"And sleep roused Morpheus from his thousand sons…" Ovid, Metamorphoses XI
"I am a part of all that I have met" Tennyson, Ulysses
His eyes flickered under their lids, darting like trapped moths—the dying spasms of REM sleep.
I feel the slickness of the flower below me, still damp with morning's dew. I sense the wind shifting east to westerly. I know it will be a dry day. Warm enough to fly. My wings spread to catch the light, it reflects off them—off the golden infinity of their tiny scales. I fly to another flower, unfurl my tongue, and feed.
A funeral. The procession winds into the stars. My heart is about to break, and I don't even know who died. The mourners wear black, very slick black, plasticine pleurants in trench coats. And…sunglasses? It is raining. I am wearing blue, like a lost patch of sky. And carrying an umbrella—black lined with blue sky and puffy clouds crowned in a bowler hat. I cannot bear to look at the other mourners, cool and sorrowful. Knowing. I cannot have them looking at me in my colored nightclothes and cheap museum store umbrella. I turn away in shame.
I stand before a castle. The funeral procession is gone. A stand of dark trees wave in its place. The fortress is a pulsating Neuschwanstein rendered by Escher. Columns and walls defy the laws of physics. Defy reason. Lilliputian doors are set in gigantic facades, and it looks right. Colors dance over white-grey stone despite the clouded sky. I shade my eyes and step back, craning my neck to see the highest gilded turrets.
I look straight ahead again, massaging my neck.
A pale man. His robes are so white my eyes imagine I can see the spectrum in every thread. His is tall and thin. Very thin, very pale, with hair like seafoam—all unruly sparkling light—and eyes like two stars.
I wonder if the stars sign the life that is to be mine…but night has clouded over…No Vela No Orion…mighty hunter felled by the scorpion, eternal combat...falling only to rise again like the morning star in lesser glory…when shall we three meet again…I know you well…fair is foul and foul, fair…beauty is truth, truth beauty…hover through fog and filthy air… Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for…a slumber did my spirit seal…do I wake or do I sleep…
His eyes cut through the rain-gray like Venus and a twin, reflecting light and swamp gases. Still his eyes shine, behind my own, haunting the corners of my mind. So very real.
He wakes.
The eyes are gone. They could not be real, he insists, staring blearily at his familiar bedroom wall. But in their wake nothing seems quite real. Not the demon-red flashing of his spiteful alarm-clock, not the steaming hot not quite but almost burnt coffee with an aftertaste of dishsoap. Not even the paper he spent half the night typing—half-assed bullshit that he knows it is.
He shaves. He stares in the mirror, caught off guard by a pair of very familiar grey eyes that aren't his own.
Fuck. Blood runs from a small cut. It stings like a bitch when soap sneaks in. Pain makes it real.
"There are dream-gods that show themselves by night To kings and rulers only…If I dream I was a butterfly and wake, how do I know I am not a butterfly dreaming I am human. A nightmare, that. I felt the petals and the air brushing my wings, the pollen on my feet as surly as I feel the stinging cuts on my throat from a too-dull safety razor now. Did I dream I was a butterfly, or do I dream that I am human?
How do I know? Proof. Science doesn't give answers. And Descartes was wrong. Maybe. Am I what I think I am because I think it? What of the delirious or drugged? Oh, drugs. Good idea."
He opens the medicine cabinet and takes hold of a generic white bottle filled with a willow derivative, struggling with the safety top and deciding drinking binges and philosophy papers don't mix.
He gulps down a few painkillers and swishes his mouth with vile green mint mouthwash. No use. He can still taste the staleness on his tongue. Like the mist behind his eyes. The shining eyes in his mind.
"Do we see all there is? Something is missing…"
He smashed the cabinet door shut.
A quarter turn gave him a view of the graffiti covered brick church, looking all the dingier for his dirty window screens. The flaking gold painted cross added a certain je-ne-sais-quois as well.
"Not that type of beyond. More the mortar that holds the bricks." A dismissive snarl.
He walks into a livingroom/den/kitchen. Fishing line holds up the mobile his younger sister had made him before he went to school. From a distance the origami cranes seem to fly of their own volition.
"Shit. Late again. I'm late, I'm late." He grabs his battered watch off the counter and runs out the door.
Books are spread before them, largely ignored in favor of cups of coffee and assorted junk foods. "You have a second-grader's lunch."
"What, going to beat me up for my milk money?"
He steps in. "Nah. Might steal a cookie though." He reaches his hand out…
"Go ahead." The smaller figure took out a gaily decorated tin and held it out. It was full of chocolate chip cookies.
Two hands lunged in.
Another pair grabbed the top of the tin. It was decorated with near pornographic drawing of three women—one well built young redhead, a curvaceous pregnant woman with clearly defined nipples and mahogany skin, the third a near colorless old woman with clouded eyes and drooping breasts.
"What is this?" He waved it.
The other shrugged. "My aunt gave me the cookies in it."
"She bakes cookies and gives away shit like that?"
"We have to meet this woman."
Another shrug. "I visit her every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. You can come with me if you want."
He looked a little concerned. "Won't a horde of surprise guests bother her?" His eyes fell on the tin of cookies.
"Nothing surprises her."
They met at the dining hall as usual, four figures all slightly cleaned up—making an effort to look respectable. They walked to one of hundreds of tennement-style buildings, and went it. His friend gestured at a door.
He stepped forward to knock on it, hand already raised when a grandmotherly looking woman opened it.
"Hello, Morpheus."
"I…"
Morpheus woke. His battered shirt strained at the seams with his waking stretches. Another day, another chance to find The One. And find the eyes like stars.
AN- Sorry, don't mean to profane either work, but the damn idea bit me and wouldn't let go. Any one who wants to take a crack at doing a better job of Morpheus inspires Morpheus please do and send me the link. I just had to get this out of my head finally.
And yeah, lots of random quotes stolen. Ovid through Enya by way of the Bard and the Romantics.