The Story

She glared down at the pages. After shuffling through several, she threw the entire pile onto the cold fireplace.

“Nothing you like?”

“Not a damn thing worthy of a second glance.”

“I’m sorry, dear.”

“There’s never anything even adequate anymore. I’m going to die of starvation!” She slammed her hand against the mantel, a crack splintering the wood, the mementos scattering.

“Hand socks? Those are gloves. Living trees? Already written. Lyric after lyric of broken hearts that are less impressive than a stinky rose! What. Is. Happening?!”

She whirled on the wisp of a figure at her dark table, “Well?!”

“I told you I am sorry, my dear.” Came the voice like sand over granite.

“Is there nothing that can be done? I am drowning in repetitive scrawls and half-baked monotony!”

These days, her dreamers only offer anxiety. They shoot straight up in the middle of the night, their skin covered in goose bumps and sweat. They do not whisper sweet poetry or grand ideas. They do not reach for their oils or charcoal. They scream prayers for comfort or absolution. Occasionally, for their mother.

She closed her own eyes, dragging memories unwillingly to the front of her mind: of nights long ago when the people used to wake with song for her. They opened their eyes gently into the darkness, offering up their rhythmic words, colorful explosions, superior plans to bask in her glory.

Their thoughts were sweet nectar at her altar.

She would feel the warmth of the pyre and drift to them on the evening breeze. Sitting by their side was to bathe in starlight and hope. As she caressed each inspired cheek, blessing them for their offering, she would memorize their reverent eyes. She determined to know each of her congregation by heart. Then they would thank her with a smile, a sleepy sigh, and rest their heads again never to remember her presence.

Sadly, when she opened her eyes once more, she was met only with the shadowed fireplace. Its dusty mantle, where she’d kept her favorite gifts for many eons, looked back at her with a weighty silence. What was a chalice of ivory to her now, if it was empty? Who cared for the schematics of a machine long outgrown?

“Why hasn’t Morpheus helped them?!” She demanded, her knuckles tight, begging her palms to bleed.

“You know that’s not what he does. He’s there to respond to them, not persuade them.”

“But-“

“It has been just as hard a time on him as on you, my dear. These things are cyclical, you have to have some patience.”

She turned back to the darkened wall, “I see you have been perfectly fine.”

The heavy chair scraped across the marble floor, and suddenly there was a hand on her shoulder.

“Do not be bitter with me, love. If I could help you I would. You know that is not what I do, either.”

“I don’t care about helping me, I want to help them!” She turned on her mother, “If there’s nothing for them to offer me, then they have nothing at all! I am generous, damn it! I have let them keep measly plans and honestly, quite mediocre penning, simply so they do not starve themselves. And so there is nothing left for me because my darlings have nothing in them to give! Even if things are cyclical as you say, I fear they nor I will even survive to see the end of this drought.”

A chilled hand reached for her cheek, then caressed her forehead, cooling her heated heart.

She continued, “Mother dame, if they go on this way, I will lose hope. And without my hope through the night-“

“-they will fade. My darling daughter, I know too well.”

In final surrender, she tucked herself into her mother’s shoulder. “Is there nothing I can do for them?”

Large hands combed her soft waves of hair, “Go to them. Offering or not, see them through the darkness.”

---

In the night, he wakes. His heart is beating too fast, his mind cannot keep up. Was that screeching within his nightmare, or out here, somewhere? In his home? In this very room?

The calico beside him blinks one tired eye at him before adjusting itself, licking a paw, and falling back asleep.

So it was just a dream. He sighs, encouraging his heartbeat to relax with him. He is about to reach for his phone- maybe distract his fraying mind with a calming cooking video, or ASMR, even some celebrity reading a children’s book.

The hair rises on his damp neck and the panic begins again- he is not alone.

“Shhhh, my child,” comes a warm whisper in his ear, “you are safe. You are beloved. You will endure.”

He whips his head to the dark corner by the bookcase, then towards the door and hallway. There is nothing, save the now snoring cat.

“Calm, my love,”

And his neck cools.

“Rest easy, I will watch over your night.”

The voice is far, but familiar. As he closes his eyes in an effort to place it, he drifts into a dream of melodies he will beg his soul to remember come the sun.

A great distance away, and yet quite close, an ember catches.

The Word

Vision: (noun) 1. The faculty or state of being able to see. 2. The ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom. (verb) Imagine.

Another short one- but this is one that kept itching at me and I just had to get it out (maybe Nyx was bugging me herself?). With the state of the world at large, I’ve been thinking of the artists. It was first kicked off by the floods in NC, where Asheville was ravaged, along with many other towns. The artists have been lifting each other up through their mediums to rebuild. And that led me to wondering about all the art lost through history- and yet it’s what we depend on so greatly to know what history is. I could write a whole essay on that topic, but a lot of people who are smarter than me already have.

These are some of the thoughts that woke me in the night. It’s why I keep a notebook by my bed, it’s why so many writers and artists and engineers and scientists I know both personally and from distant admiration follow the same practice. How could we possibly lose that one great thought that came at midnight? In the dawning hours?

But these days are not calm. If we were the old Greeks, we would easily say these are the days of Chaos, Nyx’s mother. We are not Leonardo Da Vinci, who slid from his bed to his canvas pallets, waking his students by accidentally stepping on their night gowns (who promptly brought him tea and fruit), to pick up our cleansed brush and begin again by the light of the moon.

No, we are a people of work hours. Of calculating precise time off. So I think of Nyx, who waits in the nights. She used to gorge herself on the brilliant thoughts that came to us in twilight, allowing us to keep only the lovely ones that would better her world. And now she is thin, panicking herself at the sight of our pale skin and weighted blankets.

I just had to get this one out. I’ll continue to work on it.

I hope you sleep well, dream well, and wake well, dear readers.