-Nora-
For most people, dreams are an escape from reality-- maybe even a window into the subconscious mind. Mine have never been normal, and this one is no exception. I look to my right and smile to myself at the little girl on the bench next to me. Her long blonde braid hangs over her shoulder, barely brushing against the little pink nose of the snow white rabbit that is curled up peacefully in her arms. She sings softly to him as she strokes his ears, pushing them back along his furry torso. Her melodic voice is barely above a whisper, but I can tell there is something special lurking within the notes.
Before I can read any deeper into the unfolding scene, it fades into a deep billowing cloud of red pigment. It swirls through the town, enveloping the street, the bench, and finally even the little girl with her rabbit. As she fades into a cloud of red dust, my eyes zone in on hers, and catch a tiny fleck of yellow-gold. The spot glimmers in the middle of her swirling baby blues--Just to the side of the pupil in her right eye.
Just like mine.
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I wake up with a start, and stumble over to the mirror next to my work station. My already pale face is a stark white, shocked by the discovery of a young stranger who shares my unusual birth mark. My head is swimming, and though I was sleeping just moments ago, a jolt of adrenaline pushes me into gear.
That mark in her eye. It was nearly identical...
Inching my face closer to the glass, I inspect my own eyes. The emerald irises may not be the same as her blue ones, but the golden fleck remains.
Not only that, but the placement is exact. Uncanny. Not even a millimeter off from the placement of the mark in the mirror looking back at me.
Shutting my eyes tightly, I think back to the dream. The swirling sands only ever mean one thing. This dream wasn't some work of fiction, and I can only assume that this girl is out there somewhere with a voice like smooth honey, and eyes like mine.
Unwrapping a pristine white canvas from my stash--reserved for times like this--I run my fingers along its smooth cloth surface and discard the plastic wrapping. Closing my eyes once more, the young girl's face fades into focus. Usually I take the time to stretch my own canvas, but I can't risk the delay it would cause. This one is important, I can feel it. I have to paint before I forget her dainty features.
Who are you?
She looked so young in my brief vision, no older than 10 years old. And that mark we share just can't be a coincidence.
Maybe it means something.
Maybe she has more answers than I do.
I can't help but feel connected to her. My intuition tells me we are linked, and I wish I knew why. Pulling out some raw pigments to work with, I begin mixing my paints and prepping the canvas. Cerulean blue, of course, for the eyes, gold, peach, honeyed yellows, and a deep crimson red. I grab my brushes, and mentally trace the lines of her face. As I begin to commit her memory to canvas, I can't help but wonder where this new puzzle piece fits into my own life.
I have been trying to decipher the mystery of my past for a long time now. I can barely remember my biological family, and what is left of them only comes to me through my dreams. My dreams are the only constant that I have carried with me throughout my life. For as long as I can remember, I have seen glimpses of the world through clouds of dusty pigment. They flow like sands through an hourglass, filling me up and presenting me with whatever visions they see fit.
When I was young, I thought they were the product of an avid imagination. Life was simpler that way. The compulsion to paint has always been there for me, but art is my way of life, and there is nothing abnormal about that. I have been painting, sketching, and otherwise documenting the most notable dreams of mine for many years, but I started documenting them all more thoroughly once I realized the scary reality that I lived in.
Does this girl share my reality? Does she have the dreams, or see the pigments? As I outline her innocent young eyes, and work inwards to her pupils with feathery strokes of silvery blues, I realize that I hope she doesn't. I wouldn't wish this uncertainty on anyone, even if it meant I wasn't alone. I was still blissfully ignorant at her age, but I was only a few years away from reaching awareness.
Around age 13, my English teacher assigned us a creative writing assignment: to pen a unique work of fiction--a short story. I took an easy way out by committing a dream of mine to paper, and turning it in. I was shocked when I received a failing grade on the assignment as it apparently "bore an almost exact resemblance to historians' account of the wedding of Prussian King Fredrick II to his Queen, Elisabeth, in 1733". My teacher had thought it was too elaborate and detailed to come from the mind of a girl my age, and confirmed her suspicions upon conducting a simple google search. Because it was well-written and thought to be "well researched", she allowed me to re-write the assignment, but both myself and my foster parents had no explanation to offer up as to where I could have picked up such a detailed knowledge of Prussian history.
