"Sweet dreams", you said and you kissed me goodnight. I promised that I would, and I did.
I dreamed of flying. I've related flying dreams in the past, and I enjoy them just as much now as I did when I was younger. The difference is that these days I am no longer disappointed when I wake to discover that dreamflying is not possible in the Real World™.
This dream had me flying over a meadow, rich with flowers and wild grasses. I swooped, I soared and I did aerobatics. It was joyful to feel the wind in what remains of my hair, to tumble with the crows and brush the meadowgrass with my belly. I crowned the trees, I swam through the clouds and tasted the freedom before I finally landed, replete with sheer joy. Somehow I could hear the bees talking and singing as they worked the flowers. I felt like The Wart must have in The Sword In The Stone when Merlin turned him into a hawk, a tree, a stone; it was a wonder to hear the language of living things. Perhaps somehow this was a lesson taught by my own personal Merlin.
I walked through the waist-high growth, careful to avoid the pretty cornflowers. I picked and ate some corn salad (which you may know as mâche) and like Alice in Wonderland, shrank to the size of a mouse. From this new perspective I saw all the tiny life doing all their various works, and among them, wee spiders that moved through the stalks and organic material on the soil. They were delightful, like bijou clockwork toys, ticking their way along the ground as they moved things about. Now the bees seemed like vast furry helicopters, gleefully working the flowers, chatting about their harvest and delighting in their role in the cycle of nature. As I stumbled around marvelling at all this wondrous work I slowly began to grow to normal size, and as I did so, took flight again so as not to disturb the workers in the fields.
Now, finally, I flew away until I found my Grandma's house nearby. I know I've mentioned my dreamscape before, and this house is part of the heart of it, connecting me to all the places I knew growing up. But this night it was just the house, there was no dream physics connecting me to anywhere else. There was just the magic I'd brought and laid there over the years, piled up in the corners like twinkling dust bunnies. I sat on a couch and looked out of the window and went to sleep to the sound of the bees, still singing their working songs.
It seems I kept my promise to you. Now it is evening once more and I can sleep again, to see what tonight's dreams bring. Possibly it will be of shooting stars and lunar eclipse adventures and some wonderful witchy people gazing at the sky, surrounded by magic.