The dream began normally and there was no indication that it would turn strange at all. Neither was there any hint that there would be a stranger in her dream. Yet there was.
Sereia followed the water current in as it passed through the open mouth of the great cave. The water was as gentle and as blue and as comfortable as it always was. She would know, for this cave was very real. It existed outside her dreams too, but in the real world it bore none of its mystery and its splendour. The cave was a place of peace and solitude, it served as a home for her when the sea became too much, when her hunger grew ravenous and wild. Here there were no creatures for her to feast on. Here was another place where the sea met the land and together they birthed a private idyll. Never had Sereia known anyone else here, so, as her feet find the shore and her body shifts from sea-form to land-form she expects no one at all.
In dreams she is never ungainly when she takes those first few steps on land. She does not have the moment where her limbs feel long and spidery as a newborn foal. The water always dries fast too yet today she feels the way it drips from the angle of her ribs and taps down upon the grassy shore. Each droplet lands with a chime, striking different blades of grass and forming a different note. They gather into a tinkling tune, much like a lullaby her mother once sang.
Sereia walks, light as air - for there is never any effort in dreamwalking. The willows bursh their leaves across her spine in greeting. The glowing walls, and ceiling turn all into a strange, strange hue. But nothing is strange to Sereia, until she begins to emerge from the veil of an upside down willow and sees… him.
“Oh!” Sereia breathes, startled. She stops, half out of her veil of willow and gazes him curiously. “I was not expecting you.” The girl muses, gold eyes lowering to the floor and then back up, back on to him. Never has she dreamed a boy before and not once does she think that he might be a trespasser in her dream. A trespasser of flesh and bone and as much tied to the real world as she.
Sereia waits for a twist of hunger, for her kelpie to feel his pulse rippling the air with a vitality she feels as strongly as the waves upon the sea. But she feels nothing. Oh, bliss. Keen she steps out, keenly she covers the ground between them until she stands as close to him as she dares. Sereia pauses, waiting, yet still there is no hunger. Only a euphoric absence of violence fills up the kelpie-free spaces within her. She smiles, the smile of a normal land-girl, one who does not need to hide her too-long teeth.
It takes her a long time to study him. A very long time indeed. An impolite amount of time one might say. Yet study him she does, for this is her dream and never have her dreams made something like him. Never has she dared get so close to a land-horse. If she ever got this close it would be at the command of her kelpie and he would be just a tangle of blood, broken bone and mangled flesh. She is glad he isn’t.
“I can get close to you.” Sereia says joyful, a breathless, incredulous laugh threatening to spill from her lips. Of course she would not need to explain her joy or her comment, for he is of her mind, is he not?
@
~Anna Funder
