By A Thread

Migraine time again. So many images sweeping me up into a vortex of cacophonic assaults of light and movement. Many of them, nothing but misfirings of stressed neurons. Something to chuckle at, then discard like a Facebook opinion. But two days after one image in particular, I keep finding my attention drawn back to it.

I’m trying to find a place to ride out the migraine. Most of my usual mental tricks aren’t working this time. I suspect I’m having fits in my sleep again. The (then) svart-alf had taught me how to use the dirt of the earth to sleep out a migraine, but I couldn’t find a spot in the various dreamscapes to settle down long enough to do this.

I kept being pulled into a Neither Here Nor There state. Physically and mentally unstable. Only the pain was constant. I gave up trying to take control over the pain and just allowed myself to float to wherever I went to.

Wound up someplace that would only make things worse. I couldn’t stick around here in the state that I was in. There would be repercussions, vibrations that would spread my malaise in unwanted directions. I had to remove myself from here. I had to get down to the ground, where I had a chance at burrowing somewhere and sleeping the migraine away.

I knew it was a dream/hallucination/not-real, but I felt greatly limited in what I could accomplish by will alone. My vantage point was very high, and just jumping down was out of the question unless I could use my dream-world abilities. I called my wings to myself, and leaped away.

A sudden surge of pain accompanied by a twisted unclean scent turned my awareness inside out. I was fitting. I lost knowledge of everything, a devouring darkness that smothered sight and thought.

My first rational moment that followed, was the sensation of being suspended vertically and twisting gently. There was something in my right hand, and it wrapped around my arm. I was holding it tightly. I felt something coming out of my left hand, which was held tight to my chest.

I opened my eyes and looked carefully at myself and my surroundings. I was suspended between my former perch, and the ground. At first, I thought I had hold of a rope, but as I looked closer at it, I saw it was far too thin to be a rope. “Hanging by a thread, how poetic.” I chuckled to myself, then winced at the amount of pain the action had induced.

Lifting my left hand from my chest, I meant to reach up to start climbing the thread. It would seem, that I had reached the proverbial end of it, as it did not extend past me. But as I moved my left hand, the thread tightened around my back as the arm’s movement took up the slack. The thread was coming from the palm of my hand.

I looked closer, and realized it was spider-silk, and somehow I was producing it from my human hand. I looked up to my right hand, which was gripping the silk produced by the left, and realized it was adding another strand of silk to the thread. Looking further up, I saw the silk thread was attached to my former vantage point.

So, here I am, not only in between worlds, but in between levels. Neither fully awake, nor fully asleep. Neither up nor down. Quite the liminal state. Holding on to a spider’s thread that I somehow made with my own hands. I wanted to remain here, but another sharp stab of pain urged me to find a way down.

I didn’t explicitly think about making more thread. I told myself to descend the same way one would tell one’s feet to pedal a bicycle. I wanted down, so down I went. A little too fast at first. My right hand clenched tightly in reflex on the twined silk as a brake. “Oh, so that’s why I’m hanging like this. I got it now…”

Started descending again, now at a more reasonable and non-pain-inducing pace. A chilly breeze brought my attention to my floor length skirt as it mocked at being a parachute. I was barefoot, and wondered if that would bother the ground’s inhabitants, then realized they probably preferred me barefoot anyway. Easier to identify me.

Down and down I went. It felt like hours had passed. Just before I reached the ground, I realized the act of descending was a meditation in its own. I considered raising back up again, but my toes were settling on nubby dirt.

Sure enough, the inhabitants came to investigate me at once. They prodded and tasted and inspected my feet and ankles. Declaring me Not A Threat, they left me to myself and resumed their busywork. I wandered around a bit, careful not to step on them, until I found a patch of dirt that they had left untended. I asked them if I had permission to make a shallow burrow there and rest. They didn’t deny me.

As I crawled into the hole I had made, I blacked out again from the intruding pain. When I returned to the burrow, I found I had lined the walls with more “spider” silk. The entrance was slowly being closed by the inhabitants. They knew my intentions and was signalling their acceptance by finishing what I couldn’t. I covered my side of the entrance with a scaffolding of silk, over which they piled on dirt and pebbles, completing my entombment.

I slept for several hours like that. While it did not completely relieve the migraine, the rest made the rest of the day tolerable and vomit-free. I’ll take that.

Since then, I’ve wondered about the forms and shapes I take on in my dreams. For a long time I wore snakeskin as I went up the hill and around the tree. I have a few other forms I could take, but they are mere skin. This, is something new to me. And yet, it also feels as old as the dirt I took refuge in. I’ll have to think on this more once the migraine lifts fully.

Make of that, what you may.