A Year of Stories (Collection Two)

They Say I Dream Too Loudly

They say I dream too loudly.

Everyone does.

My friends, my family, fair faced strangers walking the streets of our fine world.

Even if they don't say it with their lips, they do with their eyes, with the spider web thin thread of recognition that flashes across them when we meet.

I can tell when we meet, that we've met before.

I can always tell.

I once dreamt that I was traveling through the desert on the back of three-humped Camel. On the way to wherever we were going, we came across a city made entirely of obsidian and glass. It was shaped like the tip of a spear, and rose so high into the sky that where it caught the Sun's brilliance, it shattered it into a thousand, thousand rays across a thousand, thousand miles.

It was a city filled with light, a city filled with ghosts, and I woke up before we ever stepped inside.

I met that Camel last week, he is an Accountant working in the same office where I went to do my taxes. I think his name is Marvin. When he saw me, he blushed, which considering our introduction, isn't too unexpected.

2

They say I dream too loudly.

But I think it's because most people have shy dreams, hidden dreams.

They cage the worlds within them, secreting away the jewels of their souls in the dungeons of their waking lives, hoarding them like Dragon's treasure.

They never allow their dreams to stretch their wings and fly, so they grow thin and frail and sickly, unable to affect anything beyond their eyes.

Not mine.

Mine are dreams in full bloom.

When I dream of a beach, I let the air around me turn to salt – the lake behind my home into an ocean – my backyard into a roost for gulls.

When I dream of falling, the entire world becomes a sky, and thousands fall with me – knowing in their hearts that they will be OK, because even though the dream has broken free of it's shell, it is still a dream.

When I meet these people on the street – I can tell, I can always tell – you never forget someone you've fallen forever with.

3

They say I dream too loudly.

And I try to understand.

But you have to understand, that when I close my eyes, new realities burst into being, the cosmos shake at my slumber.

Yet still, I try.

I ask myself what it must be like for the others – for the people, for the billions of people whose imaginations are caged – whose dreams are trapped within the walls of their skulls.

What must it be like to night after night see endless possibilities, and know that they will end the moment you awake?

To know that you are only what your waking eye can see, or what I make you out to be?

I've dreamed Kings onto their thrones, along with Tyrants and fools.

I've ended wars with a rest, and started plagues with a nightmare.

I've changed more from my pillow, than most have with their entire existence.

Maybe it is too easy...

Maybe that's why they hate me.

4

They say I dream too loudly.

But what dreams they have been!

I once walked a path so dark and deep, that it had never been walked before.

I once became the god of a moonless isle.

I once traveled to the beginning of time, only to find it was really the end.

I was once the consort of a Fairy Queen in a vermilion glen.

I have been men and women and children and beasts.

I have seen the world end a thousand, thousand fold.

I have lived lives of violence and of magic and of wonder.

And each night I know it will begin again.

Each night I know I will begin again.

5

They say I dream too loudly, and maybe I do, but that's only because I fear that if I don't dream too loudly, I may never truly dream again.