Daily Prompt: Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)

Fantasy flower by Shock2006 (CC-BY-SA 2.0)

The best dream I have ever had is part dream, part nightmare. It is vivid because I often dream in shades of gray, but every hue of the rainbow was represented here. The fragments of my dreams tend to be disjointed, the imagery travelling in different time streams: sometimes in slow motion, other times at accelerated speeds beyond my ability to comprehend. This dream, however, was linear and ordered — if logic and entrophy can be ascribed to dreams.

It was a familiar scenario: I was on the run from enemies heard but unseen. What I had done to incur such wrath, I do not know. Did I hail from a royal lineage they wished to eliminate? Was I a commoner thief, caught trying to steal something valuable? Whatever the situation, those who wished to shuffle off my mortal coil had already drawn first blood–my arms and legs bore testimony to fresh, deep scars–and addled my senses with powerful drugs.

In spite of these wounds, a desire to preserve the self gave me a fleetness of foot that enabled me to escape from captors and the Grey Castle. It helped immensely that my gaolers were asleep at their posts, thanks to a wine-induced stupor.

The Cloud Shadow (Anti-Crepuscular Rays)

The Cloud Shadow by Jason A. Samfield (CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 )

By morning’s early light, I soon found myself in a forest clearing. Cloud and mist and mental fog had lifted. I usually say nothing in my dreams–at least, I do not recall hearing myself utter any words–so when I met that rarest of creatures–a pegasus–we must have spoken mind to mind.

His dazzling white coat and silver mane contrasted with the reddish browns of the woods, bright greens of the lush lea, and sparkling blues of the brooks. He was a creature of the forest, and yet he was not.

He was not my paladin, but healed me with a nearby spring, and gave me the gift of his wings before disappearing all too soon in a blinding flash of light. The memory of whom I was still eluded me, but at least, I was regenerated in body.

Pegasus by The Shifted Librarian (CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0)

I had no chance to exercise these newfound powers, for no sooner had I been granted them than my awakened enemies appeared. My first attempts at flight were clumsy. I swooped more than flew, and several times, I could feel my enemies keeping pace with me, nipping at my heels when gravity brought me close to the earth. Through scrub and brush and open plains, I never looked behind me though my heart hammered in my throat, not wanting fear to paralyze me for an instant.

But the stakes of the chase were upped as we neared the edge of a 100-foot cliff, and with a last ditch effort, I summoned every bit of mental focus and calm, and soared smoothly–for the first time–higher and higher into the skies, wings beating like great bellows, and ending the pursuit to the curses and shouts of my thwarted enemies. I have had variations of this dream, many times afterwards, but never again with the pegasus.