Dreamwalk
This short story came to me — through life, its ingredients, experiences, and encounters. However, it doesn't belong solely to me. Perhaps, right now, it also belongs to you. Certainly to many others out there.
Take care of yourself and yours ♥
Hugs, Christine
There is a place that is not a place.
It has no name on any map. It cannot be seen from airplanes or satellites. It cannot be found with coordinates or a compass.
But everyone knows the way there.
He had been lying there for three weeks now.
Deeper than sleep — this was something else. As if his body had finally decided to let him go, one breath at a time. The nurse who came in the morning said nothing anymore. She adjusted his pillow, briefly placed her hand on his forehead, and left.
Outside the window, it was raining.
She sat in the chair beside him. The same chair for three weeks. She no longer felt whether it was hard or soft. She felt nothing, really — just a large, still emptiness that had settled over everything as if it were snow.
She held his hand.
Perhaps he noticed.
That night, she fell asleep without intending to.
And he — he went a step further than he usually did.
It was neither dark nor light there.
Something in between — like dawn but without direction, as if the light came from within everything.
She stood in a meadow. Or something resembling a meadow. The grass beneath her feet was real — she felt it — but the colors were different in a way she couldn't articulate, nor did she want to.
He stood a few meters away.
They saw each other at the same time.
Neither of them asked how. Neither of them asked why. It felt like the kind of dream where you simply know, without needing to explain it to yourself.
He looked lighter. As if he had shed something heavy without her seeing when it happened.
— You look tired, he said.
She laughed. It came out as a small, unexpected sound — the first real laugh in weeks.
— You're the one dying, she said.
— Yes, he said. It's strange how little it hurts from here.
Anisã arrived without them having heard her approach.
She was simply there — as if she had always stood slightly out of their peripheral vision and had now stepped forward.
Neither old nor young. Neither near nor far. She had a face that was hard to remember in detail but easy to recognize — like a face one had seen in a dream long ago and carried with them without knowing it.
She smiled at both of them.
A smile that neither said it will be alright nor don't be sad. Just a smile that said I see you.
— Would you like to walk a bit? she asked.
It was an invitation that already knew its answer.
They walked.
Anisã showed them things without explaining them.
A river that flowed in two directions at once — and it seemed perfectly reasonable. A tree whose roots hung in the air and whose branches went into the earth — and it seemed perfectly right. Stars that glowed from within, steadily, without flickering.
— Where are we? she asked.
— In between, said Anisã.
— In between what?
— Everything, Anisã said simply.
As if it were the most obvious answer in the world. And perhaps it was.
He walked beside them and said nothing for a long time. Then:
— Is it lonely? Where I'm going?
Anisã stopped. Turned to him with that smile.
— Nothing is lonely there, she said.
They sat by something that resembled water but sounded like music.
He looked at her for a long time.
— You need to stop sitting in that chair, he said finally.
— I know, she said.
— Live, he said. That's all I ask of you. Live properly.
— That's too much to ask, she replied.
— Yes, he said. And yet.
She opened her mouth. Closed it again. There was so much she had held onto — sentences waiting in a box she had never dared to open. Now that she could finally say everything, she felt that most of it had dissolved on the way here.
Only the most important remained.
— I'm afraid I'll forget what you sound like, she said.
— You never will, he said. Never truly.
— How do you know?
He looked at Anisã. Anisã nodded almost imperceptibly.
— I just know, he said.
They sat there for a time that lacked length.
Anisã left them alone — by becoming a little more still, a little more background, a little more of the soft light around them.
They talked about things they had never talked about. Old memories that turned out to be more important than they had thought. Things that had felt like mistakes and from here looked like something else. Turning points. Gifts in disguise.
They laughed more than she had expected.
It surprised her — that one could laugh here, in this place, in this moment. And then it didn't surprise her at all.
When it was time, they both knew it, without anyone saying so.
Anisã stood close again.
— Does he have to? she asked. It sounded childish. She knew it.
— He is neither going away nor disappearing, Anisã said quietly. He is moving on. That's an entirely different thing.
— What's the difference?
— Away is nowhere, said Anisã. Onward is somewhere you have not yet seen.
He took her hand one last time. Her dream hand. She felt it all the way down to her fingers.
— Live, he said again. That is enough.
She woke up in the chair.
His breathing was slower now. But it was still there — quiet, steady, like a last gift.
Something had changed in the room. Or in her. Only that the emptiness now carried a different weight. As if someone had opened a window in something she never knew had walls.
She took his hand again.
It was warm.
And then — as if he had been waiting just for that — he opened his eyes.
Effortlessly. Without pain. Like someone waking from a good sleep and knowing exactly where they are.
His gaze found hers directly. No searching. No uncertainty. Just — there you are.
They smiled at each other.
A smile that carried neither sorrow nor bravery.
The kind of smile that simply is — without context, without explanation.
He took a breath.
And then he took no more.
He barely noticed the transition.
Like stepping from one room to another — and realizing the door had always been open.
Anisã waited on the other side.
She stood at the foot of a staircase he could never have described to anyone — because it was too simple for words. White as the light just before the sun rises — that soft, promising light that warms without dazzling. Marble-like. Warm beneath his feet. As if the stone breathed.
He looked down at his hands.
They no longer trembled.
— Welcome, said Anisã.
— I thought I'd be more scared, he said.
— I know, she said. Most people think so.
— Why are they still scared?
— Fear belongs to what you just left, said Anisã. It simply doesn't fit with what you just stepped into.
They walked up the stairs together.
Each step felt light — his body could finally do what it had always wanted. Move without resistance. Breathe without effort. Exist without cost.
At the top, a large hall opened up.
He stopped.
Grandeur without threat. That was the only way to describe it. The ceilings were high — or perhaps there was no ceiling at all, just a continuation upwards that the eye never quite reached. The light came from nowhere specific. It simply was — even, still, alive.
And the love.
It could neither be touched nor seen directly. But it filled the room in the same way music fills a room — as a quality in the air itself, as if the walls, the floor, the light, the entire atmosphere were made of something that lacked a better name.
Love.
The kind that asks nothing in return. The kind that never hurts when it leaves — because it never leaves. It simply is, without conditions, without history, without end.
He felt something within him — something he had carried for so long that he had forgotten it was a burden — lie down and rest.
— What is this place? he asked.
— It has many names, said Anisã. All are somewhat right. None are entirely right.
— What do you call it?
— Home, she said.
He looked out over the hall.
People moved there — many familiar faces among them. Faces he had long thought were gone forever.
Something tightened within him — though it was no longer a throat or a heart, just a feeling that still knew what longing felt like.
— They are waiting for you, Anisã said quietly.
— For a long time?
— Time works differently here, she said. But if you ask them — they would say it felt like just now. And like an eternity ago. Both at once.
He understood it and didn't understand it. And both were equally true.
— And her? he asked. Will she come here?
— Everyone comes here. She still has things to do. Things that only she can do.
He nodded slowly. It ached a little — the kind of longing that is really a form of love in disguise.
— Can she feel me? he asked. From there?
Anisã turned to him. That smile again.
— You will be surprised, she said, at how close one can be to someone who is far away.
He walked towards the hall.
The familiar faces turned towards him. A woman whose laugh he had never forgotten. A man who had taught him something important without knowing it. Hands reaching out to him — with the kind of patient joy that has all the time in the world and knows it.
He turned one last time to Anisã.
— Thank you, he said.
— It is I who thank you, she said. It is always I who thank you.
He neither understood what she meant nor why it felt so right.
He smiled at her.
And then he walked in.
© by HerMine’s
