A Dream of Riddles

This was originally posted on my tumblr: Three More Ways as a dream snip, yesterday. But the more I turned it over in my head, the more I felt it was of more import than I had originally given it. This morning, after a dreamless night, I found I still remembered the details of the dream. And so, I present, a Dream of Riddles.

Wasteland. Dust storms. Taking flight when it’s utter madness to do so.

The salt flats again. I’m in a valley that once used to be under water. Far in the distance I can see the mountains that define this area. To my eyes, they appear as minor hills, deceived by the perspective. But I know, they are unscalable peaks.

I’ve been here many times. Of late, almost every night will have me here even for the briefest of moments. It was here in the salt flats that I challenged my Doubt. I long for the enveloping comfort of the lair. For the scent of forest undergrowth and the river nearby. But I know I’m in the salt flats for a reason, I just haven’t found it yet.

Walking aimlessly, I am completely lucid. I know I am dreaming. Yet, I feel different from my waking self. Aspects that I keep under layers of restraint are free here. The salt crunches under my leather bound feet. The light has a twilight ambiance to it, even though the sun is directly overhead. I am comfortable under the feather cloak to the point of ambivalence, neither hot nor cold.

A breeze starts to pick up, causing the salt I have broken free to chase after me. The breeze grows stronger, lifting the sharp pieces and hurling them at my neck. I lift the cloak’s hood, and cover myself. Standing with my back to the wind, I watch as the air current plays with the corners of the cloak. When I realize the cloak is now flapping like a flag on a stormy day, I realize how unusual this is and turn to face the wind.

In the distance, already obscuring a third of the mountains, is a dark cloud of churning dirt and salt. I know I have to find shelter before it overcomes me, but on this plain the tallest thing around is a 3 inch chunk of salt. There is something ominous about the dust storm. It doesn’t feel like a normal meteorological event. There is something sentient in this storm. Something vicious. It views me as an intruder, as prey.

For a moment, I panic. I turn away from the dust storm and run. At first, I ran only the speed my waking self is capable of. But as I run, I return to my lucid senses, and burst forward in supernatural acceleration. My senses tell me the dust storm, which had been moving slowly but steadily forward before, has accelerated as well. It’s enjoying my panic. It had gone from stalk, to chase.

On a whim, I turn full to my right. If the dust storm is mundane, it will continue its course straight forward. I don’t have to turn my head to know the storm has corrected itself. It is pursuing me at a speed greater than I could ever outrun.

I stop, face the dust storm, and kneel down to wrap my cloak fully around me. To my surprise, I find my black shawl wrapped around my neck under the cloak. I pull it up to mask my face. Just as I curl myself into a black feathered ball, the storm overcomes me.

Howling and raging sounds surround me. My mind tries to map the impossible sounds into ones that I’ve heard during the Waking. Tiger growls and lion roars assault me. The dust storm pulls furiously at my cloak, trying to rip it off of me. Fingers of sharp salt try to pry it from the floor of the salt flats at first. Failing, they then pin me down.

The dust storm couldn’t take me, so it means to imprison me. As I feel the weight increasing on the cloak, I know it means to embed me into the salt itself. Encase me with a hydrophilic mass, mummifying me in the lifeless desert. If I remain, I am doomed.

When there is no right answer, the right answer is to take a chance.

I call my power to myself, tie the shawl even tighter around my nose and mouth, and explode upwards turning the feather cloak into large raven wings. The dust storm assaults me at once with conflicting winds that shift impossible directions. I know if I am dashed back to the ground, I am lost. With the cloak as wings, my body would be vulnerable to the growing salt crystals waiting to shred me.

But I know how to fly in cross winds. How to move the wings like a boat’s sail and tack into the flow. The wind shifts. I shift with it. Sometimes I tumble. Sometimes I stall. But little by little, I rise through the stinging storm. In the higher altitudes, the storm’s ferocity fades, and I am able to actively rise even higher. The dust storm, it seems, is bound to the ground. I note this for later.

Now free of the storm, I am a few thousand feet in the air. Below me, the ground is obscured by the angry circular churning of the storm, now deprived of its toy. In the distance, I see the surrounding mountains. But I can see nothing beyond them. Lacking a knowledge of what lay beyond, I pick an arbitrary direction and fly towards it. The decision to leave the salt flats changes the dream, and I am engulfed in a brief darkness. When it lifts, I find myself flying above acres and acres of human bones. I recognize Ravenwoman’s Boneyard at once.

Boneyard. More questions. No answers. Dry bones ready for the fire. Bones that need the fire to dry.

