I Dreamed I Could Fly

Please be kind in judgement. I wrote out this dream in stream of consciousness and only edited for the most obvious blunders. I left it in this form because I thought that best retained its dream quality.
.
I was lying on my back slightly inclined, but flat, and I remember that my hair was long as in real life and strands of it blown across my face. I was outdoors, and a group of young people, male and female, were gathered casually around to look at me, but though I could see them faintly, I could not open my eyes. In sleep, I realized it was sleep that held my eyelids closed, and it was a pleasant sensation, sleep, that is. I felt secure in my distance from the group, as though they could not harm me, although I lay vulnerable to them as they stood peering down at me.

Then a young man joined them. His name was John, and he noticed me right away as he approached the group. He had a kind look, not handsome, but he had dark hair in a thick mess around his face. The others thought I was of no use, but John did not dismiss me as lightly, and he knelt beside me to study my face. I slept on at ease. The interest of the others waned, and they began to wander away. Gently a breeze began, and it grew stronger. I rose and spread my arms, and the wind caught me up, lifting me at least twenty feet into the air. Immediately, John followed my example, and suddenly we were both flying in a blue sky above the Kansas fields. At first the other young people were astonished, then inspired, and they all, too, raised their arms and allowed the wind to lift them into flight. Soon, the great group of us was flying higher toward the setting sun. John always remained near me.

The sun set, and we saw in the distance the lights of a city closely packed with skyscrapers, lit in a myriad of colored lights. We flew into the evening city, but as we settled lower between its buildings, we were cut off from the wind, and we lost our ability to fly. Try as we might, we couldn’t find our way out of the city again. We were trapped, wandering, a people separate from the native inhabitants of the city. They called us “The Inspired Ones,” but ignored us otherwise and didn’t understand our need to be away from the streets and buildings. We wanted to fly again!

John was always with me.

One night while crossing on a bridge across a river, we looked into the night sky and our people saw a terrible accident between two aircraft occur. One of the planes plummeted from the sky toward the river. Our people scattered, and I tried to avoid the crash, as well, but it was as though doomed for me. The planed veered in my direction, but luckily landed in the water before reaching me. Thinking I was safe, I turned to John, and then I saw a small, mechanical apparatus leave the downed airplane. Swiftly, it flew over the water toward me and pricked me in the bare heel with a needle. It was only a small pain, and I thought little of it, then both were gone, plane and device. I was with John. We turned to continue across the bridge, but we found it broken by the crash, and we were stranded on a fragment in the midst of the river, while our people were safely on the farther shore. When we asked for their help to cross, they looked at us askance. Something had changed. None of the others wanted anything to do with John and me, and they left us on the bridge fragment, floating on the river, to make do for ourselves.

We lived on the bridge fragment, and John went everyday to make a living performing as a gladiator, but it was not glorious work. His face was always hidden behind a foolish mask, and it was considered a clownish and lowly work, done only by the most desperate among the city. Nevertheless, he performed and fought for years, and he learned all the tricks and that he must be merciless if he wanted to survive. One day he was pitted in the ring with an old adversary of his, a man new to the gladiatorial contests. John beat the other easily and showed him his face, the only one to ever know John was the greatest of them all, although the work was demeaning and ugly.

After that contest, John came home to me. I had returned to sleeping and couldn’t open my eyelids, but I knew John was there. John lay with me on the bridge fragment, and we were both at ease. After that, I was different, at peace though we were isolated from The Inspired Ones. We were now going to have a baby, but no one had children in that city. We didn’t care that we were unlike everyone in all the world. We wanted to fly anyway.

As I was waking from this dream, I took John’s hand to lead him from the bridge, and we climbed the face of the tallest building of the city and came to the rooftop. There I spread my arms, and John understood and spread his arms, too, and we flew away.