Dreamwalk
This story came to me through life, its ingredients, experiences, and events. But it does not belong to me alone. Perhaps right now it belongs to you too. And surely to many others out there.
Take care of yourself and your ♥
Hugs, Christine
There is a place that is not a place.
It has no name on any map. It can be seen by neither airplanes nor 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. No, it 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 no longer said anything. She adjusted the pillow, placed her hand briefly on his forehead, and left.
It was raining outside the window.
She sat in the chair beside him. The same chair she had sat in for three weeks. She no longer felt whether it was hard or soft. She felt nothing, really—only a vast, still emptiness that had settled over everything like snow.
She held his hand.
He might have noticed it.
That night she fell asleep without deciding to.
And he? He took one step further than he ever had before.
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 that resembled a meadow. The grass beneath her feet was real, she could feel it, but the colors were different in a way she could neither put into words 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 laid down something heavy without her seeing it happen.
– You look tired, he said.
She laughed. It came out as a small, unexpected sound. The first real laugh in weeks.
– You are the one lying there dying, she said.
– Yes, he said. It is strange how little it hurts from here.
Anisã appeared without them hearing her approach.
She was simply there, as if she had always stood slightly out of sight and had now stepped forward.
Neither young nor old. Neither close nor far away. She had a face that was difficult to remember in detail but easy to recognize, like a face you had seen in a dream long ago and carried with you without knowing it.
She smiled at them both.
A smile that said neither it will be alright nor do not be sad. Just a smile that said I see you.
– Would you like to walk a little? 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 down into the earth, and yes, that also seemed perfectly right. Stars that shone from within, steady, without flickering.
– Where are we? she asked.
– In between, Anisã said.
– In between what?
– Everything, Anisã simply said.
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 am going?
Anisã stopped. She turned toward 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 should stop sitting in that chair, he finally said.
– I know, she said.
– Live, he said. That is all I ask of you. Live properly.
– That is too much to ask, she replied.
– Yes, he said. And yet.
She opened her mouth. Closed it again. There was so much she had saved up; sentences waiting in a box she had never dared to open. Now that she could finally say it all, she felt that most of it had unraveled on the way here.
Only the most important things remained.
– I am afraid of forgetting how you sound, she said.
– You never will, he said. Never really.
– How do you know?
He looked at Anisã. Anisã nodded almost imperceptibly.
– I know, he simply 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 which 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, at this moment. And then it did not surprise her at all.
When the time came, they both knew it, without anyone saying it.
Anisã stood close again.
– Does he have to? she asked.
– He is neither going away nor disappearing, Anisã said quietly. He is moving on. It is a completely different thing.
– What is the difference?
– Away is nowhere, Anisä said. Further is somewhere you have not yet seen or forgotten.
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 final 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 had never known 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.
Without effort. Without pain. Like someone waking from a good sleep and knowing exactly where they are.
His gaze found hers immediately. No searching. No uncertainty. Just – there you are.
They smiled at each other.
A smile that carried neither sorrow nor courage.
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.
As if stepping from one room to another and realizing that the door had always been open.
Anisã was waiting on the other side.
She stood at the foot of a staircase he had never been able to describe to anyone, for it was too simple for words. White like the light just before the sun rises; the soft, promising light that warms without dazzling. Marble-like. Warm beneath the feet. As if the stone were breathing.
He looked down at his hands.
They were no longer shaking.
– Welcome, Anisã said.
– I thought I would be braver, he said.
– I know, she said. Most people think that.
– Why are we afraid anyway?
– Fear belongs to what you have just left, Anisã said. It simply does not fit with what you have just stepped into.
They walked up the stairs together.
Every step felt light—the body was finally allowed to do what it had always wanted. Move without resistance. Breathe without effort. Exist without cost.
At the top, a great 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 could never quite reach. The light came from nowhere in particular. It was simply even, still, alive.
And love.
It could neither be touched nor seen directly. But it filled the room in the same way that music fills a room, like 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 for nothing in return. The kind that never hurts when it disappears, for it never disappears. 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, lay down and rest.
– What is this place? he asked.
– It has many names, Anisä said. All of them are a little right. None is completely 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 believed 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 did not 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 hurt 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 toward him. That smile again.
– You will be amazed, she said, at how close one can be to someone who is far away.
He walked toward the hall.
The familiar faces turned toward him. A woman whose laughter he had never forgotten. A man who had taught him something important without knowing it. Hands that reached out to him with the kind of patient joy that has all the time in the world and knows it.
He turned around one last time toward Anisã.
– Thank you, he said.
– I am the one who thanks you, she said. I am always the one who thanks you.
He understood neither what she meant nor why it felt so right.
He smiled at her.
And then he went in.
© by HerMine’s