The place no longer chills me with fear. It is a land of the dead. Death comes to all life eventually, why shy away from what life needs to continue? The eternally gray sky hides any evidence of the sun, but I am able to see here even in the darkest of nights. Day or night, it doesn’t matter to me.

There are scattered bonefires placed seemingly at random. I check them for signs of Ravenwoman. Still in flight with my cloak made raven wings, I listen for her distinctive cries, or the sound of her fussing at bones not ready for the bonefire. But there is only the sound of air rushing over feathers. The boneyard is huge, larger than the salt flats I had just left behind. She did not call me here, I came on my own. I have little hope of finding her if she does not wish to be found.

I see a space clear of bones and fire, just large enough for me to attempt a graceful landing. My cloak wings whip up a lot of debris as I bring myself to a full stop and hover a few feet over the detritus ground. Looking with all my senses, and finding nothing taking umbrage at my presence, I land in the boneyard. The raven wings settle about me as the cloak again.

My aim was to wander among the heaps and piles. But as I start to leave the small open space behind me, I find myself pulled at within. There is something here I need to do. The ground is made from the long crumbled and decayed remains of the innumerable bones that were here long before I arrived, and will be heaped and piled long after this lifetime is lost in history. Yet, there is a sense of barrenness here. An empty offering bowl is a sin. A sweater cast aside is forlorn. It’s said that nature abhors a vacuum. And an empty place in the boneyard is a waste.

Yielding to, and trusting in, my instincts, I start searching the bone piles around the empty space for those bones ready for the fire. Dry bones. Hollow bones. Broken or whole, it does not matter. The tibia could be ready for the fire, and it’s fibula companion still needing more time. The cranium may turn to powder at the slightest kiss of the fire, while the accompanying mandible will only steam in defiance.

Most of the bones I search are still damp. Some are bloody and slick, freshly ripped from the body left behind. Many have damage in some way. I am reminded of the aftermath of war. In some larger bones, such as the scapula and the pelvis, I see perfectly round holes. As I use one such hole to hook a finger in and pull it free from the pile, I realize the wound was caused by a firearm. I study the still bleeding bone without emotion. It is not my place to know who the bearer of the bone was. Not my place to know why that person died, or if the death was swift or agonizing. All I need to know was if the bone was ready for the fire, and if I needed to sing the bones as well. This bone is too fresh from living, and not of my concern.

I toss the bone back onto the pile and continue searching for ready bones. I had poured myself into a sense of detachment as I went about the work. As my pile of dry, dessicated bones began to grow in the middle of the formerly open space, I started questioning my dedication to this task, and eventually my sanity. Each of these bones came from someone living. Even if I looked at the dream as pure fancy, sprung from my addled mind, that meant that I was harboring some inhumane desire for death. Was the boneyard the embodiment of my everpresent suicidal wish? Since I couldn’t take my own life, I would surround myself with death?

The bone seemed to call out to me. Without eyes I could see it was ready. I had to dig into the pile a little to find it. When I hooked a cavity and pulled it out, I found dangling off my finger was the fragment of a small child’s skull. My finger curled around the broken eyesocket, it was half the size of my hand. My eyes observed the skull fragment. My soul observed my reaction.

Once this was a child. Somehow, I knew the child was a girl. Did she wear dressed and played with pink ribboned dolls? Did she work in the fields with her family, never knowing the sin of laziness? Was her death swift, a freak accident that neatly removed her without her ever being aware of it? Was she the spoil of war, a trophy to be enjoyed, and then discarded? I asked the bone I held, and the bone said nothing in return. Whatever the girl was, that girl was gone. There was only this last piece holding her to the world of the dead. I smiled slightly as I threw the fragment onto my pile. Soon, child, soon. And even that will be gone.

More bones ready for the fire. More height to my pile. More unnerving observations. I’m lucid. I don’t have to be doing this in my dream. I could leave here, and have some fun frolic on black sand shores with some limber bodies. I could place myself in a library and listen to Morgan Freeman recite the Jabberwocky. I’m choosing to dig through piles of bones in various states of decay. What the hell is wrong with me?

I’m being true to myself. The thought brings me to a complete stop. I’m holding an armful of various bones. My clothes and exposed skin is stained with blood in various points of separation and decay. And the thought brings to me a peace I haven’t had in a long while. Everyone in my life has told me how a Good Girl should think, should act. Certain roles should never be touched by a Good Girl. Society has placed the Dirty and the Dead far away. No Good Girl would ever seek them out. No Good Girl would stand in the land of the dead, bringing the bones of those weary of existing to the Devouring Fire. But I’m not a Good Girl, I’m being true to myself.

