There were steps somewhere in the distance but I was far to comfy to care. The bed formed to my body and it smelled of cinnamon and something sweet, a plant of some kind. The sheets were thick but quite smooth but it felt nice against my dry skin. It tangled around my legs, scratching at them and I shifted, content with the itch it was pacifying.
Something whispered in the background and I didn't move, a smile forming on my lips involuntarily. Throwing my arms over my head, I stretched and twisted, almost teasingly. I couldn't seem to control my body anymore. Everything was hazy, as if it were a dream. But, there was something else to it. It seemed to real. The details were all hyped up and I could sense everything around me. Everything seemed real.
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, but to imagine your facts is another, John Burroughs reminded.
Another whisper carried throughout the room and this time I twisted towards it, peeking through my eyelids with a smile twitching onto my face. From my angle on the bed I could see a tall boy, not quite a man yet. His unruly hair seemed to be lathered with blood for it was so red and his eyes, vacant of pupils, were pale jewels that glowed from between heavy black circles that stood out against his pale, alabaster skin. His details were rather fuzzy, other than his broad shoulders and lean frame. His body had developed past the gangly teenage years but hadn't reached full maturity yet, telling me that he was around my age. To me, he seemed tall and almost imposing but a familiar aura floated about him that reassured me. Even though he seemed tall to me, he couldn't be larger than five eleven.
My first instinct would be fear. I should be scared that I was in the bed with a strange man watching over me but I wasn't. In fact, it made me feel safer. I knew that he would protect me. I wasn't sure how or why I felt like that for I knew, somewhere deep within me that I didn't know him yet.
Yet, my heart was telling me that I did know him.
Horribly confusing it was. When my mind was telling me that everything was strange and that I was Alice entering the rabbit hole.
Leaning in close, I tried to inspect his face. I just barely glanced at him when his lips ghosted across my cheek down to the corner of my lips. A shock ran through my entire body and my heart clenched. Not painfully. The way the butterflies in my stomach fluttered, it was pleasant. Yes, I knew him. And I think I loved him.
Pulling away, he inspected me as much as I was scrutinizing him. His eyes were carefully guarded but were gentle. Like pleasant pools of aquamarine. The kind you would immediately sink into, not even noticing the slight chill that lingered in the tides. Something haunted him, something that he was keeping safely guarded under lock and key. I wanted to know what it was. Desperately so.
His hand, wide and strong, cupped my hip and he leaned me into him, pressing his nose into the top of my head. My own hands desperately sought out his chest and I massaged the pad of my palm along his muscles. Vibrating deep form within his chest was a purr and he playfully nipped at my ear. I laughed, but the sound never reached my ears, I only recognized the motion.
Reluctantly he pulled away from me and searched my eyes again. Speaking, another muffled sound entered the room. I couldn't understand a thing that escaped his lips. There was no sound to this world. This dreamland. It was highly unusual.
His hand dropped from my form and he padded away. Leaping to my feet, I raced after him, the cold shocking my exposed toes. Throwing my arms around his waist, I stole a hug and he laughed, or at least, it felt like it. It pulsated through him. Pleasant it was. Definitely pleasant.
Dropping away from his body, I pranced to the other side of the bed and gathered up my robes before hurrying into the other room, despite the silent protests of my beloved. Was that who he was? My feelings for him were so... passionate. I felt like I was in some sort of cheesy romance novel where there's dramatic family drama as usual and a happy ending and raunchy sex scene at the end where I pop out five million kids, the first one a son to take on the thrown or family business.
Somehow, like in every dream, I was suddenly dressed in my different clothes but I couldn't really see the details to them. I knew they were a violet color of some sort. Exiting the room, I spotted the boy, my dearest. He was reading something, his face grim and his beautiful lips, swollen from the night before, where squeezed into a tight line. My stomach flopped and I hurried to him, wrapping my petite hands around his forearm in reassurance.
At first, he didn't look at me, far to focused in rereading the scroll again. Each word was in scripted in ancient kanji and I found that I had no idea what any of it said. But, dream me knew and I gasped, the sound echoing dully within me.
Finally, he looked at me again and worry filled his sorrowful pools. What the hell did that scroll say? Slowly, as if he knew I didn't understand what was happening -perhaps I showed it in my eyes?- he pressed his nose against mine, like a dog. Then, our foreheads connected and then our lips. Something sizzled through my body and I suddenly understood why he was my beloved. He was perfect. It seemed that when we were together, we were whole. We were meant to be.
I didn't believe in love at first sight or soul mates but he was the real deal. Never had I felt anything so electric, so ideal. Not even when I lived in the antique store with uncle that faced the ramen stand and I would watch my first crush enter everyday without fail, stuffing his face with ten bowls of the stuff. I thought he was my first love. That we would be together forever and marry and grow old and I'd pop out a couple of gorgeous children with him.
What I had felt for him was nothing more than attraction. Of course he had been cute but it was his personality. He was loud, proud, a bit obnoxious, positive, kind, faithful and just believin' it all the time. Legitimately, all the time.
But him. This vermillion haired hunk was it. The real deal. I suddenly understood every love song I had ever listened to and every meaningful, beautiful lyric passed through my brain on the way to my heart.
Something within me frowned at this declaration. No, something was not right here.
Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, Uncle Hizashi would quote H.F Hedge, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare.
He was nothing than my imagination. No, I reassured myself. He was my true love. We were meant to be, he was real.
A dream has the power to poison sleep, Percy Bysshe Shelley warned. I believed her but my other half, the other half irrevocably in love with the boy, scoffed.
From the mind of Edgar Cayce, dreams are todays answers to tomorrow's questions.
What was my mind telling me then? Sending me this dream. How would this answer my questions of tomorrow. It didn't even have anything to do with my life. The perfect man, the best bed ever, the nicest clothes. This was not my life. I was living nothing more than a small figment of my imagination. A perfect little lie.
Nothing was what it seemed.
But it seemed I was waking up.