I dread the dawn.

I awake and keep my eyes closed. I hope that I can shut the day out and fall back to sleep but memory and fear rush in and I open my eyes to see the empty floor of dirt and straw. I hear only stillness echoing off the cracking walls. I lay a while before I grab my staff and push myself up onto my good foot.

The road is quiet, but the eager buzz of another day begins to vibrate through the people like something between opportunity and the unknown. I sense it around me, but feel nothing. The sun is striking the temple in the distance, gleaming pure and white. The Hope of Mankind, they once called it. Miserable old thing.

I pass through the city gates and see the markings on them, carefully carved and painted. An old man is on his ladder repainting the fading lines so we never forget. There are pictures of enormous beasts, heroic men and women, and of course the Empress herself.

The city is the same as it ever was and probably ever will be. My mother took me here as a child. We traveled three days from our home where everything was green. The way to the city was dry and hot and I didn’t like it but she said we had to go. She gave me an apple at the end of each long walk and they were sweet and made me happy. Night was cold, but she always held me close and sang me to sleep. I wish I could remember the words to that song. On the third dawn the sun hit the temple in the distance and made a brilliant light in a sea of gray. I thought maybe our lives would change.

I sit down beside the street, lowering myself down with my staff. I like this spot because in the morning you can smell the baker’s work and in the evening you see the hunters bring back their catch. I smell the warmness of fresh bread and my gut turns, but still I lay out a shawl in front of me, say the words that others call a prayer and then wait.

The crowds rush past and I let them flow over me. Most don’t look but a few toss clay coins at the shawl, rushing off before I can thank them. A hunter drops a scrap of bread on his way out to the plateau. Still warm and so soft inside.

I wait. I used to hope.

The day blurs into memories and wanderings of my mind as I see the people around me, but I am separate.

I think back to when there was no wall of shame to divide us and I was one of them. The sun takes its course across the sky and the hunters return with their catch but it was not a good day and their eyes stay on their feet.

I have enough to buy a few scraps of tough meat from yesterday’s hunt. The man cuts through the dense steak and hands it to me and even tries to smile but his eyes are full of pity and he knows that.

I look out and see the sun setting over the river and I wish he was here to share this with me. I turn back to my smoldering fire and poke at it. I never was very good at making a fire but eventually I get lucky and it catches and breaks the cool night air and helps me relax. I set my dinner above it and lay down and it feels so wonderful to be in stillness with no one to avoid looking at me or stepping on me. No one to pass by me and feel guilty that they don’t care. I can just lay here.

After I eat, I go inside and set my staff beside me. The floor is still empty.

I close my eyes and let the darkness take me.

I see his face, all at once joy and sadness and I see the day I met him and that day I lost him and I see the days of my hunt and I see that wretched denizen and I see the hunger and I see all the pain. I always see these things.

Then a light. Not the light of dreams, ever wrapped in a muted darkness, but a light of intense brilliance. This light is brighter than the sun and purer than the moon and like a gleaming white eye looking back at me, seeing me and seeing all that I am and all I’ve been and all of my secrets. This is no memory or hope for tomorrow. This is. It looks at me and I see it too. It is no man nor woman nor angel nor devil. They are the hope of death and they are beauty and wonder and terror. She is my end. I try to speak, but nothing can break the peace so we just look and I am wrapped in her beauty. She is more real than my life. She exists with such profound presence. I want her to take me with her, but somehow I know she won’t.

The vision fades and I am left in darkness.

Only silence around me and the gray chill before dawn. I go outside to sit. Perhaps the air will clear my head.

I had never experienced anything so real. I look out to a pale twilight. I feel outside myself. A stranger looking through my eyes. Time passes and I barely notice. The morning breeze dries the sweat from my skin.

I walk to the city, but after I enter I go a different way.

I know these streets, but they always change. The stones are old but the faces are new. I walk past a small alley and there is nothing remarkable or different or special about it but still I look. Whether fate or God that led me to it, I do not know. It is not any memory or knowledge that makes me notice it. But rather a feeling like an animal’s instinct to find its kin. I go down its muted corridor, removed from the morning’s stirring and soon I see a small courtyard where several men and women sit in silence with tired faces staring aimlessly at the ground. A woman pushes aside a heavy cloth covering a door and emerges. A small trail of smoke seems to follow her out. Her face is old and kind. Her hair is silver and stretched back over her head. She looks at me and wishes me a good morning.

She is different but I cannot say why. She motions to me and we take the small stairs on the side of the building up to the roof and have a seat. There are gaps in the city that give us a fine view of the sun rise. She pours tea for us both and the steam rises out of the smooth clay cups.

“What did you dream?”

“The day I met my husband.”

She smiles and nods. “Yes, I’m sure. But that’s not what I mean.”

“I do not know what I dreamed.”

Then she tells me of the dreamers, who have always been more attuned to the river that contained all thoughts, hopes, memories, and sins. It contains our past, present, future, and everything else. Time disappears and we are left only with reality. Every night we dream, but rarely do we loosen our grip on reality enough to experience true dreams.

“It was real?”

“As real as the tea in your hands. Whether a memory or reality, hope or sin, it was true and good.” She pauses to smile. “This is my house of dreams and you are welcome here.”

We drink the tea and watch the sun rise. I watch the shifting tones from yellow to the clear light of day. It is a new day and a beautiful day and for the first time since I watched my precious girl die, I feel alive.