The Poet's Dream
The time was like many dusks, the Poet sitting with his quill to his paper with ideas and concepts rattling and jumbling in his mind wishing for freedom in the written word. The quill wrote and the hand crumbled and tossed away. The thoughts didn’t find solace in the Poet’s written word. Tired, Poet was tormented by his own inspiration like the puzzle pieces to a masterpiece that they couldn't fit together. The Poet knew he couldn’t work this late and resigned himself to his melancholy slumber. Sleep. Sleep is without trouble. Without problems. Without restricted thought.
This night was different for the Poet, he had a dream most grand. A dream of a mansion with a garden where he grew their most vibrant and brilliantly colored flowers. The dream felt almost indistinguishable from conscious reality. Behind the Poet, a being bright as the sun and as comforting as a crackling hearth began to approach him. The dream seemed so real and the being was so bright, yet the Poet continued to tend to his garden with a sense of prideful purpose.
The being greeted the Poet like an old friend with a smile and sunny demeanor making flowers bloom where his feet tread. The Being asked the Poet if anything was troubling him, the Poet was almost too focused on his gardening to respond until he said, “Well, I have been troubled greatly in my attempts to weave a desirable narrative for many moons.” The being urged the Poet to tell him of the proposed story he wished to tell. The Poet and the being sat down next to the sparkling fountain in the dry thick blades of grass as the Poet began to describe his tale. The Poet transcribed to the being for what seemed like many hours about his characters, symbolism, and proposed events in his ambitious book. The being listened intently and even provided input to the Poet about specific details.
As the Poet finished reciting what he had planned to the being, the being stood up. The being planted its hands onto the Poet’s shoulders and stared deeply into his eyes as if observing. The being then touched the ground and just as they did so, the garden began to shift in form. The field in front of the Poet and the being became an ocean and the grass they stood upon turned to sand. The sun lowered from high noon to dusk in an instant, meeting the sea. The Poet was startled by the change in scenery and faced the being with a bewildered expression. The being understood the Poet’s confusion but instead of an explanation, the being motioned to the great expansive beach with their hand.
The Poet’s bewilderment faded into wonder as he looked towards the light cascading across the ocean and down to the sand between his toes, they promptly jerked their head behind himself to unveil a faraway mountain with a peak above the clouds. The Poet swayed their head left to right and was met with sights of such magnificent status that he could hardly believe what he saw. The Poet saw luxurious ponds with thriving Nyads, dynamic phoenixes, towering giants, and a number of mystical creatures.
It all seemed so familiar…
It…
Is this…
my story?…
The Poet realized that this was the first scene of his novel, just as he pictured it in his imagination. The bright being faced the Poet with an informed smile and hand on the Poet’s shoulder and said, “So you understand my friend. This is your vision in its clearest form, with my help you can connect those pieces and find those words that elude you.” The Poet, with an enthusiastic smile, shook hands with the being. For though there was work to be done, the Poet had to show his new appreciation and respect in some way.
The Poet and the being began to create vast creative scenes, each showing the Poet’s creative ideas. The shapes, the movements, the words all came flooding into the Poet’s mind. They made towering castles that held noble kings and their courts. Trees grew from mere seedlings into massive overshadowing oaks that stretched into the stars and housed glorious wildlife. Vast crystal lakes and dusty dunes could be made with merely a thought of the Poet. The Poet was overcome with options and his own creations. Each moment was expressive and lively, the Poet’s feelings in those moments could only be described as pure wonderment and pride.
They went on for many landscapes and scenes until, at the final scene of the first chapter, the being paused and faced the Poet with a hint of sweet sorrow in their expression said, “My friend, it is time for you to go back and write your book.” the Poet paused then his grin melted to a solemn frown. The Poet rigidly turned to the being and spoke, “Well I guess that is something I just wanted to ignore. But I can’t make this book without this place, without you.” The being shook their head, “Poet, do not fret. Next moon we will meet again, you will finish your story one day. I will be there for you on that day.”
The Poet was speechless with a slight smirk. The Poet calmly and slowly walked to the glowing being, step by step. The Poet wept as the distance between them and the being became more and more narrow. When the Poet finally reached the being, he embraced the being as if they may never see each other again. The world began to fade from a royal orange to a piercing white as the Poet left the world and their friend. “Till tomorrow, my friend.”
Every night the Poet and his friend are still working on their stories and thriving in their garden of imagination and creation.
The Death of Wonder
The boy was walking through the village, like many other days, was in a hurry to see the newest local magic show. The boy was walking to a particularly rare street performance done by professional magicians and wizards. Crowds had gathered around the magicians acting almost like a barricade to the performance. As the boy saw this crowd he immediately dashed across the gravel roads to gaze upon the event. The boy pushed and shoved through the crowd with great force despite his small stature.
When the boy reached the front of the performance, he saw the magicians on the stage performing impossible acts of mysticism and alchemy right before his eyes. There were three wizards, each dressed in colorful robes and holding enchanting relics. The first red wizard sat by a fire and threw magical powder into it, manipulating the fire to swirls and creating vivid colors that garnered “oohs” and “ahhs” from the masses. The second green wizard was able to make animals appear and change with a mere cloak, the wizard created a bunny from thin air and changed it into a flock of flying doves which garnered shocked silence from the crowd. The third blue wizard was out in front clouded in a shroud of mist.
