That night I go to bed under the beams of an orange moon, and the dreams flood in. One dream, the same, every night, never fail, from age 8-22. Now again, it's back, this dream - a nightmare really - and I wonder who summoned it and for what purpose.
[the dream]
Two men run as fast as they can from the forest fire building steadily as it flies after them, deathly, the heat burning bodies and lungs even from this distance of a few kilometers. Finally the fire catches up to them, the heat intolerable, and they dig out a ring and keep putting out the flames inside their ring. But who can live through that? Through the trees, just a few meters perhaps, was the lake. All around her ice-cold borders the fire raged. But the lake shrugged her icy shoulders and turned her back. The two men finally meet in the middle of the ring, quickly converse, then run side by side, out of the ring of safety and toward the lake. One overheats and knows he must take cover, that he'll never make it to the lake.
He pulls a silver caterpillar out of his pockets, and lets her spring forth, a pupae gleaming orange. He ducks inside and pulls the top over himself. His last glimpse is of his friend, still running through the flames, he a miniature against the 30 foot flames. The fire rolls over the man, his bag glares orange and is too hot to touch. He alternates hands, holding the hot springy silver rod that forms the opening. Just when he feels he will die of heat or suffocation, he feels a cool wind fighting with the fire. Waiting until his tent is cool, the man stands up, saved, surviving the flames. The fire crackles here and there in the white pillows of ash across a blackened landscape. He walks toward the lake. Just a hope. But before he arrives there, he stumbles across the bones of his friend, lying flat with his hands still stretching his goal.
Why, 10 years later, do I dream this every night? Do you have a dream you feel has significance or one that you have repetitively?
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