F I C T I O N
It All Starts with A Dream
MAIA LYNN ANDERSON
I
T ALL STARTS with a dream.
She opens her eyes to oceans. She stands upon waves, dark and churning and crusted with foam and as solid as stone, as glass, as ice beneath her feet even as it moves and laps over her toes and the ocean spray speckles her ankles. The world sighs around her as the sea stirs, in and out and back and forth, over and under and endlessly crossing, and the water dances to the spell of a pale purple moon. The abyss of water and life yawns beneath her, heavy and full, and she half believes that she could swim it forever and come back up under stars, for surely there is no Earth beneath these waves, these ripples that betray the currents weaving through the unknown depths. She tilts her head back, spine curving and arcing and toes sinking, heels rising as she lets herself fall about her own center, and gravity tips her. Arms open and hair trickling past face, and there is an eternal instant where she falls but doesn’ t sink. For a moment she is suspended over water and under stars and she watches with hungry eyes the small specks of light swimming in the vast void. Beneath her, moonlight turns the ocean’ s surface into a mirror, reflecting back the galaxy. Stars blur and glow in the rippling water, undisturbed by the surging waves that are born beneath its surface and roll the many miles to seek out shores to throw themselves upon. She breathes out and plunges into silver and black water, trailing tiny shining bubbles and the deep, silent weight drags her down. She does not struggle as she sinks. The ocean murmurs here, its song a lullaby. Her lungs are empty and her eyes are closed and she folds herself into the hushed embrace of the deep waters. She does not breathe. She does not drown.
He opens his eyes and he is standing on wind. It sleets beneath his feet like ice or sand and though he does not move with it he can feel it whipping past him,
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