All About Her
When she falls asleep that night, Girl does not recognize the scenery.
Her dream self awakens in a circle of torn junipers, right where a triangle of sky has collapsed. Just a few steps away, the trees are lush as she always knew them; yet, besides their leaves, nothing is just as familiar.
She keeps drifting on the flat expanse. No lake is to be found. It is even hard to see the moon – the branches are darker and dense and entwined, she really does not want to see them like this – they are there nonetheless, and they weigh like iron on the sky.
Although this is a geometry she has never built herself before, the underlying pattern is more than familiar. The way the path to the water has rewritten itself, the number of the misplaced cascades and rocks, the rainbows – they are all part of a new event in time, born from the inevitable, powerful erasure that follows a change.
The mountain folk of the Caucasus always find time and answers in their dreams – sleep is the other side of them, a cryptic mirror to most of their lives. They cannot guess what they will find, but always know how to look for it. And Girl, ethereal and silent, has to sit on the last rock before the horizon. There is nothing beyond that.
Several times, in the life of every Caucasian, slices of dreams are lost. Some nights start belonging to others; some woods and mountains switch places with unknown copies of themselves, adapting to what becomes different, to what is there, and what isn't anymore.
Girl no longer looks for her old dream in the following nights. One time was enough to understand.
The stone arches and the hill, the lake, the hollow tree – even though they will not open for her anymore, they are still existing, in another place. The woods keep murmuring, lagomorphs still jump, more and more mushrooms grow on the soggy ground.
Somewhere in the twilight realms, that scenery is set up for the new person who made it hers. Complete, unchanged, repeating itself, it stays under its own moon forever.
Forever open to her alone, and forever empty.
