Lee wakes up in a dream and finds herself standing on a hill, looking down at a small lake. The hill is bare, and the valley below her weaves between hills which look almost as high as mountains compared to the valley. The lake has a small clear stream tumbling into it from the hills around her and there are sheep grazing near the sparkling blue lake. Suddenly she hears the deep croak of a heron and turns to see a huge blue heron landing in front of her like an ancient phoenix. It looks at her, and asks her to follow her with a look, then takes off, and only just misses her head as he flies over her and floats down to the lake below. She feels the breeze on her own silver blue wings and follows him, falling slowly through the air like her did. He waits for her, then looks at the clear pool, but when she looks, it's full of dead fish with human reflections caught in their scales and a few bricks and lumps of concrete. He croaks in obvious disappointment that all of the fish have died together. He carefully picks up her fish, and looks at her to call her to follow him again, and they both take flight on the breeze. They fly high and she sees the world set out below her like a map before they glide quickly back down. She soon recognises the hill she woke on, the winding valley, the stream leading to the clear again pool, but they go across another hill, and over a blue barn. He leads her to a bend in another river and lands gracefully on the gravel of the river bend, waiting for her. She lands near him and sees the road on the far side of the valley, the fields and blue barn behind her, the bridge downstream from this bend, and he waits patiently till she's learned how to find the place again in images he doesn't quite understand. When she's ready she looks up to him and his eyes says “watch now”,and he carefully places the fish with her reflection into the water. After a few seconds it's tail twitches, then it comes back to life and starts to explore it's new home. She watches it swim around and sees her reflection before the sun catch it's scales with a flash of fire as it turns. She looks up at him again, then understands. All together in cities, dead, alone in this new place, alive. Twin flashes of silver from the water catches her eye and she looks back to see many fish swimming around this bend of the river. She recognises some of the reflections, but not all of them, and knows that she will eventually know them all. The heron is protectively watching over them and she wakes with the whole dream still clear in her mind as she searches for pen and paper.
Comments
Post a Comment