The dream itself occurred yesterday, but the fullness of it did not strike me until today. It started off with me standing in a cave somewhere in what we now call “France” but somewhen far before what we call “now”. I am watching small hands draw out an image on the wall. Even with the barely perceptible light from the dwindling and sputtering torch, I know what the image is.
I bear its resemblance on a copper medallion tied around my neck.
An unvoice tells a thing to my heart and my mind rejects it bitterly.
When the physical medallion was struck, the blow shattered the striking block making it the last one produced by that crafter. When my mind rejected what my heart was told, the figure on the cave wall lept from stone into space, bounded over to me, and struck the medallion as it rested over my heart. The blow broke the manifestation of my body in a way that echoed the shattering of the block and banished me from the cave.
The density of the holy place under my feet told me where I was long before I opened my eyes to confirm my blasphemy. I was ashamed of being here, even though I knew that physically I wasn’t. The dry air encouraged me to close my eyes and keep myself blinded.
“Wrong skin.”, I whispered. “And no blood.”
A snake wound around one ankle, prompting me to raise the other. A long stick came to one hand and I used it to balance myself as I propped the lifted foot against the still captured leg. With my mind’s eye, I saw that the person that stood upon the ancient place was not the person I thought I was.
And yet, I am.
An unvoice speaks to my heart about a thing and my mind rejects it as appropriation and theft.
The holy place cracks and I fall into the night-sky ocean of stars contained within it.
I am before a cave. I am invited to cross the invisible threshold and enter it. Around the mouth of the cave are a multitude of glyphs and images referencing infinite stories from infinite cultures. Though I recognize none of them, I can read them all. I know where I am.
The one I expected to be guarding this cave is not present. I have the sense they are already within it, waiting for me. But I have no formal invitation to proceed, and this place is a hallowed one.
I start to cross the threshold anyway when I hear a noise in the thick woods behind me.
I use the sound as an excuse not to lose myself to the cave. In instinct, I call the same stick that I held on the holy place and am surprised to find it in my hand. It became a spear as I turned around to face the indistinct woods. I may not have the right to enter the cave, but I will defend it with all of my being for as long as I can.
The noise recedes suddenly. It was not expecting to be challenged.
As I stand guard, [something] comes out of the cave behind me and wraps around my ankle. It climbs me quickly and settles into my right arm and my right eye. It consumes me from within with terrible speed.
Since I would not go to [it], [it] came out to me.
I know it for what it is, and I yield.
The woven grass roof was supported by expertly hewn beams. A round hole in the apex of the roof allowed the bright noon sun to invade the otherwise darkened interior. I stood in the vertical column of light. Blinded by the glare pouring over me and slowly wakening to my surroundings.
Naked but for one tattoo marking my otherwise unblemished skin, I struggled to recognize where I was or to remember who I am, this time.
I looked up at the sun. Despite the cloudless day, I found myself staring at it without discomfort. The sun itself appeared perfectly a part of this world even as I realized what was wrong with it.
The light it cast down was true. The sun itself was inverse. I am under the light of the Midnight Sun.
I stepped out of the shaft of light into the darkened temple room. At once I knew where I was in the world, and when I was. The interior of the temple room was covered with glyphs and scenes. As I read them, I realized they were referencing a mythos that this particular civilization could not possibly have known.
The mythos was completely my creation. Wrong era. Wrong continent. Wrong language. There is no reason why this place should have these scenes engraved in stone.
What is time to the infinite. What is space to the immaterial.
The light of the Midnight Sun continued to reveal the stones and the stories they held. The scenes shifted with my perception of them, moving as I moved, advancing as I advanced. I stopped reading the scenes as excerpts of a personal diary, and started looking at what they all had in common.
With a flash of understanding, I saw the common point between them all and what I have had in my sight for years if not decades but never understood until this moment.
The unvoice spoke to my heart. I accepted what was said and echoed the words with my voice.
“The Black Sun burns blood.”
The Midnight Sun suddenly ceased being in the underworld sky. To those with sight but without understanding, the land became darkened as if under a full solar eclipse.
But now I had the Black Sun with me. I saw and continued to see.
I stood in the space under the hole in the roof and raised my arms to the blackest of days. The Black Sun inflamed under my feet and I was no more.
I am lying on the ash-tinged dust by the fire without my lair. My right arm and right eye feel heavy and leaden. Mxtl knelt over me, rubbing salve onto my chest. I did not realize the spot she was tending is sore until she touched it.
“Why the hell are you so hard-headed? Did you forget [certain things] again? Of course, you did. You better pull your head out your ass before [all this shit] catches up with you.”
Without looking, I knew what she was tending and why. I knew what would follow from the experiences, but I did not know when. I still had other obligations to keep before I could add this one to the list.
She heard my thoughts as clearly as if I announced them. “Yea, you better jump on that shit. And soon. You’ve died three times, you know. Twice physically, and now [a certain other action]. You owe [them]. And they are setting you up for collection.”
I nodded. I wanted to ask Mxtl if she was still “just” a shard of my personality, or if she was the echo of a previous life. I thought too loudly and her resulting side-eye convinced me that silence was the most prudent action to take.
She sighed as she sat upright on her knees. With a deep severity, she said a thing. Her voice echoed with unvoice and my heart was struck by the weight of what she said.
My mind, still feeling to be unworthy of any of these attentions, much less all of them wrapped together, could not accept what was said and rejected the words with the usual dismissals.
“Wrong blood. Wrong tradition. Wrong skin. Wrong knowing. Wrong. It’s all wrong. Not me. I’m … wrong.”
Mxtl, snake-dancer and bone-cleaner, keeper of the obsidian blade and the bone rattle, “healer” aspect of my psyche, settled into a silence so dark, that the shadows fled as if this were the last warning of her defleshing wrath.
“I will say this only once. It is wrong to you because you have been taught it was wrong. You were taught it was wrong, because those that taught you did not want you to ever know yourself. They did not want you to know yourself because you are a force of and in yourself, and what greedy [men] can not steal, they will foul so no one else has use of it, including the bearer. You forget yourself, [a multitude of names spoken at once go here]. I have not forgotten. If I have to flay the lies off your soul to free you, I will.”
She raised her hand and a whip made of leather and lightning woven together came to her hand.
The first crack of thunder shattered my perception and I fell away.
I wake with a start. The Black Sun burns blood. For several hours, that is the only thing I remember. I looked up some references but found what I expected to find from Eurocentric anthropologist theories.
I held on to certain snatches of memory that comforted me and tried hard to ignore the rest.
The Black Sun continued to burn blood.
I thought about all the references I had been chasing and what language I had been chasing them in. The reference to the Black Sun was very specific about when and where. What if I were to look it up in the modern language of that era?
I found that segment of the dream reflected in someone else’s words.
It is not wrong. It is just different from what I had been taught to expect.
The flash of elation at finding the thing is wearing off, and the somber realization of [other things] are starting to set in.
I have no idea what’s coming.
Only that the Midnight Sun will continue to illumine the border between dreams and Dreaming, and that the Black Sun will continue to burn blood.
Okay.
Let’s go.