This story has its origins in my dreams. Let us hope it inspires the makings of a wonderful narative.
Night was fast approaching and I felt compelled to go outside. I think I lived alone and I do not know why I needed to go outside.
As I came out of the building I saw on my left two people, one atop a camel, robed completely in black. Only his dark eyes were visible. The other, in a dirty white Arab outfit and a turban, looked directly at me and smiled. I walked towards him. I had instantly trusted him, almost like I knew him. And then the ground beneath me shifted, turned into sand, and it seemed like we were in a small desert heaped high with with dunes, right here in the outskirts of this lush green town. I approached the pair on unsteady feet. The one atop the camel reached into the inner folds of his black robes and retreived what looked like a black cloth wrapped around an uneven wooden stick.
"Perhaps he will do better this time," he intoned in a deep but gentle voice that gave me the sense of ages, eons, as he handed me the stick. His companion urged me to unwrap it. I did.
It was like my eyes opened for the very first time; almost like I had been asleep the whole time and new sensations were stirring in me and all around me.
When I looked up, the black-clad man was gone. So was the sand. His white-clad companion, however, remained. He asked me what to do. His name came to me-Andreshan-was this a memory? Or was it the scroll? He lifted his hand and pointed. I followed it and spotted a little girl who was beckoning to me. She was sitting on the veranda of a nearby house, regarding me expectantly as I approached. Something above the house distracted me. Night had now fallen, save for slight silver splashes on the clouds now illuminated by the moon. A small chubby dragon flapped its wings and flew towards us. I looked at Andreshan who smiled still, nodding.
"Can everyone see this?" I asked, feeling as though I was rapidly losing my grip on reality.
Andreshan shook his head. The dragon hovered in the air in front of me, smiling as it stretched out its hand.
"Hello, Henry," the dragon said, as I took its hand for a firm handshake. Then it was gone. My attention once more returned to the little girl. It seemed not at all unusual to her to be talking to an imaginary being.
She pointed at the sky,covered with scattered clouds. It seemed to be bigger. The moon, peeping from behind a cloud, was now grander and more magnificent than I had ever imagined. "I saw it yesterday." She was pointing at a constellation of three bright stars. "Right there, I saw the comet." But I could not see it.
The clouds had almost completely obscured the constellation when the three stars formed a triangle with more glittering stars. It then began an acrobatic dance in the sky, drawing multiple white rays of light. Then the rays of light changed, seemed to be emanating from a rotating house floating in the sky. Again it seemed that only I and my new companion saw this.
Angreshan urged me toward this unreal wonder. Our flight of sand would have to wait.
Comments