I add my armful to the pile. Without measuring, I know the pile is at the proper height, but it is missing something. I turn my thoughts away from the conflicting views of my society and culture, and yield again to my instincts. Once again, I’m digging through piles of bloody bones. Not for those bones that are ready for the fire, but for those bones in need of the fire. Those bones that still cling to life and bleed eternally despite not having a heart to fuel them.

Many of these bones have horrific wounds to them. I recognize tool marks on a humerus, the scrape of metal against bone. Shattered ribs, crushed clavicles, and the splintered remains of carpals with the fading scent of spent gunpowder wafting away. These, I gather and bring to my pile. I create a hole in the middle of the dry bones, and place the bleeding bones there. I cover them up with more dry bones, and stand back to examine my neat chest-high heap of bones.

Dry bones ready for the fire. Bones that need the fire to dry. My instincts tell me that part of the work is complete. I reach out with my hand, but call no rune. I whisper no secret name of a god, call no facet of divinity. Somehow, I know the Devouring Fire and I are the same. Even as the Devouring Fire is flame, and I am human. I am human, right? A moment of confusion. Then the bones remind me where I am. A moment’s pause. The Devouring Fire leaps from some place within me and pours onto the bone pile I have assembled. It takes quickly to the ready bones. I consider singing the bones, but I know, this time it is not necessary.

“What am I then?”

The ambient sounds behind me deaden slightly. Something softer than bone is nearby, absorbing the crackling of the fire. I slowly turn, and find Ravenwoman there, with a large raven perched on her right shoulder. She wears a deathmask as part of her enveloping headdress. No skin is visible, not even her neck. Her feathered cloak, larger and older than mine, covers her completely.

I bow in greeting, and submission. She cocks her head at me then looks beyond me to the fire I’ve set. The raven on her shoulder is shrugged off violently as she walks forward. Pulling a long bone from a nearby pile, she pokes at the burning pile in several different areas. A few small bones tumble free, but the heap itself stands firm.

I stand with respectful attention as she examines my handiwork. The mask hides her facial expressions, and she is silent as the stalking crow. One last poke, and she tosses her instrument onto the top of the pile. She observes how the fire caresses it, then turns to examine me.

She walks slowly around me, noting every speck of blood, every stain of carrion’s touch. She clucks disapprovingly. “Your fire has not been fed its fill. Withhold its food and you will suffer for it.”

I dare to glance upward at her. Noticing she has become taller than me. Or is it I that have become younger. I ignore the implications of that thought and look at my carnage marked hands. Remembering how she had to extract every portion of blood, bile, and dying breath from me when it was time to surrender the jersey to the fire, I realize I had taken on part of the dead in the gathering of them.

I stepped forward to the Devouring Fire with the intention of offering myself to the flames. When I was within its cloak of heat, the fire itself reached out to me and embraced me from head to toe in a swirling display. I felt no discomfort, no heat, no pain as it slid between cloth and skin to sip every forgotten stain of blood from me. As quickly as I was embraced, the fire took the stains of the dead from me and withdrew to the pyre.

“You did good, Girl. You just have to remember the details. There is no devil in the details, only frustration and vain repetition. The devil may be preferable to such.” She laughed at her joke, but I didn’t have the heart to join in. When I didn’t turn away from the fire, she laid a talon gloved hand on my shoulder. “You are using respect as a tattered blind. Speak, Girl, or you’ll burst.”

“Ravenwoman, do you know what I am?” The taloned hand withdrew, and her presence held me tighter than my cloak. She had stepped close behind me, such that her chest brushed slightly against my back as I breathed. She loomed over my neck, silently, without breathing, until I shuddered in a sudden feeling of prey like panic.

As she withdrew in response, I knew she was smiling. “You are not me, Girl. You are not me.”

I was afraid to turn around. Even though I had seen her without her deathmask, which was really my deathmask. I knew she would wear my face. But I was afraid to turn around and see it again.

“What am I, then?”, I half whispered to her, half whispered to the fire.

A slight chuckle mocked me. “Perhaps, it’s time you faced yourself and found out!” A fierce grip grabbed the back of my head. Before I could react, she spun me around to face her. My face leered back at me for a moment, before Ravenwoman kissed me with cold glee and drew the life from my body. When I fell, I did more than fall at her feet.

I fell between worlds.

Discussion through the mirror. Which is the reflection and which is the true? Both are illusion. Modern symbols of forgotten symbols of abstraction.

