I recall a big, yellow, American-style school bus,
in the middle of the desert.
I just arrived.
There are extraordinarily beautiful, tall, elegant people about, maybe fifteen total, leisurely milling. They have nothing pressing to which they attend.
I am alone and new, per se.
I am acutely aware of this.
I feel disapproval.
I receive an unfriendly welcome; this I derive from the expressions of the others as they take notice of me, for the first time.
A stunning, pale-skinned blonde approaches, motions to the school bus, and, with perfectly calculated ‘disinterest’ says:
They can teach you the ways of death.
As though this was that which I sought.
Of course, you’d need to talk to Kimberly first.: she says.
I say: Kimberly is actually my cousin. She is already dead.
I intuit this disarms her through surprise.
My immediate understanding and audacity to speak it to her face.
And, (no shit) I think: Nice try, you silly bitch. I wilt not fall for your maleficent insinuation. I am just barely pretty and charming enough, in a strangely colloquial way, to have made it to this place of your people. I know your resentment of my prescence leads you to seek my removal, but I am in no rush to die. I certainly will not seek my death at your subliminal request. You feel threatened by my uncultured, odd intelligence. There is no reason for this. I do not want to mess with the circles within which you run. I am no threat. If you were slightly less self-involved, you would perceive this and make me your ally.
I’m the proud-beauty of your worst night-mares.
I say to her mind, in mine silent stillness: Æ ain’t leaving on that short, yellow bus. You may try to trick this fool into it; but,
Æ see through this mirage you call an oasis.
She walks away.
I pull out my stakes, canvas tarp, and tenterhooks.
Pitching camp before the freezing night comes.
I come from the water: a voice of my head suddenly says.
(I briefly become lucid in the dream, before losing the thread.)
I recall: there are four, fundamental groups: Water, Earth, Sand, and, blood.
Æ am a blood, but no-one can tell, unless Æ tell them.
I had reached the Sand after arising from distant Water.
We all came from Earth, but I had not been there or seen them in ages.
And, as Æ am thinking these things, I feel an intensifying heat rising in both hands.
Fingers and palms burning in sensation, not flames.
I think: I have the power to raise intense heat from my hands. I can emit it into the world around me, perhaps as a weapon. I feel over-confident.
I examine the feeling more closely.
I discover that Æ am not radiating the heat from within myself.
Heat is being emitted from an invisible sphere outside myself.
The orb is somehowl held in place between my palms, as if strung upon a string.
Like a diabolo.
I reach this revelation after experimenting. Moving my hands closer together/farther apart. Noting small changes in nerve sensitivity.
What I first thought was coming from my Within to the Outwards is actually being generated from the Outward and perceived and wielded by mine Within.
WrittenCasey 