The Dreaming

Last night I dreamt of Australia again. 

I was a young girl with dark eyes and sun kissed skin, barely out of my childhood, riding through the Outback, wild and free, with the wind in my hair, chasing fast-moving clouds and struggling to hold on to the mane on my temperamental brumby, trying to synchronize my heartbeats with the rhythm of its gallop, breathing as one, moving as one.

The majestic mass of Uluru beckoned from the distance, glowing fiercely in the sunset in carnelian and pomegranate hues as if on fire, calling out to me ‘you are life, don’t you know that? You are life itself.’

‘Yes, Mother,’ I answered it, ‘I am truly alive, just like you.’

The colt stirred the bright red dirt with impatient hooves and a deep night sky opened suddenly, like a giant umbrella covered in the intricate embroidery of the Sagittarius constellation. 

One after another, lights from before the Earth’s beginning appeared, large and bright - the Southern Cross, the Jewel Box, Carina, Antares, the glowing ember heart of Scorpius.

‘Open your heart,’ they whispered, ‘to memories from another life, lived under stars you’ve never seen.’

And I smiled at the stars. I smiled, and I remembered.