He would always hear the breath she woke up with, the break in that steady whisper that would always send him off to sleep at night. She always slept with a hand on him, “For security reasons,” she had said, breathing on his neck, nestling into his shoulder and pulling the blanket over bared shoulders. She saw autumn leaves in her dreams. She told him one morning that she had dreamt that she was walking down a road embraced by the arms of hundreds of trees. It stretched for miles, never curving up, down, or sideways. There was a constant rain of colored leaves, like so many hands sifting them from the canopies. Fingers of the evening sun burst through holes in the blanket of leaves, creating starbursts in her vision. Someone held her hand for the whole walk.
Weeks later, once that dream had faded, she had another where she felt like she was falling. It wasn’t a straight down kind of fall that makes you wake up in a cold sweat, trying to capture balance, but a lilting, delicate drift. The world danced around her, refined and sparkling.
She would always wake up with a beautiful smile that formed with the intake of that first morning breath, her forest green eyes deeper than they would be for the rest of the day. She’d kiss him, and run her hand across his shoulders. Good morning. I love you. She was happiest in a waking reverie.
He would soak it all in; her stories, her smile, the peace that she radiated on those perfect days (how could there be so many?) where the sun shone through the eastern window where the crystals hung. When she had put those up there one night before bed, saying it would fit the feeling waking up on a sunny day. On such days she was right; the room was a carnival of dawn. Little specks of color crept across the room, jumping chairs, shelves, and instruments. She always woke to a vibrant world, even when leaving such dreams.
But autumn leaves and the song of her mornings lay next to a man of nightmares, and it seemed almost necessary. He didn’t bolt up in his sleep anymore, frantically searching the room in a cold sweat. He didn’t talk to himself in his sleep like his family had said he’d done when he was younger. His moments of beauty lay in the daytime, within consciousness. Dreams in the night were occasions for pain. He dreamed of tortures and violence that he’d never seen before, that had somehow made their way out of the ether and into his head. Nothing was in a haze; everything was over-focused, in high contrast, and malformed. He’d always smile to himself when he heard others talk about nightmares, like a war veteran that had survived a lost siege listening to an epic recounting of a squirt gun fight. There would be no comparison of stories; past nightmares are meant to be things to laugh about. Waking was a splash of cold water when he had a dream.
In a quiet, waking coo, she’d ask,
“What are you thinking about?” and he’d laugh. It was a practiced laugh, and a painful lie.
“Rain. A storm.”
“Sounds scary.”
“Not really.” It had taken him some time to defeat the hesitance that follows answers about what he was thinking. Whatever might have been on his mind is never something she, or anyone, would want to hear. He was eliminating blades and bullets, blood, bones, and teeth. Rain, he figured, would wash it all away, even as a lie. It all had come from nowhere in particular, so it seemed fitting he could only return it.
“Tell me more about it.” She’d say, blinking off sleep. She would turn to him and lay on his chest with a leg draped over one of his. He’d wrap his arm around her, feeling her chest and stomach press to his side. He’d always notice the coarse weave of pant legs and the way her breasts pushed together under the tank top. Naked, he only felt warmth and the smoothness of skin. She would complain how cold his feet or hands were. They were always cold.
“I was just standing in the rain and watching the lightning. There was no thunder, though. I think all my dreams don’t have much sound.” That little bit wasn’t a lie, at least. The guns never cracked through the silence and commotion. There was never a shredding sound when a knife cut through flesh. Screams were distant and muted. If there happened to be rain and thunder, there was no peaceful patter and report to find solace in. Only images, color, and motion. Actually, that was only the matter most of the time. There was occasionally a dream where his voice could be heard. It’s surprising how empty your voice sounds all alone.
“I don’t either . . . although sometimes I think that there’s music off in the distance somewhere. No singing, just instruments.” She said.
He had considered countless times what a dream of hers might be like. It seemed like it came out a little when she played around on the guitar or the piano on lazy Sunday mornings, but those were only a taste. Those were the days that he considered happy dreams. He technically wasn’t entirely awake yet, or even out of bed, and she would grab the guitar from its stand, or move over to the piano (the sheet always placed in the proper spots if necessary). She’d play light, tinkling tunes that the motes of sun and flecks of spectrum would dance to. Anything that had been in his mind was completely wiped away. Even that small bit of her dreams made the world more radiant for him.
The nightmares had been thinning as of late, occasionally replaced by fantastic dreams of large imaginary cities, people, animals, and machines; something more like what he would paint or write about. Thinking about this one morning while she still slept, he came to the conclusion that she had some contribution to the change, but she had done the most work unintentionally, and he couldn’t love her more. He would always question what he did for her in the moments before she woke up. She had told him once that he made everything more interesting, more detailed, that he imagined up a whole reality that is a level beyond our own.
“With you, the world moves more randomly than before. Things happen, and people act differently. I dunno what it is, but you make life like walking in a strange dream.” When she said it, despite mulling over it in the back of his head for the day, he couldn’t have thought of anything else he would have rather heard. It had recently been his feeling that he was some kind of unintentional, but masterful, liar. The only honesty in his life was the moments he had to himself, with no one around. It wasn’t true though, he knew of times around her where he felt totally uninhibited, when his character in its entirety was able to shine through, and he felt like, yes, maybe despite the darkness, he was a good person. He might even approach the man she saw him as.
These days he wakes up with a little more wonder than before, always going straight for the hiding spot he had chosen a few weeks ago after she rolled out of bed and made her way to work. Before he’d write a word or paint a single line, he’d check the little golden band sitting on top of his bookshelf, making sure that the gems embedded in it sparkled just as much as the day before, and that it always fit comfortably on his pinky (which happened to be the exact size of her ring finger). During a daydream on a fall day, when he had say down his pen to crack his fingers, he had imagined himself walking down a familiar road. Shadowy figures flitted through the canopies of the lush trees, their silhouettes playing in the moonlight. There was the whispering of rain drawing away in the distance, only feathery clouds to mask what he could catch of the moon. Lamplight came from beyond the boughs of trees, lighting little camps in the distance where people moved to and fro, about their own business. It was all curious and new (and yet ancient and mysterious), the trees twisting in some gnarled way that they had lost to human handling, and the path worn like it was a highway for gypsies. Someone held his hand, humming a lilting tune that seemed far away and right next to him all at once.
He asked her to marry him that afternoon.