The Dream

A dream crept out of my skull, through my ear, staining my white pillow case. I awoke in the morning, after a heavy, black sleep, to find the corpse of a dream, bleeding on my pillow. The blood had crusted and blackened, and there was just the heart of the dream itself, a glass-like shard, made of shadows and rainbows, embedded in the bloody, black mess.

Carefully, I pried the shard loose. It glittered, full of colours, in the morning sun. In the shard, I saw faces trapped and frozen - a princess, with tears cascading down burning cheeks, an ogre, with a mouth full of sharp, pointed teeth, a witch, black locks rioting through the air, as she sped through the skies. These things and more, I spied, frozen in the glass corpse of the dream.

I pounded the shard into a fine powder, which I corked in a blue glass bottle. I kept it there, on a shelf in my kitchen. Perhaps, someday, I would have some need of it - perhaps someday, when my craft and skill ran out, I could turn to the powder in the bottle. Or when pain and illness overcame me, I could turn and find release in the magical dreams the powder could bestow.

But one night, I awoke, to hear the sound of a scuffle in my kitchen. I donned my dressing gown, and quietly crept down the stairs. In the dark kitchen, I saw the shadow of a cat against the wall, pulling the bottle out with it's paws. The bottle fell off the sledge, splintered on the floor, the powder spilling out. The cat leapt through the air, and landed on it's paws, to lick the floor of the powder.

Horrified, I watched, as the shadow of the cat blurred and shifted. A sabre-toothed tiger stood in place of the cat, and then, a moment later, a lazy-eyed chameleon, colours shifting across it's skin, slumbered on the floor. A mammooth rose up, tusks piercing the ceiling, and then a snake - with a blue, sinuous tongue, slithered across the floor. But then, the snake shook, a shudder ran through the length of it's body, and it's skin changed into gold, red, blue and green. And finally, the cat, lay again, sprawled across the floor of my kitchen, tongue hanging out.

Minutes passed, and the cat didn't move. I ventured, tentatively across, to touch the cat. It was dead, frozen stiff.

When morning came, I buried the cat in the graveyard.

Days later, I found a hole in the ground, where I had buried the cat. Now, the children of my village claim that a cat visits them in their dreams, a furry, shadow-less creature, with a long blue tongue. There are also reports, of giant footprints in the forest - footprints that belong to an elephant. In my garden, I see the sliding tracks of a snake, and once, the postman found a long, pointed tooth, embedded in my post box.

The dream lives on.