The Dream That Found Me

A boy and a magic lake.

The Dream That Found Me

 

It’s not the cold that agitates me, it’s the waiting. I’ve been up for several hours in the early morning sitting here along the shore of Lake Ungthet, waiting for a mystery. I don’t really know what the mystery is; I should explain that to you very clearly. I don’t know what the mystery is. But I know it was there lingering in my dreams. I know these same calm shores and windless forests were in my dreams. I was waiting just the same in my dream. Sitting here, with my legs out before me on the cold morning sand. I sat here, just like this, in my dream watching the waters of the lake reflect nothing and wait for something. I watched the water watch me in my dreams.

                The mist fell slowly over my face in my dream, I remember. It slid over my eyes, into the forests and spilled over the lake that was watching me. The mist grew to fog and slinked over the still forests from either side. The fog poured into my dream and bathed the silent lake. But my eyes never left that spot in my dream. My eyes watched the space between my feet that lay out in front of me and watched the lake watching me. I watched the fog fill the lake from either side of my feet and into the space I watched in my dreams.

And just then… just as the fog poured over my feet and into that spot I saw it. I watched the small face rise from the water and found the eyes that were watching me. The face raised its beautiful face of mystery as the lake spilled over its long curves and drip back into the water. The eyes that opened inside the face did not watch the anxious forest or hear its silent music, these yellow eyes of the lake watched me and nothing else.

 The face raised itself inside the lake and became the head. The head raised itself inside the lake and became the torso. The torso raised itself inside the lake and became the body. And it watched me. The long snout and the yellow eyes and the scaly four legs watched me through the space in my feet as I blinked inside the space that I watched and blinked again.  I blinked yet again to wake myself but the yellow eyes watched me through that spot in my feet. I had waken up in that moment. That moment when the face became the body and watched me on the shore. I had waken and my dream had found me. I had waited long enough.

 

II.

 

I stared at the ancient reptile that was sitting in my family’s summer lake and was not surprised much. I had been expecting him or at least something to come out of that lake. In the previous hot summer nights I’d rolled in my bunk and curled the soft blue sheets around my neck exposing my toes to the forest’s winds that invaded my open window dreaming of the lake and the eyes that watched me from it. I’d dream and I’d fight the lake in my dreams. I’d fight a battle against my own curiosity and that eerie lake that strolled in and out of my dreams as it chose. Then the hot summer nights would fade into the chill of the morning and I would wake and curse my toes for exposing themselves to that window and its invasion. As I’d lay there in the freshness of the morning and crisp cold of its greeting I’d look out into that window and think of the lake and the eyes that sat in the stillness of that lake.

One excessively cold and windy morning I could take the eyes no longer. I had not seen them in my dreams but I had felt them. I had seen the empty forest and the soft waters of the lake and I had felt the eyes on me in my dreams. I burst out of my bed in this terrible morning and across the log floor of our summer cabin and leaned out my window and engaged the eyes of the lake. I watched that lake while my mind and its clever imagination declared many times that I had seen the eyes in the lake. But I knew I had not. I knew the eyes had seen me but I had not seen them. I could only watch the lake and expect it’s magic. Then in my frustration in this morning I grabbed my baseball from inside its mitt that sat on the chair of my cluttered desk and threw this ball across the yard, into the shore and tumbling into the lakes waters. I watched it roll slowly across the sand and fumble its way across the small sticks of the shore until the lake had found my weapon of choice and swallowed it in its dark waters. I watched the lake and demanded that it respond. “What are you lake? Why do you call to me in my dreams? Find me! I am here lake. I am not my dream”.  But in this declaration of angst and curious battle the lake did not find it suitable to respond. It sat there as it always had as the sun crept over the silent forests and the fog crawled over the shores and into the water as the morning demanded more from the night and its soft retreat back over the mountains.

The cabin was consumed with confusion as my parents ran about from room to room to see who was yelling into the holy silence of the early morning. They ran about inside the cabin and as I heard the second door close down the hall I expected mine would open next so I cursed the lake again and begged it to find me where ever it may and ran back into my bunk and curled inside those blue sheets and hugged them against me and the chill that sat in my bones. The door crept open and with it an electric light that slid over my face for my curious father to consider. He looked at the open window and the early sun as it rose in the calm sky and back at me again for a final consideration. “Bad dreams. Hon, kid’s having bad dreams. Talking in his sleep I think”. Somewhere below my considerate father a concerned mother made the loving demands of a closed window and a boy without a cold. My father crept across the wooden floor in his woolen socks so quietly that I only heard the shutting of the window and the closing of my door as he left me to my dreams. But just as I imagined my dreams and considered what I wanted of them I rolled over and gazed at the window as the light began to creep across the sky. I sighed and lay heavily inside my bunk, curling against my many pillows and then I gasped. The chair and the desk. It was as it had been before my war against the lake. And there sat on my cluttered desk a single wet baseball for my sleepy consideration.

 

III.

 

It wasn’t a contest. The large dragon in the gentle lake mulled over me purposefully and did not stare. It looked me over and pierced past my eyes and into my thoughts. I spoke silently to the green beast of my dreams, “What is it you want from me?” The dragon from the lake judged me as I leaned forward in the sand wondering how to judge a dragon. The dragon in front of me contemplated my presence deeply until a sharp tunnel of breeze caught it by surprise and he curled into himself and inside his wings for a little warmth as the last drops of the lake were carried off in the wind. The droplets of water that fell of the dragons wings sparkled in a soft green glow as they drifted over the lake and into the forest. I blinked again and the dragon remained. I watched the green water rise and dip into the forests and the trees shook as these shining waters entered through its branches. The dragon had turned to watch with me the silent forests and gave a deep sigh. We gazed into the dark woods and listened just so carefully as the earliest morning birds found their song and sang into the glowing breeze. The chatter of the birds grew and the forest came alive in that moment as the trees shook and the wildlife ran about inside its shaded cover.

The dragon’s neck grew out from under its wings and leaned towards the singing forest, raised its chin and sang back to the forest for just a pair of notes. The dragon of my dreams did not frighten me as he sang to the forest. I had always felt he came with great purpose.  When his brief melody ended and the forest had heard its claim it fell silent and still again. The dragon stood tall and proud in the lake and stretched its vast wings out in a show of age and strength. I saw that dragon in its entirety now. I saw its broad wings, the same shade as the forests proud evergreens. I saw its harsh coat of scales and its worn gentle face. I saw its age and its gentle beauty. I no longer wondered how to judge a dragon. It had shown me exactly how in its dance with the forest.

And then it watched me again. But now it watched me as if it had made a choice and expected something of me. The dragon leaned forward and took its first gentle step out of the lake and onto the white sands of the lake shore. It’s face showed confidence and a resounding purpose. I leaned forward in the same sand as this dragon and slowly raised myself up in front of the towering beast. It reached its long neck towards me and looked deep into my eyes but it did not frighten me. The dragon and I stood in front of each other as two old friends would that had found each other by chance over many forgotten years. The dragon and I were comfortable in that moment but I lingered in the suns of its eyes and asked it again in silence, “What do you want from me?”. To which a gentle whisper rode the wind of my thoughts and just so gently spoke in the ears of my curious mind, “Love”. In its eyes I saw my own reflection. A boy on the shores of a lonely lake looking up into the face of a great mystery.

 

IV.