Embarrassingly, I had thought Prussia was a made-up land I had, literally, dreamed up on my own.
I had never even heard of Prussia, and was sure she was making it up. Maybe my story was too good and she made it all up out of jealousy? My pre-teen mind concocted all sorts of excuses to allow me to live in continued denial. But after the smoke cleared and the anger and denial passed, I did some research of my own. I researched more and more of my dreams until I was bombarded with an unavoidable conclusion: These dreams weren't my own.
Every dream I'd ever had contained the trickling presence of colored sand. I may never have had a genuine real dream. Not the way normal people experience them, at least. I was seeing things in my mind that had really happened, and even if they weren't all documented in time, I knew in my heart that even the outliers were true events. They all fit the pattern, and contained ever single sign pointing to the truth of their nature.
It has taken me years but I have begun to piece together bits and pieces of the way my dream world functions. I have no conscious control over the dreams I am given, but the pigments do tend to follow a distinct pattern. I can't be certain, and some of the pigments don't yet have a discernible meaning, but I have been working for years to confirm my theories and suspicions of some of them. The Prussian dream swirled in olive-toned pigments, which I currently associate with windows to the past. My dreams of midnight blue seem to show me events that have yet to pass. I developed that hunch after a series of natural disasters and high profile events took place, disasters and events that I had already witnessed in my dreams.
The olives and blues were all I had seen until my sixteenth birthday. The night was perfectly normal, until I turned out my light and crawled into bed. Once I drifted off to sleep, I saw my first crimson dream. I still don't really know what I saw that night, but it did not feel as though it belonged in this world. Crimson dreams don't occur nearly as frequently as the dreams of events past and present, but they do still occur now and then. Lately, their frequency has slowly begun to increase, and that knowledge has me feating for the future of my world. From the experiences I've had through crimson sands, my best guess is that the powdery crimson is connected to unnatural phenomena, or things that surpass the known limits of the natural world. Things like me.
On occasion, I have seen through the eyes of a few other types of pigmented clouds. I have seen some dreams of purple--although they were vague and spotty as though they were experiencing radio static across their transmission, and once I was pulled through a cloud of ebony black. But none of these had a high enough frequency of occurrence, or notable unique characteristics, to fit into any sort of category.
I sigh to myself at the thought, and look down at my completed work. The girl's eyes stare right into my soul, her rosy-cheeked face peeking out of a crimson cloud. I typically include the sands in my art, as this helps me to continue my research into their origin. I like to know to which realm each piece of knowledge belongs. Maybe one day I will be able to piece them together and decode their hidden secrets.
To finish off the piece, I pinch a small amount of raw crimson pigment powder, as well as an even smaller pinch of burgundy for depth, between my thumb and forefinger and carefully sprinkle it measuredly throughout the crimson swirls on the canvas' surface. The paint is still wet so I know the powder will stick, and even though this method is unconventional, it is a highly effective way to exhibit the texture I seek.
I feel more connected to my dreams when I use the raw pigments, and their fine powdery consistency reminds me of the familiar sentient sands. There is something magical about the raw colors that you can't get from pre-mixed paints. The connectedness to the work and the control of the degree of saturation is an exhilarating feeling.
The last grain of pigment slips from my fingers and suddenly, a spark catches in my mind. Teegan. HER NAME IS TEEGAN.
Lowering the canvas to the desk, I pull out my journal and immediately begin scribbling the morning's events with a new vigor. This has never happened before. Either my insights and abilities are getting stronger, or something deep in my subconscious recognizes this girl. Teegan. Recognizes Teegan.
Setting down my journal, I grab the hair tie from my wrist and tie my long, unruly hair back into a snug ponytail. This is huge, but further reflection will have to wait. I've got a long day ahead of me, and I'm gonna need to start brewing a large cup of coffee if I plan to make it through without a nap.
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