dreaming in pursuit

Hūr Amran woke up with a gasp. Outside the air was heavy, pregnant with moisture. Inside, it was just hot and humid. The fan whizzed, circling so much and so fast that looking at it would make you dizzy. Diligently. Yet it seemed, to no effect. He was lying on what they called a manjee. Very surprisingly comfortable. A patchwork of straw thatched together. Stronger than an individual straw, very strong as a whole. It was hard, but it was comfortable. When he slept on it, he felt alert, he felt like he could jump up and run six miles. But for today. Today he woke up with a heavy feeling and a gasp. It was as if a heavy blanket had been put on his heart. It was dampened. Slow and fast at the same time. Heavy, sinking almost to his stomach. Flies buzzed around him. Crickets called to one another in the late and getting later hours of the night. Otherwise, all was silence.

He had seen dreams. Dreams like he had not seen before. They were real. Not in the way dreams usually feel. They were real. He knew it in his bones.

He had seen a girl in a white wedding gown dancing in a clearing. Her face was pale, her movements graceful. He had seen forest animals sitting all around the clearing. The moon had been high above watching over it and over her. She needed to be protected. She was crucial. She was important for something. For this? Her face was beautiful, her eyes sparkling with different colors in the light, dancing with fire and then earth, and then the blue green of the ocean on a sunny day. She had been so beautiful his heart hurt. He felt a longing. And he felt she was crucial. The dream had fizzled. He had had the feeling of heavy and dreadful loss. It was as if he were falling. But he had not woken up as one often does during falls in dreams. He was falling. He was in love. She was somehow critical to what he was looking for. And then she was gone. He had the feeling that her fire had been extinguished like a candle in a hurricane. She could not withstand and she flew away. Her fire burnt out. He saw different futures, written on the same pages of The Book. Written over one another. Unsure. Uncertain. He saw one where he had these memories with her. Lived to a ripe old age. Loved her. Was loved by her. This was his past, present, and future. Nothing could disturb it. And then something did. She faded. One second she was there. Then she blinked out of existence. A yellow red burst of lighting across an otherwise pitch black sky. And she was gone. Taken from him. Wiped out of existence and eternity and the lot.

There was a heavy feeling in his chest. A tightening. A constricting. He felt stones and he felt falling. He was dying. He was sad. And alone. Afraid.