I
closed my eyes and sighed. I had to stop beating myself up for what was going
on. It wasn’t good for me. I had to let go of it and try harder to leave it
behind me. As I was trying to quiet the myriad of questions and worries that
often filled my mind before sleep banished them, I heard someone call out to me
again. My eyes popped open and I looked around the room.
No one
was there and my phone was off. I opened the door and called out into the
darkened apartment. “Diana? Are you home?” I called into the blackness. I got
no answer. I shook my head and closed the door once more. “I have to stop
jumping at every sound I hear,” I muttered and turned back to the window.
I
stood frozen to the spot when I saw what was in the glass. A beautiful woman
had replaced my reflection in the window. She wore a high crown of stars and
moon phases. She called out to someone but I couldn’t make out what she was
staying. I’m dreaming…this can’t be real.
My sleeping meds must have screwed with my perception of reality. I can’t
actually be seeing this!
I
rubbed my eyes in hopes of banishing the vision but it didn’t work. The woman
was still reflected in the window. This time I could hear her. “Please,” she pleaded, her voice sounding
like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. “Please, come back. Help us! We need you!”
Her
cry was repeated at least three or four times. As I listened to her I looked
around the room. The place seemed to become liquid. Everything in the room
looked like it was melting away. I tried to reach for my bed but my arm could
hardly move. It felt like I was trying to swim in deep water. The next thing I
knew, I was sinking beneath the floor. Not like sinking in quick sand where
it’s slow but the fast sinking that happens when you’re going underwater.
I kept
my eyes on my room until it faded and all I had left was the dancing light of
the moon that was refracted in the water around me. Soon, that faded too and I
closed my eyes. I couldn’t fight what was going on so I surrendered to the
current. I prayed that this was just something generated by the medication.
Yet, it couldn’t be. I felt the wetness around me and it saturated my clothes
and hair. That sensation couldn’t be faked or at least I didn’t think it could.
I
remained in oblivion until I felt my head break the surface of the water. I
gasped for air and took in huge gulps of it. Once I felt satisfied that I was
alive, I opened my eyes. The first sight that caught my attention was that I was
standing in a shallow river inlet. I heard the sound of running water and
looked behind me. A great river flowed just a few feet away. The far bank was a
good twenty or thirty feet from where the inlet and the river connected.
The
far bank had tall grasses that waved emerald green in the moonlight. Just
barely visible above that was a line of trees that formed a forest. I shook my
head and tried to make myself wake up. You’re
dreaming. Come on, wake up! As I was trying to do that a shout rang out.
“You here!
Stay where you are!” cried a gruff voice from behind me.
I spun
around and saw a heavily armored man standing on a stone veranda. Steps led
from the veranda down into the waters of the inlet. The man looked like a
medieval knight but one thing made him stand out. He had large, translucent,
blue, dragonfly wings that jutted out of his back. I also noticed that his
features reminded me of elves from the Lord of the Rings films. He had the hair
and pointed ears to match.
“I’ve
got to be dreaming…” I muttered under my breath. What I was seeing couldn’t be
real. I couldn’t actually be speaking to a fairy. There was no way. I was
rooted to the spot just staring at the fairy guard.
He
fluttered down into the water and grabbed my arm roughly. “We’ll see how the
King and Queen deal with you, spy,” he growled and began hauling me up the
steps into the massive palace that lay before us.
As we got within the walls,
my mind just stopped working. This can’t
be real. I can’t be in fairyland… I just can’t be.
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