blue bird

4 - Dreams

"So, grandma, do you have any more stories to tell us?" Manu asked. She looked at us with a daring sparkle in her eye and grinned while fixing her posture in order to get comfortable.

My grandma gets these recurring dreams every so often about these hidden alternate worlds. She has been telling us these stories about her dreams since we were children and it is something we all look forward to.

The setting of these dreams are quite inconsistent and random. However she does get one setting more often than others, she describes it closely to the middle ages but with advancements in medicine, fashion, and magic. She has been to the past, present and future and all over the globe. Her dreams can range from thriller to mystery to fantasy to romance and ridiculously detailed. I'm not sure if these are just illusions that she imagines because she does have an extremely creative mind but one thing is for sure...it's very entertaining. And of course with the amount of medication she is on, and the aging process, her mind struggles to differentiate her fantasies from her reality.

The weird part about her dreams is that even though she claims them to be random, they often correlate to aspects of her life. For example, she had a dream about my mom being pregnant with me a few weeks before my mom even found out and when she was diagnosed with cancer, she had a dream about her being in a dystopian world that was being wiped due to this virus. I know that dreams can stem from the subconscious and can be connected to psychology but sometimes there just isn't an explanation for them. Another weird thing that she has mentioned is the ability to control what she does within the dreams, it's as if she stumbled upon Jumanji and plays as a character within a fictional world. It requires a lot of brain power, energy and intuition. One time my grandma voyaged the galaxy, watched greedy people take land from the people that the land belonged to, another time she watched the world crumble under the power of technology, and she's even seen two people from separate sides of war fall in love with each other. She has made friends along the way but they don't always survive but then again....they don't exist.

My grandma sometimes forgets her dreams or certain parts from them so she likes to write down what she hears, sees, smells, and touches in her journal so she can remember them and any important details. She's very protective of this journal, so we never get to look inside it or even touch it; her friend whom she was very close to gave it to her a long time ago. I'm surprised she still has pages to write in since she uses it often.

It's yellow like the sun at dawn because yellow is her favourite colour and there are two blue birds on the front of the journal that she drew on to it. My grandma doesn't have any family here, I've never met them or seen pictures of them, and neither has my dad as he is her son. Apparently she has been getting these dreams ever since she was a kid, but she doesn't tell us much about her childhood.

She began telling the story that she supposedly dreamt of a couple days ago and in this one, she was around my age. She was an assassin, hired by the king to kill his enemies from other kingdoms. She was very skilled at doing so and never got caught. She told us about the obstacles she had to overcome, how she killed her victims, how powerful she was and how she hated every single second of it. Sure, she liked the power of being favoured by the king but she did not willingly want to kill anyone. However she had no choice as the king threatened to kill her family. She also mentioned the challenges she had with controlling herself, she said she felt schizophrenic and at times felt almost like she was watching herself in third person.

"Hold on, you killed his enemies and they didn't fight back?" Francis blurted.

"Of course they fought back but they weren't very good at doing so." My grandma explained with innocence.

"I mean no offence but you're a woman?" I rolled my eyes at Francis and everyone mentally face palmed their foreheads.

"Good observation Francis." Manu said sarcastically.

"You're also 65." He added.

"In this dream, I was much younger than I am now." She replied.

"But-"

"Give it a rest Francis." Tane sighed while facepalming.

"I'm just trying to be realistic here."

"It's fictional, the whole thing is non realistic you numb nut."

Dear God, here we go again. I love my cousin but he sometimes believes that men are the superior sex mainly because he is one himself. One time we were all biking and noticed two girls fishing but they were having some trouble since they got their hooks stuck, which is normal; getting a hook stuck in some weeds or wedged between rocks happens to almost every fisher. However Francis yelled at her "hey, are you stuck? That's why girls don't fish, go make out with your boyfriend and leave the fishing for the boys!"

The rest of us had to pretend like we didn't know him and just gave him dirty looks. I always find it ironic because he's the oldest out of the six of us and yet acts the youngest. In fact, he's an adult; eighteen years old...not even my thirteen year old brother would say something of that stupidity but some kids never learn right from wrong.

"I bet I could kick your ass right now." Tammy challenged him.

Francis replied "oh please, I'm not gonna fight you, you're a girl." Tammy raised her eyebrow and leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees.

"Y'know I'm still not back on the hockey team."

"Okay...how is that relevant to what we're talking about."

"They didn't suspend me for two weeks for nothing. I gave a few girls busted lips and broken noses during the game. If I could take three of 'em, I can take you, no doubt." She said, confidently.

"So you wrestled with a few girls? I bet you would've liked a little more of that." Francis said with a wink and a grin.

"That's it!" Tammy stood up quickly with pure anger in her eyes but before she could charge at Francis, Tane held her back while she struggled against his grip.

"Tane! Let me go! Or I swear I will break your arm!" She said through gritted teeth. Tane whispered something to her and she had a moment of realization, she looked over at our grandma and relaxed.

My grandma smiled at her and winked, "don't worry about me sweetheart, if you two wanna fight it out, by all means go for it." She said.

Tammy looked back at a smug Francis and scoffed. She pushed Tane off of her and walked out of the room. Everyone followed her except Keiva and I as we helped our grandma get out of bed and got her, her cane.

"I hope things don't get out of control since I'm in charge of you guys." she said with a laugh.