a dream i had

The sky was huge, black overarching us. The feeling of near death was enough to curl our hair as we crouched in the tall, but still too short grass. My brother and sister were bent low next to me and our eyes were fixated westward, I wasn’t sure whether we were victims or perpetrators, the feeling of danger and heroism was so mixed, but we sat like cats, our bodies leaning into our gaze. Away across the field (too far away maybe, but our eyes were uncommonly well) was where they were shrouded and clustered together, they slumped into one another as if they weren’t used to having their secret beings out in the open. There they were, maybe three of them, their grayness meshing with the grayness of the sky and the grayness of the tallish grass. They all billowed with the wind in unison. On horses, I suppose unicorns, though they were covered in cloaks of grey, with holes in the mantel where eyes should be, and instead of twirling cones placed beautifully on their brows, these were more like glinting knives that flashed across the field with each movement. We knew they saw us, we knew it, we wanted them to see us? My brother pointed his index finger and raised it to the sky. I could see its black silhouette, oddly, too oddly, resembling the shape of those horses’ spears. He was trying to fool them, as stupid as it was, we did the same, my sister and I. They looked and they knew it was us, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore, we were epically brave, of course. And then we were off! We sprang up and ran at a brilliant speed. We became the dangerous ones because we were not afraid. The pent up adrenaline let us run unthinkably fast and I was almost laughing because they were so stupid, and we were so brilliant and free, like shooting stars.
We didn’t need to know where we were going to get there. And presently we found our sanctuary. Safety is the only destination and one knows it when one arrives. She, the woman in a large apron and the dress constructed out of some rough fabric, flung open the door of the large thatched cottage to let us in. She was not unfriendly. She was practicality. We stepped inside. Everything was just a little too dirty to be America, but of course, because this was Morocco! Morocco is fun. She handed us bowls filled with an uncertain soup mixture, I balked for a second, perhaps it would make me sick, this strange Moroccan soup. But I tossed the thought aside. After all, we were uncommonly free at the moment. Why not eat some strange soup? So what if I throw up a thousand times later? But I had to call Chris, so I asked the boy if there was a phone.

tonight

If I could do anything in the world that I wanted, this would be it. I would gather up my thousand journals and stuff them into leather bags. I would jump on my pony and we would take off across the countryside, village to village, the pages flapping out of the bags, out of my sleeves and out of my hair. Grabbing fist fulls of the pages I would cram them into the empty hands of the villagers on the street, they would gasp, some would shout and try to chase me, but they would never catch us. I wouldn't come back until they were all gone, if then.