05-03-2024, 10:52 PM
In my dream I am running. I have four strong legs, and though the way they move beneath me feels just like swimming, I know that it is better.
Even in a dream, the four beat pace feels right. So right, that at first I do not realize that I have woken, and that the hoofbeats exist outside my dream. The water around me is dark, the distant surface barely aglow with dawn.
That is where the noise is from, echoing down through the ice and into the depths.
And then, just for a moment, it is perfectly silent.
I remain still save for the dappled edges of my gills and the waving dark hair that ripples up from where I lie curled on the floor of the lake. A splash overhead has me lowering my head to the silt, trusting the dim light and my dappled body to keep me unobserved by whatever had just jumped into the lake.
The splash had been large, and yet as I slowly raise my head, I find that the shape moving through the water seems far too small to have caused it.
And the otter certainly doesn’t have hooves.
I drift upward as it swims toward the surface, far enough behind that I do not think it will see me. I keep to the depths of the water rather than pursuing it to the shore, and break the surface in time to see the dark shape climb onto the bank with a silvery trout. It certainly looks like just an otter, but I cannot shake the sound of hooves I had heard, or the dream sensation of possessing four legs and running as swiftly as the wind.
I drift closer, enough to talk but not quite in the shallows.
“Are you really just an otter?” I ask the creature devouring a meal in the pink light of dawn. “Or was that you running along the ice before?”
@
Set
Even in a dream, the four beat pace feels right. So right, that at first I do not realize that I have woken, and that the hoofbeats exist outside my dream. The water around me is dark, the distant surface barely aglow with dawn.
That is where the noise is from, echoing down through the ice and into the depths.
And then, just for a moment, it is perfectly silent.
I remain still save for the dappled edges of my gills and the waving dark hair that ripples up from where I lie curled on the floor of the lake. A splash overhead has me lowering my head to the silt, trusting the dim light and my dappled body to keep me unobserved by whatever had just jumped into the lake.
The splash had been large, and yet as I slowly raise my head, I find that the shape moving through the water seems far too small to have caused it.
And the otter certainly doesn’t have hooves.
I drift upward as it swims toward the surface, far enough behind that I do not think it will see me. I keep to the depths of the water rather than pursuing it to the shore, and break the surface in time to see the dark shape climb onto the bank with a silvery trout. It certainly looks like just an otter, but I cannot shake the sound of hooves I had heard, or the dream sensation of possessing four legs and running as swiftly as the wind.
I drift closer, enough to talk but not quite in the shallows.
“Are you really just an otter?” I ask the creature devouring a meal in the pink light of dawn. “Or was that you running along the ice before?”
@
Set