blinks, suddenly aware of the double entendre of her words. “Um. That didn't come out quite right. Yeah, I need a smoke. Back in a few, Eve. Oh yeah, I made coffee.” I smile at her and nod my thanks. Violet doesn't like coffee. She puts a cigarette in her mouth and starts flicking her lighter as she walks towards the beaded curtain which hides the employee area and back door.

I follow her into the break room, making a beeline for the coffee. “Out the back door, Vi,” I remind her, as I search for my mug in the collection on the counter.

“I'm goin', I'm goin',” she mumbles around her cigarette, hefting open the door and struggling to scrape it open enough to squeeze through it. “Might help if we get this door fixed.”

“Working on it,” I call back, scooping sugar into my mug which has the words “Fuck Destiny” emblazoned across it in stark, black letters. “Got a call into a guy who can level it.”

She shoves the door closed, and I hear her holler back something which may have been “Awesome!”

I pour Coffeemate in my cup, fill it to the brim with the nectar of the gods, and go check the office for the shipment box. It takes a minute to find it; it's sort of hiding underneath Alice's desk. It's not very big, and only says “Alice's Wonderland” on a card taped to the top; I pick it up and carry it back to the register counter with me. I can enter it on the computer there.

Using a box cutter, I open the top of the box. It looks like only one thing is inside, wrapped in layers of bubble wrap. I tug it out, tearing away the tape and cushioning, revealing an old, leather-bound book. I open it, flipping through it carefully. Its pages are yellowed and brittle; I wonder how old it is.

There is a note in the box.

Alice,

Here is the manuscript detailing the events of the War. You will need this.

Strange. I peer at the lettering while slowly turning the pages. I can't read it, but I have the oddest sensation of being almost able to read it. There are elegant illustrations gracing the text, images of soaring, crystalline buildings, expansive forests, violet skies, and beautiful people with faces decorated by precious stones and elegant clothing that looks both medieval and strangely modern, that send the most curious shivers rolling up and down my spine. I turn the page, and see a beautifully rendered drawing...

Of me. Not the me that sits here right now behind the register, but the me that travels to fantastic worlds. The figure in the drawing has amethyst-colored eyes and a wild mop of silver hair threaded with gold, pale and petite and fierce like a jungle cat. She wears an almost sheer white dress that whips about her legs and bare feet, and is standing on a violet-grassed hilltop among frothy white flowers, her arms thrown out to either side, her head tilted back. It is like someone dipped into my subconscious and painted the dream I had a few nights ago.

This can't be me, my mind immediately tries to rationalize. For one thing, this book is old, obvious to even my untrained eye. I'm only twenty-five, definitely not old enough to be pictured in this book.

Something within me flares to life, and I compulsively slip the book, the note tucked away in the pages, in my bag, just as Violet comes back in. She sees the empty box, but doesn't seem to notice that I had just put the contents of the box in my bag.

“Oh,” she says. “That's not the shipment box.” She leans over the counter on tiptoe, grabbing it and looking at it. “Yeah, it was dropped off by messenger yesterday, though he was kinda a weird messenger. Must be privately employed. Oooh, Alice is gonna be pissed that you opened that; she acted like it was something really private.” She hands the box back to me. “The merchandise shipment is in the break room.”

“Why the hell did you put it in the break room?” I snap.

“Geeze, Evie. Calm the fuck down. I put it in there because Alice locked herself in her office for like three hours after that one came in.”

I look at the package; it hadn't been opened when I found it. I wonder if she had re-sealed it with the intent to pass it on to someone else, or maybe to keep it in a safe place.

“Sorry, Vi,” I say absently. “Hey, why don't you keep quiet about my opening this? I'll just seal it up again and stick it back in her office. That way we both avoid the Wrath of Alice.”

“Sounds good to me. I'd rather not get on her nasty side either. That gal is like ice when she gets pissed.” I nod; I've known Alice literally all my life, and she has been an absolute lifesaver, always being there for me when my family... did things. Giving me a place to live as soon as I was old enough to leave home, giving me a job. I've got my own little Victorian-style house now in this little Louisiana town, glad of my independence and liking my space, but Alice will always be the big sister I never had by blood. But Violet is right. Alice's temper is terrifying.

But then, so is mine.

I smile at Violet and say, “Tell me about it.”

