Sage
Dance of the Marked
Prologue
Dreams are captivating. They seamlessly blend the realities of our conscious and subconscious minds, and often distort our ability to discern what is real from what is imagined. In truth, our minds actually never sleep. Perhaps what we see in our mind’s eye is closer to the truth than what we see with our physical sight alone.
My parents, like many of the elders from my clan, believed that a chosen name confers certain gifts upon its owner. I don’t know if it’s true, but my parents, keeping with the old ways, gave me the name Sage in hopes that I would be wise and full of insight. Sure, insight. Right. I wish I had insight into my recurring dream of late. It leaves me feeling neither wise nor insightful but rather confused, for what I once thought wasn’t possible, might be. I think I might know what it means, but I sure hope that I’m wrong. I often replay this dream when I’m awake in hopes of finding that loophole that will prove that in fact dreams can’t come true, that they are only dreams. I don’t think I want it to be true, or do I?
The dream is always the same. Two silver wolves stand in a clearing amongst the tall pines. A light fog is visible hovering over the dry earth. It must be early morning, right before the sun rises over the mountains. Then, I am running, running in the woods at the edge of my hometown. I hear pine needles snapping all around me. I can’t remember if I am running away from or toward something, but I know that I am not alone.
It’s been almost a year since I left home and left my old life behind me. Life had been preciously normal, even mundane here at college. I routinely went for stretches of days or weeks in which I felt like any other 19-year-old college student; well that was until about 3 months ago when certain physical traits started to appear, along with bizarre dreams not fully tangible but memorable enough to leave me with a sense of foreboding. I could feel the truth of the dreams press down on me as that thin veil between my subconscious and conscious minds slowly lifted.
I always had a secret to keep, a secret that really wasn’t mine alone. I come from Julian, California, a far-flung mountain town outside the postcard perfect city of San Diego. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows each other, but many that live there have a secret too, the same secret. Everyone that harbors this secret seems to get pulled back to this small town as if by some mysterious black hole’s gravitational pull. It may sound a bit melodramatic, but now I too am beginning to feel that pull, and I’m not sure that I’m going to escape it. The real question is, do I want to?
Just stumbled across your blog here and am taking a look around. It's looks like a pretty nice place. How brave of you to put up entire chapters!
ReplyDeleteI read this in your prologue here, "Dreams are captivating. They seamlessly blend the realities of our conscious and subconscious minds, and often distort our ability to discern what is real from what is imagined."
That's very beautifully put. I think we see the world through dreams, only some get it more right than others. It's hard to move from one to the other (when we see we've gotten it wrong), and we hold on too tight sometimes.
Thank you. Only the prologue is in its entirety but the rest are long chapters so I only took excerpts. I had mixed feelings about putting up long excerpts but I wanted to put up enough to interest anyone that "happens" upon my new blog. Thank you again!
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