The providence of dreams

To some people, dreams are a gateway to the soul. To others, they are glimpses of possible futures, or echoes from the past. Dreams are the realm of mystery, possibility, higher consciousness. For others, dreams represent some very basic and necessary processes of an organic mind. Assimilating experience into memory and resorting neural pathways to make the brain ready for another day.

In spite of my Buddhist upbringing and the significance of dreams in those traditions, I'm a rationalist. I understand the purely organic nature of brain function and the random synaptic interconnections that become our dreams. I don't believe dreams are a window into some higher reality, but I do believe that sometimes our dreams have meaning. Sometimes, dreams are the only way we can talk to ourselves. And I know when I'm dreaming.

It's always difficult to tell when a dream's started. There's a rolling window that can only see so far into the memory of dreams. You can see where you are and may remember where you just where, but the images are fleeting. It's hard to remember how you got there.

The images change. Reality is fluid, sometimes disconcertingly so. But it's a dream. It's not supposed to be solid. Even when the colors are vivid and the imagery solid and real, it's just a dream. People. Places. Things. All usually identifiable in the context of a dream, even when they bare no resemblance to the reality they represent.

This dream is no different. I am me. Of that I have no doubt. I'm at the beach house, the one we would sometimes visit in the summers, though it looks nothing like it and the rooms seem to change as I move through them. That's the nature of a dream though. Real is what it is, regardless of what it isn't.

The rooms shifting and changing don't bother me.

That the world outside the beach house lacked a beach didn't bother me either.

I would have expected beach clothes to go with the house, a swimsuit or sundress. But it's not. I'm in my Dress Black's, the dress uniform of Intel section. Black. Silver trim. It can't be mine though. It doesn't fell right. Too tight in some places, too loose in others. In a mirror it looks right, but the uniform doesn't fit.

"They used to call you Ice Queen." A voice says to me softly. A child's voice. A little girl, no more than seven or eight years old.

"Once. A long time ago." I answer. We're standing outside the house. I don't remember moving from inside to here, but it doesn't matter. She's sitting on a large rock wearing a slightly scruffy sun dress. Her features are indistinct. I don't know this child, but she knows me.

"Why did you end my pa?" She asks me. An innocent question, but full of hurt.

"I'm a soldier," I reply. "Sometimes soldiers have to kill people." It's the only answer I have. I don't know this child's father. Or maybe I do. Did it matter? I'd ended my fair share of people. It was inevitable I'd left someone without a mother or father. "I bore him no malice, child. That's not why I became a soldier."

"It's ok," she says. "I'll have enough malice for both of us."

I look, and she's holding a gun. It looks almost comically big in her tiny hands, the muzzle looking a full twenty millimeters across. So big I can see the blunt nose of the round in the chamber and a slow motion eruption of flame around it. Everything slows. The round crawling up the barrel, then bursting out with a wash of fire behind it. I have an eternity to move, but I don't. I just watch as the round crawls towards me.

A hand reaches in from beside me and plucks the round from it's course, holding it up to examine it curiously. I know this person, but I can't find a name. The male side of androgynous, average, nondescript. He is everyone, and no one. His voice, like his form, faintly masculine with the undertones of dozens of voices all speaking as one.

"This does not have your name on it. Do you see?" He says, holding the bullet out in his palm for me to see. Scrawled down the side in Cyrillic letters, the name Shan Yu, the long dead dictator known for his cunning and cruelty.

"But why? Why are you here? Why do you save me?" I ask the figure I can not name.

"Because the future will need its Dragons," he answers simply, and is gone.

I hear the little girl scream in frustration and anger and she's lunging towards me though a haze of bright light and I am . . . .

Awake.

I can hear Haley snoring peacefully on the couch in the other compartment, and Sabrina's soft murmur of complaint as my motion disturbs her sleep. In an instant I know where I am again and snuggle up against my wife's warm back, burying my face in her hair.

I find comfort in the close contact, but tonight, I will find no more sleep.