On the Horizon's edge

My dream began to collapse around me, the lovely beach disappearing as the waves washed it all away. The vestiges cleansing themselves from my mind, the final moment was encapsulated with the faint words spoken by a beautiful voice “I await your next dream so that we might be together again.

As my mind came to full clarity after the final dregs of my dream were swept from my mind, I rolled out of my bed. Looking over to the clock I noted that it was just after 4 am “Another morning to being my work.” moving to the bathroom I began my daily ritual. Bath, dry then brush out my hair, pull it back into a ponytail, brush my beard, and finish it with braiding the beads in it.

Having completed my morning ritual, I went outside for my daily run. I typically try to run anywhere from one to two miles a day. As each foot hit the ground, the slap of the anklet hitting my foot never left, its presence impossible to ignore. A constant reminder of my past, I would never be able to forget what I had done. Even now more than three years after the fact, my actions weighed heavily on my soul.

Living deep in the woods far away from the rest of the town however inconvenient was worth the privacy that it gave. That coupled with not having to worry about upsetting any neighbors with the sounds of hammering at strange times was a great boon as well. Out here I was free to use my forge at any time I wanted to. That coupled with the large plot of land that had been left to me from my grandfather. Luckily for me, the entirety of my property was included in my allotted boundaries. Having this much land, while exhausting to keep up, did help to curb the temptation of just trying to run for it.

After I finished my run, I grabbed a drink from the kitchen. As I finished my drink, my eyes drifted to the date on the calendar. “ oh boy, it’s that time of the month again, time to get to the clearing.” Stepping outside, I made my way to the clearing that was around half a mile from my humble home. Here there was nothing around but a scarred husk of what was once a tree. Deep grooves cut into the trunk in a seemingly random manner. These deep cuts had wept the sap that was the lifeblood of the once great tree. As I cast my eyes upon the corpse of the once grand giant, I felt a keen sense of regret. I muttered to myself. “At least with taking it out of this dead tree, so I’m not hurting anyone.”

Whispering to the hidden voice inside “Okay, you are in control for the next few hours, try to keep our hands looking alright. We have a project that we have to finish by the end of the week, and you know that we won’t be able to get it done if you fuck up our hands too much.

A few hours later I returned to my home. Glancing at the clock, I noted that it was just after ten in the morning. “Time to hit the hay.” I started to myself. Thinking internally ‘I need to stop talking to myself out loud. Someday someone is going to see me doing it and think I’m nuts.’ After having wrapped my hands with some gauze and disinfecting them, I returned to my room. Having been left to my own devices over the years, I had developed a diurnal sleep schedule. I would sleep through the middle of the day as well as the deepest parts of the night.

I had grown to love this sleep pattern. It afforded me the ability to witness my two favorite events of the day. They subsequently happened at my favorite times of the day. The gentleness of Twilight, the graceful rise of the moon, or the triumphant coming of the sun. Both of these events held exceptional ties to my heart and soul. Throughout my life, a lot of bad things had happened to me. But for everything that was a negative point in my life, I had found some beauty. Some of the best moments of my life had happened to me during the calming hours of twilight. My first kiss, my first date, the first time that I had told someone that I loved them. For me at least, the coming of the sun or moon, for me this was bliss.

As I moved through my room preparing myself for sleep, I made sure to grab my phone and earbuds. My phone was one of the few pieces of tech that I owned. I put my earbuds in and selected a song from my sleeping list. Moving through my room, stepping over piles of things that should have been put away, I crossed the room to the one bright area. This area held my old gas space heater. I knew that it wasn’t safe to sleep with this thing on, but come on. It has a timer, and it is balls cold out there today. I flipped the thing on, hearing the reassuring hiss of the gas, I ignited the heater. It sputtered a few times, but it then remains lit as it warmed up.

Lying back in the bed, I closed my eyes to enjoy the soothing sounds of Chopin. As I was lying there waiting for the sweet embrace of sleep, my mind called back to the dream that I had experienced early that day. The only part of the dream that I could even remember was the voice of that woman. Hoping that I would be able to dream of her again, I cleared my mind in preparation for sleep. I was unsure, but I thought that just before I fell into the grip of sleep, that I had smelt something off in the air.