Sleepless Dreams

Last night, after hours of what I might be hesitant to call sleep, I finally lapsed into a light snooze near dawn's light. And with apple-juice chemicals seeping down my veins, I dreamed, and the semi-lucid nature of this dream elucidated the unsteady proximity of this sleep to wakefulness. Yet, I dreamed.

I was in a manor, full of family, relatives, friends. It was one of those manses you imagine when reading nobler exemplars of british literature, with chestnut trees lining the approach, a marble fountain in back, a high hedge around the lot, and all fashion of incredible landscaping that comes from a permanent staff of gardeners and absurd amounts of money. 

Of course, none of this catches the eye nearly as surely as the mansion itself, with Doric columns showing off a regal, daunting archway and gaudy threshold. The house itself is Victorian, with sash windows and the daunting facade that is nearly as much fortress as house.  

Inside, though, that is where I was.

There was a great hall, somewhere in the upstairs of the mansion, with a rounded ceiling arched along a great length. Everywhere on the walls were hangings that split between an eido-japanese and shinto artistic genre and a historical, european lineage of wall-hangings that described a pedigree back to creation in intricately painted portraits. 

The great hall was filled with people, prepared for a banquet. Food was lavishly arrayed about the long, central table, and there was eating and drinking to rival the romans or the vikings in their heyday.  But I was not particularly hungry, and craved only to explore the household.
It was a strange house. Every room centered on the main dining hall, which was the only room in the house not to touch the outer wall. The house was old, and every room contained a door to a small balcony, specific to that room, where you could overlook the grounds. Unfortunately, the constructions for these was crumbling, and I went room to room, trying to find one on which I could stand without it crumbling beneath my feet. As I stood upon each, I found myself scrambling for purchase and frantically leaping backwards into the house for safety, as the stone crumbled down into the garden.

In one room, a number of children were jumping up and down on a mattress, and laughing with glee. But there were dangerous objects clustered around the base of the mattress: knives, pins, nails, and so I shouted for the children to stop, though they would not listen. I rushed into the room and swept away all of the dangerous items, and joined the children in hopping on the mattress for a time. The mattress grew, and was large as the entire room, and the low gravity the room acquired allowed for some fancy leaping shenanigans.

Shortly thereafter, I realized someone was looking for me, someone I knew. But I knew if they found me, I'd have to explain why I left, why I was wandering - so I leapt out of the mansion and into the garden, and hid beneath a bench, behind a raised bed of flowers. 

Ash trees surrounded my hiding spot, and the scent of flowers rushed to my head like ambrosia. I heard the person who was looking for me pass, and I scrambled out of my hiding place to explore the garden. There were flowers everywhere, of every color and type. I began searching for one, a very particular flower that grew in no other place than this mansion, and found it.

It was the most sought after flower in the entirety of the world: purple and short, with petals soft as a rose, and as brilliant a violet as royalty ever wore. The stem is tiny, as short as a daisy, so the flower rides close to the ground, and the center of the flower blossom was liquid gold, like honey, and tasted sweeter.

If you plucked a flower, it would shrivel and die within a minute, the purple petals turning ashen and burning away like chaff.

But they possessed a magical allure, a siren-call that incited anyone who found them to immediately pluck them, and give them to the one you most cherished. I plucked one, hoping the same, and found how quickly those dreams turned to ash in my hands.

At this time, everyone was helping clean up from the feast, and I knew I should help. So I wandered back inside and was told to help empty giant bowls of water. So I kept taking bowls from the kitchen into the garden, and watering the flowers with the unused water.

Then I woke up.