Blue's Dream

Blue woke up suddenly. She had had a bad dream. Blue’s uneasy movement while she dreamt, though almost imperceptible, had startled her pair, 2, who was sleeping next to her, out of a sound and dreamless sleep.

As she came to, 2 asked, yawning softly, “What’s the matter, my love?”

It was a warm night, and an almost full moon shone brightly plastered boldly on a blank indigo sky. On such nights, the pairs excelled, absorbing the deep, dark, shimmering colors that illuminated the void. Shining through their open window, the moonlight glistened on their round, smooth faces, reflecting a vibrant, iridescent glow, like light bouncing off a still lake under clear skies.

The calm of the night was broken only by sounds of forest creatures and their varied synchronized snoring in dissonant rhythm. That, and the gentle breeze wafting through the small clearing deep within the dense forest where Blue and 2 called home, its soft swooshing adding a beautiful hum to the ringing silence.

Such a dramatically calm backdrop made Blue’s foreboding dream, while 2 slept soundly, all the more perplexing.

For as long as they had been paired, Blue and 2 would always dream the same dream, or rather, two halves of one. The two were never not in sync. Typically, one would dream from the beginning, the other from the end, and they would meet in the middle, waking at the precise moment before their paths crossed, as if that almost-touch in the dream signaled the start to their waking lives. Sort of like childbirth: the moment a baby crosses from womb-world into the real world, forgetting while still being fully aware, of their transition to a new reality for which they are only instinctively prepared.

Sometimes Blue and 2 dreamed in parallel, experiencing the exact same moments in layered forms; like left and right ears listening to the same music. Although there is no perceptible difference as the ears listen together combining the waves seamlessly, yet closing one ear alters the experience of the tune entirely.

At other times, Blue and 2 dreamed in opposites: one in black, the other in white; one with sound, the other without; one happy, the other sad; one tragic, one comic; one active, one still; one dramatic, one incredibly dull. And yet, each dream would inexplicably link with the other, enhancing it, or making it make sense.

Such was the nature of Blue’s pairing with 2.

And so, on this most perfect of nights—with no reason to worry—for the first time, one dreamed and the other did not.

The dream itself was nothing remarkable.

Blue found herself in a theatre, standing on stage, singing what seemed to be a happy song:

All things blithely beautiful,
All creatures great yet small,
All beings bright and wonderful,
The good Lord made us all.

Blue rolled across the stage as she sang, tapping lightly in rhythm, a half-step ahead of the words as they fell into rhyme. She could tell it was pleasing; she felt it inside her shell, as she quickly became aware of a scattering of eyes gazing at her in amusement.

As her rendition drew to a close, Blue realized for the first time, through the sparse applause from guests passively interested in what had seemed to be a rehearsal, that she herself could not hear her singing. She knew the words, she sang them, she was aware she was singing them, but all the while she sang, she never did hear her own voice. This discovery jolted Blue awake; hurrying out of sleep, she was eager to check if 2 had heard what she couldn’t in her own dream.

But for the first time since their pairing, 2 hadn’t dreamed.

As Blue retold the dream to 2 who was now fully awake, the hum of the song lingered in the back of their shared mind, a soft and reassuring soundtrack. Presently, words from the dream, which Blue must have missed when she rushed out of the dream, came to her in waves, possessing her sweet voice and cutting directly into the melody in 2’s mind:

The grey is coming… the grey is coming
For you and me, it rushes in
Whether we choose to rise and fall
The grey is sure to find us all

2 blinked, uncertain what to make of it. She pulled Blue close, turning the words over in her head, distracted by the pattern in the rhyme and comparing it to the form for “All things…”, trying but failing to rearrange them. Giving up, she let out a sigh, murmuring curiously, “I wonder what it means?”

Blue didn’t know what to make of any of it. She herself was still in disbelief at the way the words had come out—very unlike something she was remembering, and more like water flowing through her as it would a river.

“Go back to sleep, my darling. It’s a beautiful night. I’m sure it’s nothing, and you will forget it in the bright of morning,” 2 said after a while, stroking Blue gently.

She began to hum “All Things…” again, steady at first, then slower, softer, until both of them began drifting back to sleep. As Blue nodded off, she didn’t know whether to be concerned about the dream or worry that 2 hadn’t seemed bothered that, for the first time, only one of them had dreamed… but before she could think her next thought, she was sound asleep.

The couple’s lonesome house stood perfectly still in the forest, unbothered, while the moon and sky bore witness to this ordinary night that was anything but.