The sky cracked in half.
The sun emerged slowly from the horizon, crowned with a sky of burning orange, a new dawn on a new planet. But where was she? The sunlight cast her shadow across the green grass as she lay on her back. Her eyelids fluttered as the tiny glimpse of light danced over her face. She began to smile, as a dream played back in her mind. But they were more memories than dreams; she lived them once. She saw angels made of stone, a great crimson monster burning, and a girl in a fireplace. They were memories, not dreams; they were events from her past, hurrying past her mind like a train, each window in each cart bearing a recollection.
She saw men of steel, she saw screeching oversized pepper shakers, a man who never dies and a giant library stretching out across an entire planet.
Then the train began to slow, its shuffling engine grinding down to a shuddering stop, running out of steam like a marathon runner running out of breath, and with that she saw a flower waving in the wind – a rose.
Then she opened her eyes and, for what seemed like an eternity, took a deep breath, infusing her lungs with life. Her chest rose as she held it, as though this was the one and only time she would ever breath, a voice seemed to tell her to make the most of it. She held and held; squeezing her eyelid shut and then let it all go. Her lips curled as she released and another smile crossed her face.
She must have been dreaming because already those twilight memories were fading and melting into one another.
A giant crimson angel?
A steel man in a fireplace?
What was she thinking?
She allowed her head to fall to her left, in the direction of the sunrise. She did it slow and lazy, feeling as if she had all the time in the universe, little did she know how true that was.
She blinked when the sun caught her eyes and she raised her arm up to protect them from the intense light of the new dawn. The night was still present but the sun would soon push away the darkness and the day would arrive proper.
None of this answered her questions though. Where was she?
From her limited vision, still lay on her back, she could see the divided sky, the light and the darkness. She let her hands fall by her sides and run along the blades of grass, blades of anything else and they would have cut her. From this she guessed she was in a field.
Everything still felt so hazy; her memories, her dreams, all of them were glued together, or, from what sense they made, mashed together. She had images of little red riding hood on her mind and a big bad wolf, the things of fairy tales clouding her thoughts, and what looked like a big blue wardrobe which led to another world. Immediately she connected this to C.S Lewis and grinned.
Another tale, she thought.
A gust of wind blew in from the direction of the sun, carrying her hair over her face. Strands of it landed in her eyes and mouth. She spat it out and sat up, running a hand through it to straighten it. When she moved her hair from her eyes she caught sight of a rabbit. It watched her with glistening eyes, its ears twitching with curiosity. It made a reluctant step forward putting its weight on its foot and stopped, sniffing at the air. This made her smile. However, something felt incredibly wrong, but she couldn't place it, she knew something was not meant to be and yet it was.
'This isn't right is it?', she said to herself, the only other thing that heard her was the rabbit, who still watched her. They looked at each other for a few moments, eyes on eyes and when she thought the rabbit was frozen she turned over onto her fours and crawled closer to it, 'You're a brave one aren't you, are you on your own?'
The rabbit took a step back but kept its eyes locked with hers.
'Me too', she said, sitting up on her knees.
The rabbit seemed to copy her and stood up alert, twitching its ears again. It ran around in a circle and darted off across the grass. She watched it run, its back legs propelling it across the field until something else came into view, something that did not belong in the field. The rabbit ran past it, ignoring its presence until it disappeared from sight. The only thing that remained, standing tall on the grass, was a big blue box – a police box.
It certainly did not belong in the field.
She stood up slowly; her shadow mirrored her and grew long across the grass. It reached out to the police box, so close to touching it that she felt an electrical sensation to step forward and allow it to do so, to allow some part of her to connect to it, like a magnet too close, so close it might as well give into nature.
The police box watched her across the grass. It watched her as it always had and always would. She stood in a long red dress, coloured with grass stains as the knees. Her feet were bare and sinking into the grass and her black hair hung down over her shoulders, while strands hovered in the air, trapped in a dance with the wind. The police box watched the sun rising up over the shoulder.
Her shadow drew closer to the police box as she walked slowly over to it, treading grass down underfoot. With each step she felt two beats, something she didn't notice before. She stopped walking, placed a hand on her chest and tilted her head. She expressed amusement at this, that maybe she was still dreaming. She would humour it for now but soon she would have to wake up.
She started walking again, each step bringing her closer to this unnatural object. She felt her heartbeats resounding loudly in her chest, if she opened her mouth she would not have been surprised to hear them tumble out and make her lips hum.
She reached out her hand and put it against the door. She closed her eyes and smiled, sensing a feeling of unification in her stomach. She felt like a child, lost, finding home again, and yet she was still afraid to open the door. What was she expecting? Was Narnia on the other side of that door, or something like it?
'You've always been there, haven't you?', she said, half expecting an answer, she knew how dreams went. The words – police box – seemed to glow brighter with her touch, as if it were a cat purring, 'You were there for my brothers before me, now you're here for their little sister'
With her final word the door, which she noted seemed to be tense when she first touched it, relaxed and opened. It swung open slowly revealing darkness that went on further than it should have. At its heart there was the glimmer of a console. She looked around the side of the police box, her hand never left its surface as she circled it.
'What kind of dream is this?', she said, and from that moment on she knew there was no waking up, the dream rolled ever onwards, and with these dreams there came nightmares.