Like most of my dreams, I was not myself. And you were not yourself. The dream, so vivid, it is still in the forefront of my mind. I had to write it down.
I walked through the desert, my left hand full of sand. I looked up, my robes gently swaying in the hot breeze, and saw where I needed to go. Climbing the landing pad, into the ship, familiar, yet distant. I walked the ship’s iron corridors until I found you, wrapped in the pirate’s arms.
I whispered your name and you awoke. You looked up, unsurprised. “General?” you ask. Then, you look about. “This is a dream,” you told me.
I nodded. “Yes. It is the only way I can speak to you.”
You rose up, leaving the pirate behind. You looked up at me, your eyes wide, expecting judgment. I shook my head slowly. “I have little time,” I told you, looking down at the sand slowly spilling between my fingers.
We walked from the ship out into the desert.
As we walked, the twin moons rolled through the sky: heralds of the suns on the other side of the world. You begin to speak, but pause. “I understand,” I tell you. “You are confused. Your heart is confused.”
You nod. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Your heart is torn between two. Your emotions control your thoughts.” We stop at the top of a sand dune, looking down at a distant city… one you have never seen, but your mother had.
“If you focused your mind, calmed your thoughts, you would see what you need to see.”
You shake your head. “I can’t do that,” you tell me. “My passion is what keeps me alive.”
I pause, the sand halfway gone from my grasp, debating how to say what needs to be said.
“You are on your way to the flying city,” I told you. “There, you will be betrayed.”
Your eyes turn from soft to anger. “Betrayed?”
I nod. “You will lose one you love, but find the other.”
“Lose?”
I turn, walking back to the ship.
You are behind me now, your voice rising over the desert wind. “Lose? Which one?”
I do not answer you.
“General, you have to tell me!”
The sand is almost gone. With the movement that only comes with dreams, we are back at the ship. I walk slowly up the gangplank.
“General!”
I turn. You are at the bottom, dressed in white, as I last saw you with my own eyes.
“You will have a choice,” I tell you. “Both of them will be in the hands of evil. And you will be the one to choose who to save.”
The sands are almost gone. You are standing over the pirate, looking down at him. Looking up at me.
“I love him,” you tell me.
“I know,” I tell you.
A tear falls. “When I must, which one will I choose?”
The tear falls with the last grain of sand. “The future is always in motion,” I tell you, the voice of my teacher echoing in my mind.
And with that, you awaken, by the pirate’s side. A sad dream, already slipping from your mind. You turn and hold him tight, already forgetting what you already know.