Endless Dream

The Beginning

Iris was born from the dreams of a dying wealthy man, an image conjured from the memories of his long-lost love. The woman had died tragically and young, never marrying her lover - perhaps that was why he called to her and cried out for her in his last dreams.

They remembered their days as sand, rolling along the endless hills and fields of The Dreaming. They had felt nothing but the breeze that blew them across dream after dream, travelling through realm after realm until they heard the cries of Lord Edwin. He was so weak that his voice was barely a whisper on the winds.

Pity was the first feeling they knew, looking at the man's gnarled and broken hands, years of accounting and heavy arsenic ink decaying the brittle bones of his fingers. He reached out in his dreams, begging for a woman whose name he couldn't quite say anymore. The sand followed his cries of anguish, wanted to ease his mind and let him pass from the mortal world without the ache that weighed heavily on him. As it grew closer to him, grain found grain and formed the image of the once beautiful woman.

The sand shifted and changed, forming slender limb aside limb, each detail projected from a fragment of Lord Edwin's memory. The woman's sweet smile, her long flowing hair, the small moles that sat above her eye and cheek, each feature moulded from the sand. The sand even threaded its own copy of her blue dress - the last dress he had gifted her, the one she had been buried with, and a white lily that he had placed between her hands. The edges of the dress were finished with lace and white trim that grazed its newly formed skin.

The final being had no name, no real identity, just a foreign and desperate need to reach the dying man. Lord Edwin's mind was too far gone to see the slight imperfections in its image, and he couldn't tell that the sand's hairline was too far to the side, its fingers were just a little too long, or the fact that it had no mouth. He still welcomed the sight of it, unaware of the world outside the dream.

Unlike many dreamers, he always went to the same place, a pale marble pavilion in the centre of a lush green field. It was encircled with the brightest and deepest hues of purple; iris', clematis', sweet rocket, salvias and globe thistle. The sand did not know that there were this many flowers in all the realms. It was mesmerised by the silky petals and violet haze. The pavilion even had long vines that climbed and wrapped around its strong archways. Huge wisteria flowers hung in the arches and coloured the sunlight with purple, violet and the deepest blue hues. Lord Edwin always sat on a reclined chair in the centre of the pavilion, and his body was too weak even to imagine itself moving or walking again. Instead, he just sat beside the image of his love, basking in the warm sunlight. Every so often, he would murmur or make a sound of delight as a bird rested on the vines; he would grin widely even though half his face was slumped downwards. The sand treasured the look in his eyes, the unbridled joy he felt in his dream.

The pavilion was where he had met his love, where he had asked her to run away with him and the last place he had visited before his sickness took hold.

Death lurked close to him at all times, the scent of her drifting through the woven threads of his dream. The sand stayed with him, dried his eyes with its soft hands and sheltered him as his body failed him. He had a sickness that smelt like poison and forced him to suffer terrible seizures that shook the foundations of the dream.

The sand visited him only nine times, and with each dream, more and more of the sand's form chipped away. The man couldn't keep the memories of his loved one together, slipping from his fingers like sand in a time turner. Even the idyllic pavilion decayed and yellowed with each visit, and the once beautiful flowers wilted and died, leaving trails of ash and brown dust. The lush green of the field had become a thick, dense straw that crumpled under its weight.

The sand watched Lord Edwin pass, his sad eyes growing empty and dark as he breathed his last. The sand stayed even when his body faded from its world. The sand stayed even as the pavilion crumbled. It persisted even when it forgot who Lord Edwin was, only remembering the feeling of peace and warmth.

The sand struggled to keep its features after time. Its body became twisted and elongated. The pretty blue dress tore and ripped at the seams. As the dress frayed and thread fell from its seam, the line returned to sand and floated away on the winds. It knew it could not remain, it would return to the sand it was born from, but something kept it here. Was it the Lord Edwin's spirit? A small piece of his consciousness that survived in the dream? Whatever force sheltered the sand and held the last archway of the pavilion above the sand's malformed head, sheltering it as it had once sheltered a dying man.