TRANSITION

Genre: Fantasy, Reflective.

As vague as it may seem, it may just as well make some sense to a few. Nature was generous enough to offer me a joyride across the valley amidst hell and heaven.

  I am a lucid dreamer and the joyride was indeed a lucid dream of spectacular realism, atleast to me.
  A green meadow it was, with an oak tree by the edge of a lake. As I recall, the lake shimmered like a bed of diamonds. The oak tree was of a deeper shade of green, than that of the meadow. In fact the meadow was so green that it keeps me from calling it barren, for it had nothing but the oak, the lake and us. We lay in the shadow of the tree, me and her, on a red n' white picnic cloth, my mother's favourite. The plain fields stretched to infinity and foreverness as I could see it make love to the horizon.
  We soon had companions, love birds chirping on the oaken branches, like nature's aerial infantry. A habitat so small, I wondered, couldn't shelter much.

  I felt like a constant, static gust of wind, rather a flying camera, filming everything, including myself. I saw myself lying next to her. I faced her and she faced me. We were deep asleep, yet we smiled. Her head rested just below my chin.

  Among the blue and yellow love birds, I spotted a falcon pecking at a hole in the tree.
  Sun peeped in through the leaves. There was this breeze that breathed life into my sleeping soul; it brushed along my neck, injecting bliss into me. I wondered if the oak and the lake alone could build a  breeze so sweet, for there was only low lying grass in the meadow and no clouds in the perfect blue sky- none at all. It wasn't mother nature's, it was rather the breath of nature's reincarnation. It was her, breathing softly against my neck.

Oh, did I not mention who she was?
She was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to me. She was my fuel, my teacher, my weakness and my other half. She was the reflection of my introvert soul.
We lay there, deep asleep, among the green.

They say a dream is a compilation of our daily experience. A manipulated recollection of what we see, feel and do. Well, indeed it's not true at times. But, this one was nature's treat, different in it's own way. It was lucid, rare and vivid; vivid enough to trap me in a semi conscious roller coaster ride of virtual intuitions and self-doctored de-ja-vu.

I noticed the sun set slowly. There was snow on the crest of the tree. It had just started to snow. Though the lake didn't freeze yet, it was no more a bed a diamonds. The birds were fewer in number. I saw the falcon drag a dead snake out of the hole. To my deepest astonishment, the birds had no eyes! Their sockets were dark and void, and I could see right through their dead souls.
The oak leaves seemed less green.

I noticed that the breeze had ceased to blow. She breathed no more. I realised that her face had turned pale and her lips were dry. A sudden fit of panic rushed through me as I struggled to wake up and check on her, but I couldn't. I was paralysed in my sleep, in my dream. I also noticed that i too wasn't breathing. Our faces lacked the smile they portrayed earlier. I was drained off every last drop of peace that she had breathed into me.

I turned my helpless gaze at the lake to find it's water all red. If diamonds could melt and change state to blood, I presume it wasn't a very unusual sight. But I fear it was.

Perhaps all along, we weren't the only human beings in the meadow since I noticed a boy lying on the other side of the tree. There was a girl hanging by her neck, from one of the branches of the oak, right above the boy's lifeless body. There was another hangman's knot hanging right beside her. It probably belonged to the boy's neck. Maybe the young lad was the first to go, and the girl followed.

After the sunset, it was pitch black all around. The moon was dyed in red, not bright enough to guide the night. As darkness prevailed, the camera faded out, so did the lucidity.
I heard a solemn voice, chanting,"Let there be light."
There was light again. I was awake.