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Chapter One: Trickster

I don't Travel every night, but I do it more often than I don't. I don't do it deliberately. I don't choose a destination or decide to step through layers of reality on a whim. I'm not sure why or how it happens, and I won't even attempt to give a scientific explanation for it. For a long time, I thought they were dreams, intensely vivid and draining dreams, but still just dreams. When I got a little older, I learned about astral projection, and thought perhaps that was a little bit closer to what I was doing, except for the fact that I often bring back mementos from my journeys. I have a fairly substantial collection of things from the places I've found myself in, from dried leaves or flowers, to small stones, to carvings and baubles that were given to me by the people I interacted with. I've never heard of an astral projector who brought things back to the waking world with them. So, no. I don't understand it. I just know it happens.

Tonight, I am being pulled, beckoned, drawn through prismatically bending color and song, cool liquid wafting around me, tugging at me. I open my eyes, see that I am underwater, and that a pulsing light draws me upward above the surface. I don't panic, for some reason. It is like I am in a dream.

I surface, my silver hair beaded with shimmering liquid diamonds, and turn towards the source of this subliminal call that brought me here. A man, slender and ethereal, disturbingly beautiful with long dark hair and cerulean eyes that glow, sits atop the water. From his shoulders twist and spiral streams of white light, like curling lightning-wings, almost too bright to look at. He shifts deftly on the surface of the lake, as though it were ice (though clearly it is not, as I see it ripple and roll around him), and smiles at me.

“You're here,” he says with a small smile.  He looks completely unsurprised.

I look around, coming more to myself, noticing that we are in the center of a small lake, surrounded by trees. A thick mist rises from the ground and hovers over the water near the shore. I look back at him. I am still floating in the water; it wafts gently around my chest, tugging at my hair. I feel like some sort of lake nymph. “Yes,” I say finally. “And who might you be?”

He seems to consider this for a moment. “Names are strange things,” he says. “I have many, though in the end there is just one. Perhaps you've heard of me when I was Coyote, or maybe Raven. Or-- then there's Loki, though I have to say that some of those stories were downright scandalous and not in the least bit true. Disclaimer and all that. Bad PR by Thor. I did not have relations with that bull.”

“You're... Loki.” I cough a little laugh, waving my arms through the water. “And Coyote, and Raven... well, which one?”

“I am all of them,” he replies. “And none of them.” He grins suddenly. “Perhaps you should call me the Trickster! A new name, though it is of course very old. That fits, I think.”

I shrug. “Trickster. Okay. Or maybe Trick. How's that? Since you're obviously not going to tell me your actual name.”

“Trick. I do think I like that. And that is my actual name.”

“But you just gave yourself that name, just now.”

“Ah, but you helped. You were like a mirror! How fascinating. Not surprising, though. The best names are the ones you give yourself, don't you think? You choose who you are that way.”

Trick proceeds then to stand up, still on top of the water, and walk towards me. I stare at him unabashedly. “How are you doing that?”

He looks at me half askance. “You still don't know how to walk on water? How old are you?” Reaching my side, he takes me by the arm and starts pulling me up to the surface. “It's quite simple. You walk on water by...” still holding my arm, he slowly lets me gain my feet, supported by the liquid surface beneath me. “By walking on water.” He gives me that flash-grin again and takes a step forward, guiding me by the arm. “You see?” I take a wobbly step forward, and the water holds me.

Then he lets me go. I hover for a split second, and then the water is closing around my head. I thrash and sputter, unable to find my footing (how deep was this lake?), struggling to seek the surface. I finally break through, coughing, my hair hanging in sodden ropes over my face. “Asshole!” I snap.

He looks shocked and amused. I think he is more amused, and perhaps even... pleased. “I am delightfully fiendish, I know. But you did it wrong! You stopped walking on water. When you stop, of course you'll fall in. It's a simple law of physics. You do have physics in your world, yes?”

“I never learned that stuff,” I mumble. “My education was lacking.”

“So educate yourself. Why should you rely on another to give you the knowledge you seek? ” He studies me for a moment. “Why do you think you sank, Evelyn-Siabhra?”

“I... I don't--” I blink. “Hey. How'd you know my name?”

