The Dreamer's Key

In my dream, I see myself as clearly as I may see you standing here beside me, although I do not dare remove myself from the hemisphere of my own perception. Perhaps it would be better to say that I am aware of myself: that I am certain of drawing a distinction between my waking self and the self that stands amidst the pines.

My hair is long and loose - the colour of sunlight on fresh conkers - beneath a large, straw sunhat. The fresh-falling rain streams off the wide, slack brim and makes the ivy-coloured ribbon tied about it flap and click as I run through the forest in this sudden summer storm.

I am wearing a white, muslin dress: sleeveless and long skirted and so, so simple that it is almost girlish. The cloth is wet and cloying as the fog or ocean foam, it sticks to my calves and ankles as I run as though it wants to trip me. There are deep, secret pockets cut into the skirt (the kind where children may collect and hoard their stash of string and shells and soft, pressed flowers), but all I find in mine is a large and rusted iron key that's turning cold and slick and coppery in all this rain.

The lightning spreads across the hidden sky and turns my pine needle canopy into a backlit skin, spidered with tiny veins of forest green…

For a moment, I feel as though I am beneath the pelt of the wood, beneath the skin of the very earth itself. I feel as though I am a wanderer in the body of some living thing far greater and more awesome than I could ever fathom inside my simple, nearly human mind.

The peals of thunder sound like church bells...

My dress sticks against my skin...

I hitch up my skirts... And I run deep into the trees.