Half Asleep

[Morgan LaLuna]

Amber eyes opened in that flutter of just waking up, blinking as his head lifted. Had he had a nightmare? The room around him was still dark, and all was quiet. A hand lifted from beneath covers to rub at his face as he lifted his head, and there was the softest rustle of fabric as he lifted to settle on his elbow. What was the dream? He couldn’t quite remember… He only knew there was a sense of unease that was slowly dissipating in his gut. A look around showed nothing amiss in the simple bedroom of the little cottage tucked away nowhere in particular, and he let himself fall back into the pillow heavily, reaching for his phone on the bedside table. He squinted against the sudden blinding backlight, and read the time on the screen. Barely three in the morning. The phone was set back in its place, and he squirmed back under the covers, letting his eyes drift to nearly shut.

Perhaps there was a benefit to waking up in the dead of the night. He reached forward carefully to brush silvery strands from the face of the elven man sleeping there, tucking the hair behind one pointed ear with the vaguest smile. He wriggled closer until he could rest his forehead against another, and captured two hands with his own to rest between them at an equal distance. It was hard to think of nightmares anymore. They simply ceased to exist in this moment. His thumb grazed the back of a pale hand, and he shifted just so, lifting fingers to his lips, pressing them against knuckles for a moment before he resumed the previous position.

His legs pulled up closer to his own body, and let his eyes drift closed once more. He was not quite asleep, but lay quietly listening to the even breathing of the other. There was a time when he would have gotten out of the bed and wandered, distracted himself with music and videos from all corners of the internet. For now, he was content to let the soft wintry night sounds be the soundtrack to falling back asleep. His mind wandered on the edge of consciousness, swimming in color and flashes of moments like some strange, disjointed home video from long ago. Or from a time not yet passed. A time that may never come to be. Somehow, all three, grainy and muffled to near silence. A flutter of white fabric in the breeze of a spring or summer day. The sparkle of water in the distance, yet not so terribly far that the impression of a coolness in the air couldn’t be felt like a memory. Laughter from mouths he could not see, light and joyful.

Gems refracted light like rainbows across the small white flower garlands and dusty Spanish mosses that swayed in gentle breezes like pennants celebrating a great union. A large hand settled on a shoulder, and words he could not hear or understand in the muffled tone of dreamscapes were said in a tone that felt encouraging. A smile beamed on the otherwise blurred face, and he thought, for a moment, that he could recognize the man before he was gone. He was replaced with embracing arms, warm and soft with the faint thump of a heartbeat. A feeling of a great honor permeated the air, and a well-manicured hand ran fingers through dark hair before taking a trembling hand, squeezing it, and moving with the grace and elegance of a cat. Words were spoken so solemnly. Tears were shed, but not the mournful cries of loss. An air of jubilant celebration permeated and colored the moment two hands were joined by a thin red thread, a filament that was brighter than the vision itself. Fate, and the Fated, tied together after so many years. A last flash of movement; a kiss that was so fleeting, broken by smiles brought on by cheers and applause. A fitting end to a ceremony of great importance for two souls that had danced around each other for so long.

As the acrobat drifted into those final few steps into the depths of true sleep, his head tilted up, lips pressed against the warm forehead of the Moon Elf, lingering as consciousness drifted away as neatly as the half-waking dream that flickered through a mind open enough to receive them from another life lived by another version.