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dragonlady7It is the most amazing of experiences to live among the mortals of this world, to love and eat and laugh and cry and run and give birth and, eventually, die the way they do. Death is so like what we dream-creatures do constantly, and yet so different; that slow frightening passing of the self between the worlds, out of the real into the unknown, is made more difficult by the knowledge that for the mortal it is the absolute end of anything real that he or she has experienced, that there is no return, no awakening; and this is what differentiates our experiences. Though I knew where I was going, still I was as frightened and sorrowful as he was to leave those we loved behind, never to see them again in their mortal forms. I fear that I will never again feel such depths and pinnacles of emotion as I did there; it simply isn't the same to be a dream-guardian as it is to be the protector of one individual.
And now in my dreams, instead of the endless flowing colors and pure tones and scents and tastes of dreamer-dreams, I revisit those places of the physical world. I smell the dew on the crushed grass of the battlefield on the next morning; I see the sun setting behind the west tower, with the sentry's lonely silhouette isolated among the ramparts. I remember the sound of the children playing in the snow, the songs beside the dancing fire smelling of woodsmoke and candles and hot chocolate and laughter, the sound of weeping rising and falling low beneath the crackling of the funeral bonfires, the smell of blood and the haunted grim look on the dirt-streaked face of a young warrior. In my dreams they come back to me; the beautiful couple sitting together in love beneath the spreading branches of a giant old apple tree, the rays of the sun slanting towards evening across the wide grassy Plainlands, the first steps of a baby and the shape of his mother's mouth as she watches, a child's eyes growing wider as she watches her father die. These now are my dreams. Now I realize, too late, that my reluctance to take on the duty of guardian was for all the wrong reasons. But I would do it again in a moment. No longer am I content to hover, myself hardly more than a dream, the way I used to be happy. How ironic; and yet somehow it is right, as all things must sooner or later be changed, even those of the world of the dreamers.
sept. 28, 1998
And now in my dreams, instead of the endless flowing colors and pure tones and scents and tastes of dreamer-dreams, I revisit those places of the physical world. I smell the dew on the crushed grass of the battlefield on the next morning; I see the sun setting behind the west tower, with the sentry's lonely silhouette isolated among the ramparts. I remember the sound of the children playing in the snow, the songs beside the dancing fire smelling of woodsmoke and candles and hot chocolate and laughter, the sound of weeping rising and falling low beneath the crackling of the funeral bonfires, the smell of blood and the haunted grim look on the dirt-streaked face of a young warrior. In my dreams they come back to me; the beautiful couple sitting together in love beneath the spreading branches of a giant old apple tree, the rays of the sun slanting towards evening across the wide grassy Plainlands, the first steps of a baby and the shape of his mother's mouth as she watches, a child's eyes growing wider as she watches her father die. These now are my dreams. Now I realize, too late, that my reluctance to take on the duty of guardian was for all the wrong reasons. But I would do it again in a moment. No longer am I content to hover, myself hardly more than a dream, the way I used to be happy. How ironic; and yet somehow it is right, as all things must sooner or later be changed, even those of the world of the dreamers.
sept. 28, 1998