As the mist faded, two dancers emerged from where the wizard once stood and began to perform impossible feats of flexibility. The dancers emerged crawling on all fours upside down which at first scared then amazed the audience. The boy was starry-eyed and full of wonder as he looked upon the three acts of magic. The acts went on for two long hours. as the magicians took a bow and left, the crow dispersed but the boy continued to stand in front of the stage for a few more minutes. The boy swore that day to be able to perform magic, he wished to be able to do great things like the magicians had that day.
The boy eventually started his trip back home to his father, though the boy kept looking behind himself to where the event had taken place. When the boy returned to his home he told his father the astonishing feats that the wizards performed in the streets and how he wished to be like them someday. The father listened intently to the boy, though not particularly interested in the wizards. After the boy calmed down, the father told the boy it was about time for dinner and the food was getting cold. The boy respectfully obliged his father and sat in his seat at the dinner table. The hearth was crackling and the pot was boiling, though the boy couldn’t get his mind off the amazing things he saw at the performance.
Once the dinner stew was served, the boy ate heartily. The boy left not an ounce of stew uneaten. After dinner, the boy’s father took the boy to bed and was met with a fuss by the young boy who wanted to stay up and pretend he was like one of the wizards he saw that day. The father eventually promised to tell him a tale if the boy would go to sleep right after, and that seemed to work.
When the boy was tucked into his warm bed, the father began to tell his tale. The father began with, “There is a god by the name of Morpheus. He is the god of nocturnal dreams, bringing nighttime visions to all people. He weaves the dreams differently for all humans, sometimes imparting wisdom to mortals through said dreams.” The boy quietly and in awe listened to his father as his tale continued. “Morpheus pulls a blanket over the sky at night to spread his dreams. But a malevolent god Epiales sometimes interferes with Morpheus and tampers with the blanket to grant nightmares to the mortals unlucky enough to have their dreams tampered with. But, Morpheus makes sure that the kindest mortals have their dreams untouched, but leave the wicked to their torment.” The boy curiously asked, “Then what are the stars and the moon?” The father explained, “The blanket has been sometimes torn by the gods over the years, and the holes form the stars in the sky. The biggest hole is what we call the moon.”
The father finished the short tale and told his son to sleep well and to be kind to have pleasant dreams then left the room. The fire in his room was blown out and the boy wasn’t only thinking about the wizards but also began to ponder this new tale. The boy could hardly sleep, he had just learned of such an intriguing and scary subject. The boy looked up through his bedroom window and saw the moon peering down upon him. Then the boy thought about the wizards and what they did and the puncture through the sky that formed the moon. The ideas of the story and the wizards caused the boy to have a single, instinctual thought. “How?”
There is a man walking down a crowded metropolitan street, on his way to work. The man has tired eyes and an unthinking stare, he seems to be indifferent to the people around him. The man eventually stops at a tall white building and opens its glass doors. People in white coats and safety goggles litter the space, the workers seemed to each be researching some form of a scientific field. As the man walks through the space, a few of the workers wave and greet him, but none ever strayed from their work.
The man sits down in his seat and clocks in. His desk is littered with scientific equipment of all manners. The man begins his work by taking a vial of green carbonated liquid and pouring it into a heated beaker full of red slime. The green liquid’s molecules and the red slime’s molecules combust into each other and evaporate into a cloud of rainbow haze. The man stares blankly at the cloud and writes the results down on his clipboard. VRRRV! VRRV! The man takes his phone out of his pocket and finds that his friend sent him a video of a dance routine performed by Olympic-level gymnasts. “Those people must have good genetic heritage. Or high mitochondria count.” the man thinks to himself while turning off his phone.
A group of the man’s associates walks up to him, they are talking about a trick of some sort. When the associates walk up to him the main one says, “Hey Schmo, I told the fellas about that magic trick you pulled off earlier. They don't believe you can do it. I got money riding on it, so could you show them that you can do it.” The man reluctantly stands up and holds up a red card. One of the associates then grabs the card and marks it with a signature and puts it on the desk. The man then grabs a deck of cards and throws them all into the air, spreading the cards everywhere. The associates watch intently as the man then slowly grabs one of the falling cards. The card he picked up was the signed card that the associate had marked. The workers then exchange their bets and thank the man for the entertainment.
The man seemed to envy their amazement, it’s easier to be impressed when you don’t know how the trick is done. The man then continued his work, testing different chemicals and analyzing why the reactions occurred. The salamander’s resistance to fire is possible by a secreted gel, The rainbow is formed by light refraction of the visible color spectrum by clear water droplets, a pigeon’s flight is attained by a mass to muscle ratio centralized in the wings to achieve proper thrust, and a few other things were written on the man’s list of analysis. The man clocked out and headed back home late at night. The city lights were glaring and beaming even soo late, but the man wasn’t staring at the lights. The man looked up to the sky, there were no clouds that night. The man didn’t see the stars or the moon. He didn’t think about the stories his father told him as a boy. He didn’t see the constellations that formed with the stars.
All the man saw was a few balls of burning gas and a chunk of floating rock.