Drowned Dreams

My dreams were forced to hide in the foamy depths of the mysterious sea, tucked away and ushered to sleep. Every wish that I made was hidden, gone. But something kept them waiting and wanting for them to come true. 

My house was tucked away in a little cave, which was a pocket in the big grey mountains. The white-sanded harbour was an opening to the grumpy waves that splashed violently night and day. It was lined with wintry pines and tall cedars. And deep in the mist was what I like to call, “ The Unknown.”

I sat on the waves, the green water ran through my fingers. I let the sky of crimson and emerald tinted navy pull me out of my depths of haunting sorrows.

These sorrows are safer now. They are not living and whispering, there up in those rose tinged clouds at dusk. They are watching my every move and praying, I hope. 

I am stuck between, in a realm of lost hopes and fears. I am a ghost, merely a spirit who doesn’t have life, emotionless and worse than dead. Nothing anchors me down onto the human world, but nothing pulls me up into the unknown territories of the non-living.

Come. There is nothing for you here! Nobody cares!

That was death. It whispered things at night in the dark.

“Be quiet!” I yelled like a madwoman, my voice bounced around the moonlight-soaked dripping walls of the cave.

My voice then turned shallow and desperate like the voice of a hurt child, “There m-ust b-be someone who c-cares.”

This force, death, pulled me up. It detached me from rare golden joy.

Then my mind wandered out of the black unknown. It was a glint of light. I shining one, like a single strand of sunshine. Two almond-shaped eyes clouded my head, they filled me with a pleasant feeling.

“T-teddy.” I gasped and let my cold body sink onto the cave floors. 

We were friends. We would talk and share and…

laugh.

“Teddy!” I let that sound assure me as my eyelids grew heavy and my limbs begged to fall into the heavens of slumber.

***

The sun spilled it’s light onto the weary cave, soaking everything in colour. The pines swayed like emerald silk and the moans of distant seaward glens hummed around the cave. A little ribbon of purple mist sewed itself around the cave, embracing everything in a violet air. The white-backed seagulls chattered across the white sanded and sheltered in the coves filled with the light of molten gold sunshine. 

I let my clear bare feet soak in the salty ripples and picked up a mossy stick, I began to stroke words onto the pebbly shore.

Will you spend the rest of your life like this?

Death growled. I ignored it painfully and continued to write.

“I wish I could replace the memories we had. I wish I knew more. I wish I could t-” 

My words disappear in a gentle tide. There was so much lost in those billows of blue, so much love and treasures and mysteries.

My mind began to race.

I picked up a yellow smeared leaf from a swaying cedar and started to write a letter. Then I stuffed it into a green bottle that I found, crashing in with the waves. 

I let the bottle sink into the salty mist of water and smiled as it tossed itself with the azure sea and howling wind.

***

Days passed, a veil of sparkling frost coated all the withering flowers in what seemed like a bandage, restoring all the natural beauty. Winter had arrived like a bride of beauty, it filled the little coves with frosty icicles of delight, and froze a few parts of the sea, into a cold grey slush.

A blue moon was out, it made everything glow in an inscrutable light, every snow blanketed leaf looked like a glimmering diamond.

In the corner of my eye, I saw a piece of shining green glass pull onto the sand. I dived into the sea, letting the gruesome cold water envelop me.

I pulled out the leaf from the glass, my hands shaking and sunken cheeks blue.

The piece was damp and the ink was scribbled, in what seemed like a hurry.

It read:

“Dear Moon, I’m alive. Coming.”

***

Weeks passed until a chestnut boat rocked itself ashore through the gloomy day of grey pearly clouds and arguing pale shell crabs. Teddy’s golden hair shined with the dawn light in a flowery glimmer.

He came forward through the waves, his eyes were happy and I almost felt like they were starting to disappear.

We both ran two each other, it was an odd sensation, being footsteps away. The sun dragged its beloved light into the silver crested waves and the smudged melting deep roses and bronzes created an ineffable warmth of pleasantness and love.

After we hugged and twirled through the sand, my misty shadow turned alive. Glowing and dark.

Human! 

I looked into the sky of beauty, searching for the dark glimmer of death.

“Get away from me, death, never ever come close to me again.”

I yelled up at the sky and hoped that death watched me in its throne of black violet-hued flames. I hope that he watched me and felt my presence from wherever he was. I hope that he felt fear in the look of my face.

***

We lived. I lived. I smiled and danced and painted.

My pieces fill the house. Some sweet and glorious, but the most precious of all is called “Looking death right in the eye.”

It is a painting of a girl, myself, with dark hair like ash storming behind her as she stands on the cliff, underneath the rocking waves of mists and sea-captured light. Her hair blows as triumphantly as her glare towards the sky. The sky is beautiful, and golden, with pinpricks of faded stars in the early morning sky.

But in that sky, I blended a charcoal black. Then, added a smudge of glowing purple. It metaphorically represents death.

I showed the girl, yelling and screaming her feelings. Denying death. And I stroked the black colour fading out. Death never returned, not that death anyway. And soon it will, but not that death who opposed life.

But I almost wondered.

"Would death knock on my door once again?"