A Dream

 

Monet

A person was composing herself to go to sleep one night. Pillow just right. Blanket tucked just so. Not too warm, not too cool.

As she became drowsy, she entered into another place. It was not her bedroom or even her own country. It was an open landscape like the Steppes. Just windblown grass, sky and a warm breath of air.

As she waited there, she began to see small childlike figures. They came on slowly, but in vast unknowable numbers. It upset her because they were too young to be out alone in this vast country with only each other for help. They seemed to be barely of walking age.

She watched more closely how they walked along. As she watched they became less like helpless children. They began to assume an appearance of shining starlikeness. Later, when she thought back to the children, she could not quite remember in terms of earth what they looked like. But they did shine. She remembered that well enough.

The hills shone as far as she could see in this middle land. And as the children began to crowd around her, she heard a sort of soft sighing that became a simple song without words from time to time. It rippled through the throng like wind on fields of grass.

Some of the little lights drifted up into the air a bit, perhaps for a better view of our lady. And still they came on. The numbers were not apprehensible to the human mind.

She cried out “who are you?”

Then again, she cried “where are you going children?”

Voices like the wind in the grass called back “we are the Neverborn!

“We go to witness a Judgment!

“We must press on!”

She stood watching in this middle land as the children marched past her. Her hands fell to her sides and she spoke no more.

***

While she gazed, she fell more deeply into her dream and could not recall much of it after.