He laughs. “Perhaps I stole the letters from your eyes. Yes, yes, that's it! Of course, they were all topsy-turvey. I had to re-arrange them, like a... what do you call them? An anagram! You humans do have strange words for things. (Though I'm not certain I would use the word 'human' in relation to you, dear.)  Your name could be so very many possibilities, were the letters arranged in a different fashion. Did you know you could be 'Abrasively-Hen?'” He begins snickering like a schoolboy. “Or... A Blarneys Hive! Or. Aha! Sibyl Nerve. I rather like that one, don't you? It would be a fine thing, to have one's first name be Aha! An exclamation by its very nature. Yes?”

I furrow my brow at him, and he shakes his head. “You are far too serious, Aha! You should laugh more.”

“You are... rather odd,” I answer, but I'm secretly enjoying his incredibly random discourse. Something about him fascinates and mesmerizes me, and tickles my mind with an unrelenting sense of deja vu.

He walks up to me and crouches before me, those eerie blue eyes of his still laughing. “All the best people are, don't you think?” He smiles at me. “I brought you here because I wanted to see if it was truly you. I'm still uncertain, however I have seen the hold she has on you, the strength with which she directs your otherworldly paths. I thought your kind were extinct, Evelyn-Siabhra. And if you are the one I suspect-- and

perhaps want-- you to be, you've once again lost your freedom.” He studies my face for a long moment, suddenly as serious as he accused me of being a moment ago, as though trying to read the letters in my eyes. “You have a story far longer than what you can remember.” He slips his hand in his pocket and pulls out a beautiful perfume bottle the color of his eyes, filigreed and encrusted with what looks like amethyst. It is banded by gold, and looks incredibly fragile.  I wonder how the bottle fit in his pocket, especially without breaking.  “Do you remember this?” he asks. I shake my head, and he presses the bottle into my hands.

Then he reaches out and touches me lightly on my temple, almost a caress, and with a tangible whoosh, I am back home, lying in bed.

They aren't dreams. I am holding the perfume bottle in my hand.

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Nightmare

Dreams, too many dreams that sear themselves across my consciousness, choking me, smothering me.  I gag at the stench of burning flesh as smoke blinds me.  A layered, maddened scream tears through my hearing, shattering into laughter that sounds like broken glass scraped over stone, and I turn my head, feeling a sticky wetness against my cheek, trying to see the source of that chilling scream, though my stomach coils in horror at the thought.  All I can think of is Run.  Run.  Run.  But I can’t— they won’t allow it, these youthful and ancient men with insanity in their eyes that stand around my prone form.  I just want to wake up.  I am drawn from my burned and broken body like a last breath. I see a stoppered bottle from blurred vision-- how can I see with no eyes?  It is an ornate thing, this bottle, gilded, filigreed  and encrusted with amethyst, something that might hold perfume.  It is so much larger within.  This will house you temporarily until an appropriate body is found, they say.  You will forget, they say.  But you will remember one day, and when you do, we will be waiting.  There is a liminal echo of command, of threat to their words.

I just want to wake up.

Multitudes

We each of us contain multitudes, an infinity of being, of potential, of possibility.  Of what was, what is, and what could be.  We are all poured down countless paths all at once, here and everywhere.  In this infinity of self, this faceted eternity housed within a small outer shell, time is only a matter of perspective.

I am Moving, in my dream.  I am Flying, slipping through layers of infinity, and I can see so much that could be and could have been.  It isn’t memory, not exactly, not in the sense of a coherent, linear order of events, but it is the Past.  I am standing on a hill that ripples a deep amethyst under a sky that seems to reflect the color, waves of purple grass cascading across the ground like an an ocean, capped by frothy white flowers that surge and foam across the surface of that ocean.  I throw my arms out and tilt my head to the sky, as the wind whips through my silver-gold hair, my white dress.  I can feel the cold grass between my toes, and breathe deep of the fragrance of flower and grass, a hint of distant mountaintop snow on the wind.

I sing.  When I wake from this dream, I will not recognize the language, and it will rapidly fade from my memory, but for now the song is alive, breathing, reverberating through time and space and dimension.  Every molecule of my body quivers with it, resonates in harmony with everything around me.  The song expands outward, wave after wave rolling into the limitless expanse of All That Is, melody entwining seamlessly with harmony, shifting back and forth.  I am singing with the universe, as she too sings.  I could never sing solo.

When I wake, I am, for a moment, within my mind, still this silver-haired wild thing, feral heart pounding relentlessly.  I can still hear the song.  Musical language continues to reverberate in my mind, and I let it flow from my lips.

Then I am fully awake, and I realize with a feeling like tumbling into an abyss that such things are forever closed to me, except in dreams.