The headache was piercing. I pulled myself into a knot of pain, agony, and body dysmorphia. The classic accompaniment to a migraine. Except this wasn’t a migraine. This was a soulache. I peeked open an eye in test. The gray world that surrounded me wasn’t glaringly bright, but wasn’t welcoming either. My head felt overburdened. My hands felt encumbered. Something wasn’t right.

Ambient sound shifted near my left ear. Something had come. I turned over onto my back and looked up at a misty gray expanse. My back was uncomfortable in this position. It felt like I was laying on a bundle of branches. The discomfort forced me to sit up. Pushing myself upwards, I noticed my hands.

They were scaled, and taloned. I examined the inhuman appendage, following the skin up. The skin was not my human color, nor texture. Gone were the abundant breasts that suffered bras daily. I still had the appearance of mammary glands, but they were small and streamlined with my body.

I shook my head and felt a strange weight. Reaching up, I found a pair of small, barely curved, full twisting horns. I did not panic though. While they were quite not human, they felt comfortable. I felt comfortable. As if I had been wearing human skin as a heavy disguise and I was now able to be me.

I lowered my head and tilted forward in relief. In reflex, my wings beat slightly against the tilt. Wings? The bundle of sticks I had felt was me laying awkwardly on my great wings. No feathers, only skin stretched tight against a physically impossible structure. Again, I was not discomforted to see them, to know they were attached to me. There was only relief at being able to stretch out.

A glint catches my eye. I look over and see a tall mirror standing free on the ground beside me. I give a sharp cry at my reflection. Within the mirror, I am human. To see Human Keri disturbs me. For I know all that Human Keri bears in her heart. It is a heavy weight.

My reflection disconnects from her duty within the mirror. “So. I’m told you wanted to speak with me.”

“Fuck. I’m still dreaming.” My monstrous voice spoke in harmonies forbidden to human vocal cords. I think I was more disappointed that this voice would only speak in dreams than all else.

“Are you? Maybe you’re dead?” Where I remained sitting, she had crawled forward to the mirror itself. She placed a hand on it, and her handprint pressed into the glass.

“If I’m dead, then you’re dead.” “Yes.”

“Maybe I’m just a collection of bones on a fire.” “One day, you will be. But not today. So no bullshit riddles of that sort. We haven’t the time.”

I snorted a guttural growl. “You started it.” She laughed in response.

“What did Ravenwoman tell you?” Was my voice ever sultry like that? Sounding like honey and warmth and desire and shhh… I must be dreaming.

“She said I had to face myself. Or something like that.” And yet, I’m pleased with my monstrous voice as well. A voice capable of calling between worlds.

“Here I am.” “Okay, fine. What am I?”

“Confused.” I exploded into rage, slamming my fist against the mirror. “DO NOT START THAT FUCKING SHIT! I wrote that post, remember. I know where that tale leads.” My reflection looks up at me, amused. As I would be if our roles were reversed.

“Are you really going to try and find a word to describe you? Really? After what little you have learned of the Truth of the world, you’re going to find solace in words? Anything that comes out of the mouth of a man is abstraction. Some are more abstract than others, but until the man he speaks to has experienced enough of the same, the abstraction is meaningless. You might as well tell a man what it is like to have a clitoris. No matter what analogies you use, there will always be a component that your audience will have to imagine and make up for themselves.” She sits back, smug at herself for her answer. “Hell, Keri, there are women with intact genitalia that still wouldn’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Tell me, Keri, as you beat your wings in useless flailing, which one of us is the real? Which one is the reflection? Which one is the desire? Which one is the actual? You sit there, with the knowledge of breathing and sunshine and sushi and bloodlust. Yet, I am the human of us. Everything you think you are, is an illusion. Everything you think you know, is a myth. Before you launch into some pithy Carl Sagan quote, think carefully. For every creation you come up with, I can destroy it.”

I looked down at the grey misty floor, knowing in my heart my reflection spoke true. I am me. My reflection is me. And we are separated because of my disgust for myself. A hate that sears me still, even after I declared it dead. I looked back up at my reflection, and found she had lost her appearance of humanity.

She had become the swirls of a vision. A pillar of color and light that consumes all. She was destruction and devouring. She was birthing herself and siring herself. She was runes and hieroglyphs and hiragana and petroglyphs and children’s scribbles in the sand. She was everything. She was nothing. She was everything. She was me, in all the layers that made humanity humane, in all the layers that made humanity inhumane.

