As I Wake - From the bed of the dream...

[Cobalt Katze]

The bundle of leaves was my bed that night… Or perhaps, what used to be a bed became a bundle of leaves. I wasn’t quite sure as I opened my eyes, head lying at the base of a tall tree. I sat up and stretched, various colored leaves falling from me. The sun had risen, and it stared me in the eyes as I awoke. Squinting as I looked around, I spied a large group of people gathering in a nearby clearing. I wasn’t quite sure why they were gathering, nor where they were going to go, but I rose and walked to meet them.

“To the Canopy we go,” Announced a small figure with a round red cap.

“Aye! Go, go,” chimed in a man that towered above all the rest with exception of the girl with the round red cap. I approached the man and tipped my bowler hat in greeting,

“Kind sir, where are we here?”

The man smiled and gripped my shoulder, launching into a series of nearly-rhyming phrases.

“We have come from afar, perhaps too far. For by reasonable means we may come to our deaths. But never mind all the rest. We gather here in the Forests of Aden. Not Eden, mind you, but Aden. ‘Tis a lovely place of great legend and lore; in the days of our past, riddled with war… A man came here with a cannon. He knew not where he went nor where he came from. He knew not what he did nor who he met. He traveled through here, the Forests of Aden. He even passed by our grand destination. On and on he went, his time so carefully spent. He met in the fields another man, but older his years seemed to prove. They traveled along ‘till the grass turned to sand, and the ocean so turbulently moved. The older man died, a city was seen, and the cannon let loose its fire. The young man fell down, his purpose fulfilled, and let loose a last tearful laughter. For irony was found, though he knew not what he did, he in not knowing knew now what joy had died, and the grand scheme of war that he had denied.”

A million questions and thoughts came to my mind as the man let loose his story in that odd dialect of not quite rhyming. Yet I dared not ask them. Perhaps the story was told as it was meant to be heard. And so I journeyed on with these people. To pass the time, I repeated the story to myself a few times, finding it very hard to forget. Days might have gone by, but time seemed to elude me for the time being.

My sense of awareness returned again once we passed the final tree in the forest. The light of the sun on its way to set covered the grass in the emerging field with an orange hue. Eventually the light ducked behind an object in the distance, and I was able to see our destination. I was in awe. Almost like the most intricate of paintings, stood two large magnificent objects. The first, on the right, was a stout red barn. It looked as if it might have always been there yet showed no sign of decay, its brilliant paint soaking up the sun’s last rays. And then, as if to dwarf the barn, was a magnificent tree of epic proportions. The trunk seemed to be just as wide as the barn was long and nearly transparent, with the view of a long winding staircase inside the first layer of wood. The branches were those of an old elm tree, reaching out in every conceivable direction. But most curious of all was a thin glass dome that touched the tips of all the branches and seemed to act as if it were the sky to a village of houses within the thick limbs.

I attempted to lift my jaw off the ground, so to speak, and catch up with the rest of the group, all equally amazed. The girl with the red cap, the one that had initially seemed to read my mind at the beginning of the journey, had walked up next to me and matched my pace. She looked up at me as I looked at her, and her eyes seemed to catch one of those orange rays from the sun. She didn’t speak, but it seemed as if a voice spoke to me in my head; perhaps that of the girl’s.

She said, “A man lives in that tree…”

I looked at her again and raised my brow, asking “What kind of man?”

“A man that sleeps in a diamond coffin.”

“A vampire then?’

“No, he’s a normal man like you or I… But he enjoys the light. Perhaps he feeds off of it.”

“Well he would be somewhat like a vampire then, wouldn’t he?”

“Perhaps…”

“Do you know the man?"

“Perhaps…”

I let out a somewhat disappointed sigh and continued to walk alongside the girl. I looked up, and strangely enough the crowd in which we had arrived with had disappeared. I looked back. Not there either… Just as I began to worry, the girl opened her mouth and began to sing. Just a tune at first, and it was beautiful… But soon, words were added to the melody.

The man he came with a silver spoon
To feed the trees and grass
The man he slept till after noon
And gathered his things up fast

The tree it grew as he waved goodbye
The grass would not let him pass
The man let out a heavy sigh
Until there came a brilliant flash

A woman stood with flowing gown
And gave him a cup of warm soup
“This is your home till I let you down”
She said as she vanished too soon

The sun filled the sky
The man closed his eyes
And the soup filled his belly again

In his mind he would fly
He let cares pass him by
In the paradise he dreamt up instead

‘Sounds like the ultimate embodiment of sloth,’ I thought to myself as the girl finished her song. Perhaps this tree wasn’t truly as grand as I had thought it to be in the first place. If it was solely the resting place of such a slob-
As soon as I thought that word, the girl turned to me again and grasped my hand. Her voice reached my mind, saying “Don’t be so quick to judge those you don’t know. Let us see the man for ourselves, and perhaps he’ll stand in a new light.”

I nodded and followed along behind the girl. She was still holding onto my hand tightly as she led me up the winding staircase. Around and around the trunk of the grand tree. The world around me became a spiraling blur as we ran faster and faster. And then we stopped, arriving at an archway that lead into the glass-covered chamber. We walked forward, and the sun began to dip behind the hills in the distance. A soft red light lit our sides and we walked on, approaching the center of the room. And sure enough, there lay the diamond coffin: beautiful on the outside. But who knew what waited within?

As I approached the coffin, I could feel the girl squeeze my hand tighter. When I grasped the sides of the lid, she wrapped her arms around my waist and pressed her cheek to my back. When I threw off the lid, we embraced as the sun disappeared on the horizon, the entire world plunging into pitch black darkness.

I could feel myself gasping for air. A high-pitched whirring sound entered my left ear as the CD player on my alarm clock began to play its slow harmony of strings. I rolled over and the numbers ‘7:01’ burned into my vision. The numbers then became distorted as a tear filled my right eye. I tried to remember the melody, or her voice, or the strange story… All was lost as the song on my CD player kicked in with the drum kit. Frustrated, I hit the “Stop” button and slowly rose from my bed, rubbing the corners of my eyes.

I walked to the door, nearly tripping on various objects strewn about my floor, not really caring about anything. I reached for the door knob and pulled, suddenly blinded by the sheer amount of light from outside my room. Someone entered the bathroom and closed the door shut. Someone poured coffee. A newspaper crackled as a page was turned. A cheap metal fork scraped against a glass plate. The shower was turned on. Someone coughed. A woman on TV droned on about nothing. A firecracker was lit. I covered my eyes and closed the door again.

Shaking my head, I stumbled back across my room. I climbed back into my diamond coffin. I grabbed the lid and pulled it back over me. I closed my eyes yet again.

[Sperrit]

Yay! Cobbi story! Whoo hoo! Good stuff! Post more!

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[Cobalt Katze]

That's the whole story.. Anyone have any comments or anythin'? I like feedback :amused:

[Tobias]

i really liked it cobbi, it had lots of feeling in it, and i really like the dream aspect of it all, and how it all winds up to reveal that the dreamer is the guy in the coffin