I've just woken up...my dream is still in my head, and it was fantastical and a little scary, but I still wanted to finish it. I was mildly disappointed when I woke up and I felt that the dream wasn't done yet.
I was a child, in the 1930s or 40s, running and playing in a forest with my friends. It was summer, in the afternoon and it was a beautiful lazy day. We found a door, a great big iron and wood door that looked ominous, with great big wheels set beside it like a drawbridge mechanism and huge bars set across it to lock us out. Out? Maybe.
We found a weak spot in the wood of the door and crawled through like mice, and when we got through to the other side it wasn't summer anymore but autumn, and we were in a place that had many fences, and in all the fences were piles of scrap metal. Cabinets lined the walls of the place, because unlike where we had come from this was a room, not a wide open space. Children were crawling in and out of the cabinets like little worker bees. I was immediately scared, and tried to run through the paths without being seen - I had noticed another door far across the Room of Fences and I deduced that it was probably less scary than what was here.
"Stop right there! What are you doing, trying for the door without having taken your test yet?" I was grabbed from behind by two dogs with uniforms on, and forced to look up and up and up into the face of a woman with wheels for feet, and scissors for hands. She had short black hair and was wearing a mockery of victorian dress.
I replied that I didn't know I had to take the test but I would if I could make it through that door. The woman smiled (horribly) and directed me to the cabinets, where I would make my little home until I could pass the test. I was a little worker bee now, like my friends and the children before us.
I kept the door fixated in my mind - I don't know how long I stayed there but I eventually tried to escape.
I found out I could jump higher than any other person in that room, so I vaulted myself up and over the fences, running with great strides, running like a deer would run, not like a person. I jumped and landed through the door - no splintering of wood, no great sound, nothing to mark the occasion of my escape - I was just through.
I was through and sitting on a tree branch with a family of Gypsies. They had feathers woven into cloaks on their backs, which helped them fly up into the branches to rest for the night. I checked my back, and I didn't have any feathers, it was my extraordinairy jumping that allowed me to join them. I was a little disappointed, but then realized that this way I didn't have to be one of them, I was just a visitor and I could move on. They fed me apple cider and beans from a tin, and we sang beautiful songs that filled up the sky - now that I was beyond the Room with the Fences I could see the sky again, and all around me was a beautiful lush forest. If I listened I could hear singing from other areas of the trees - other Gypsies singing together, perhaps with other visitors like me.
I woke up alone, in the tree with the leaves and twigs cradled all around me. I didn't want to wake up, I wanted to be part of the tree forever and see things come and go and sing sometimes. I got up regardless, and jumped down from the branches to the forest floor.
...Then I woke up.
This is spinning in my mind, I want it to be finished! I was immersed in this strange world for a meagre moment, it was a tease.
Maybe I will think of more, and write it down. Maybe it will be a dream that doesn't fade. Who can tell?
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