“The written past will never describe you.” She spoke blasphemies that I knew were more true than any holy revelation.

“Do you know you have been asking the wrong question all this time?” The infinity in the mirror used the voice of a thousand choirs to speak. It was the rush of broken dams, the screams of tumbling rock.

Dumbfounded, I could only stare at the impossible images. I had given up trying to process them, knowing I was dangerously close to seizing. I shook my head slightly, struggling to speak. “What question should I ask?”

“Who you are, is unimportant. It always has been. It’s not who you are that you need to discover, Kerian. It’s what you are.”

My eye twitched at the words. I wanted to counter what was spoken. I wanted to scream that identity was very much an important part of myself. I had a lot wrapped up in this human identity, it meant a lot to me.

“The written past will never describe you. You can compare yourself to various folk throughout the world’s history, and they will only be distant analogies. You may carry the attitude of one ancestor so close to you that you bear her birthmark, and the daring of a man so far removed from your bloodline, its a wonder you’re both humans. But the written past will never describe you.”

Still the images in the mirror kept me captive, as she spoke blasphemies against various gods. Profanities that if I were to reveal them, I would lose every person I currently call friend. She (I still call it, she, as she still was my reflection, even in all this.) told me of myself in analogies to those people and gods that I knew. And even as I boggled at her debasements, I knew, deep within, she spoke the truth. A hard to carry, but ultimately vital, truth.

The truth was too heavy for my heart to bear. A cry came up out of me. A scream that split my awareness and shattered the boundaries of the mirror. My reflection, my reality, my illusion, my revelation, at once overwhelmed me and my senses. The foot of Shiva danced on my head, but the hand of Brahma plucked me and threw me away from there. Brahma’s throw was so fierce, I blacked out.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself laying on an large unlit pyre of bones. Ravenwoman was nearby, sorting another heap. I raised my hand before my face. I was human again. Normal, big breasted, short afro, human, Keri. I was both relieved, and saddened.

“She calms the restless dead. She holds the keys to the gate. If I am not what I thought I was, then what am I?” “I’m not the one to ask.”

“So, what did you say to yourself?” Ravenwoman never turned around to face me. She continued sorting and throwing bones about.

“I’m… I’m not sure I can answer that.”

She snorts in half amusement, half derision. “Sure you can. Just make something up. What do you think I want to hear?”

Her sarcasm bit at me.

“She… I… said…” I struggled for words. “I found I’ve been asking the wrong question.”

“Well, I did say you could be taught, Girl. And here’s proof. What is the right question, then?” Ravenwoman came over to me with an armful of bones. Without telling me, I knew they were to be arranged on the pyre. I took them and started stacking them next to me.

“What am I?” Ravenwoman rolled her eyes dramatically and cawed loudly at me in response.

“What are you… compared to what?” She had turned away from me and was sorting bones again.

I swung my legs over the edge of the pyre. “Well, you know those other reflections. There is one that calms the restless dead. And there is one that holds the keys to the gate. What am I in relation to them? I was told I was not a psychopomp, even after all I’ve been through. I really thought I was. So, if I’m not what I thought I was, then what am I?”

Ravenwoman never turned to face me. Her voice was strangely quiet and reserved. If I had not been attentive for any response from her, I would never have caught it.

“I’m not the one to ask.”

The silence hung between us for several moments. At last, she turned to face me with another armful of bones. She carefully transferred them to me, almost overburdening me with them. I looked about me confused. I did not feel I was to put them down. Too late, I realized the trap she had set for me.

I looked up at her in shock and anger, but she had already thrown her head back in power. Her cry set the pyre ablaze and destroyed my form at once.

The monster before the mirror stands weeping at the human reflection she will never wear.

I found myself standing before the full length mirror again. This time, my monstrous form was complete. I will not detail it here. It was an expression of how I truly saw myself, how inhuman I feel compared to my bloodkin and closest friends.

In the mirror, was my human ideal. She wore my face, and was 2 dress sizes smaller than reality. She was happy and well loved and successful in everything she did. She was everything I thought I was supposed to be, and was content with it.

She is a fallacy. I knew her to be. More fiction than any story I’ve ever constructed. I knew she could never exist, yet I had so rejected the reality of myself, that I longed for an identity, any identity, as long as it was human.

I pushed myself away from the mirror. I have to accept what I am, not what I’m told I’m supposed to be. It pained me to do so. I wrapped my wings around myself, hiding my face, and wept bitterly.

It must be growing season. My horns itch.

Make of that, what you may.

(Lines in bold are the original entries on tumblr.)