Dream Magic

I had a dream.

With silence as a prelude, silence as an ending.
There was only darkness at first, after the silence.
I had to strain to hear anything at all.
In fact, the precious few sounds I could hear throughout the whole dream were muted, pierced only by the contrasting sharpness of wind chimes.
Those wind chimes sounded familiar, their reverberations echoing through me.

Tinggggg...

A single, pure note sang, neither melancholy nor joyous.
A ripple formed in the bland wall in front of my eyes, glowing pale yellow.
It expanded as the concentric circles stretched and grew, soon extending to my feet and above my head.
And as the ripples grew, so did the light.
It started as a pale yellow glimmer, and then, as if sunlight breaking through clouds, penetrated all of that dimension.

My immaterial feeling grew.

I could not say if I walked forward or not.
No footfall was felt, neither the irregular bobbing often accompanied with walking.
But there was forward motion, a smooth gliding measured by the regular beat of chiming bells that would cease when I no longer willed myself forwards.

Spread out before me was a river of light.

Standing on its banks of black formless matter, I watched as the specks of light flow swiftly downriver. There were faster currents of them here and there, threading a way between the luminous crowd. The river stretched as far as the eye could see, into the nothingness. Twisting, turning, up, down, doubling back on itself, it formed a haphazard squiggle, so dense you could not make out where it ended, or if it ended at all.

There was an overwhelming urge to touch.

I moved forwards, stretching my hand out to cup the fast flowing particles. As the tip of my finger grazed where the surface would be, a cascade of flowing notes were heard from those invisible chimes, and the most incredible event occurred. The waters shrank from my touch, indenting the warped surface of the river, forming a crater. I withdrew my hands slowly, disappointed, but the primal urge had not been abated.

So I moved into the river.

Watching, as the particles flowed around me at first, a dark concentration in the middle of a glowing river. The particles, swerving to avoid me, made the river billow out where I was, a bulging current caressing my little bubble. I laughed in delight, the sound lost to my own ears.And the light ate at the darkness.I hadn't noticed as my bubble shrank, too enthralled in magic of the moment. The chimes rang again as the first specks flew across my skin, higher in pitch this time. Was it just me or did they sound little more urgent as well? It mattered not. What mattered right now was that I could feel them.

Like how water erodes stone.

They felt... curiously cold. Crystalline light, drawing chilling, glowing trails from my right side to the left. And in this way, I began to glow too. The current had no push, no strength. The touch of the particles was soft, lightly grazing skin. The chimes, for the first time, formed a melody instead of short, sharp bursts of music. It was a sad tune, full of regret, longing, and loss, opposite to what I felt at that moment, opposite to the curiosity, delight and wonder.

How even stone becomes weary.

I did notice the first particle making its way through me. It was a curious experience, watching as the pinpoint of a light gently settles on my skin, then, as if passing through a thick layer of liquid, slowly push its way across my abdomen and out the other side. There was no pain, only a chilling trail where it had passed through. Perhaps, if I had panicked then, I would've been able to make my way out of that river. But I didn’t, only watched as more and more of them flowed through me.

And will eventually crumble to dust.

The glow I emitted became ever stronger, ever so slowly. They too began to condense into their own pinpricks. I lost control of my movement, began to sway with the current, rooted at the bottom of this curious river. And then my grasp on the river bed was lost, and I, still not feeling the push of the current, was swept along with it. Afloat in that river of light, I slowly disintegrated, drowned in an immaterial pool, scattered in essence.

The river fades slowly in my minds eye, its burning brightness still leaving a negative trail against the blackness of my closed eye lids.

There was silence, broken only by the occasional rustle of the trees outside and the responding, lonely echo of my wind chimes.