#17 Leaf
I often dream. I don't think the others dream, even though they use up their years sleeping.
I don't think dead things like us can really dream. I suppose rather than dreams they're more like… hopes with pictures.
Pictures I've stolen from the living. Everything I know, everything I am… it's all stolen or borrowed from watching souls walking through their lives.
I always dream the same thing.
I'm in a world of green. Of life.
Trees all around me, stretching to the sky and spreading across the roof of the world until they filter the sunlight into the soft green that always suggests life… little drops of water fall from above, the sun catches them and they glow like specks of molten gold as they fall.
Underneath my feet, it's a carpet of grass. Thick and lush and soft, springing back as I walk over it as though I hadn't even been there. Around the path of green there's bushes, sprouting berries and flowers, sweet smells flood the whole world and everything is without question, beautiful.
And then through the bushes, I spy her. Her long blonde hair tied up, and there are flowers in among those golden locks that I just want to touch…just once.
She turns, and sees me… and she doesn't scream. She smiles, and laughs. And playfully she runs into the undergrowth, her long cream gown catches on the branches of the trees, and she just laughs more.
I follow her, and I suddenly don't care how many of my stitches come undone, how the sand that is myself flutters between the gaps of my patchwork, because she is with me, and so long as she will allow me, I will follow her.
We burst through another shrub, scattering petal and berry and leaf.
Before us, there is a fountain. A fountain that nature has reclaimed from man, moss and vines have broken it, and though it no longer flows, the water is living, and glittering.
Lilly pads float on its surface, flowers blooming among them and spreading that same sweet scent through this place. There isn't a sound… only the breath of the wind through the trees and a soft, loving sound. The heartbeat of the world.
She smiles and points to my feet.
I look down and see bluebells and daises sprouting all around them.
And with sudden clarity I realise what she is telling me.
That this is my garden. This is my place and there's nothing here but her and me. There's no-one to laugh at us or tell me what I feel is wrong or stupid. Tell me I'm a creature born only to kill.
It's full of things that I made live.
It's my garden.