A Dream of Hope

III

The daunted forest looked like a place from my worst nightmares. The trees were so close one to another, you could see the light's effort, trying to squeeze through the leaves and reach the ground. Their trial was noteworthy, yet their success was minimal. The ray of Hope had disappeared, and it now remained but a faint memory, futile for any of my momentary actions. That brick path continued into the forest, and still went on and on, but its colors were shifting the more I walked. At first it retained that yellowish taint covered by mud, fresh mud. But then it became pure black, just like the forest. It was just like walking in pure darkness. And finally, it started getting colorful. That shift from pitch black to a bit of light and a reddish path seemed farfetched, but my eyes couldn't lie to my brain. But the path disappeared, and took with it the red color it had, I had finally reached what seemed like the center of the forest.

Things started changing. A forest is usually the perfect archetype for a dangerous haunted place, but it didn't look as gloomy as it had during my long and perilous journey through the rest of this unbelievable mess. This area, around the center of the forest, or what I thought was the center, looked like a true joy, hope gleaming everywhere, like the utopia of my dreams.

The grass was just as heddle as an icy lake, and as smooth as silk, or perhaps as the skin of a newborn. The trees circled me round and round again, as if I was surrounded by friends at every corner. But they looked gayer than any of the dull people I knew back home. They looked gayer than the happiness of a first love, their light brown wood seeming to give the desire of leaking their sap, ready for harvest. One of these trees even had a heart engraved into it, with two letters in the middle. These woods weren't strangers to human presence. They were the meeting place of two people carrying this idea of perfect love, and the fact that it can still exist, even in most unpleasant circumstances.

This magnificent beauty made me forget everything I had lived in my previous life. But beauty is subjective. We all have our own definition of this abstract concept. It doesn't necessarily have to be about what we see, but can explain what we interpret, and what we think. We don't all deserve to meet our ideal incarnation of beauty, but we do deserve the chance to explain it to others. Their reactions may vary. They could see it in a totally opposite way, one that you might never think of, or one that seems to embody the contrary of this concept. You could also make an allegory out of this concept. The problem is, since beauty is subjective, you would have millions upon millions of interpretations. It's not like justice, where a blind woman holding a balance in her left hand is what we agree upon. However, this was what I considered as beautiful, and that's what my ideal, out many that exist on this planet, looks like. The same idea of beauty is not universal, just as the same idea of a perfect new world is not as well. But it was about time I started off a new one.

On the ground were beings no man alive had seen for centuries in these lands ravaged by war. Flowers, they were everywhere, hyacinths, dandelions, roses, narcissuses, and many more types nobody had even seen nor heard of, forming a five-pointed star. This is truly a miracle; seeing so many plants we thought extinct, breathing in the air they were producing, smelling their wonderful odors. We only knew these kinds of plantae thanks to our ancestors' stories, and our grandparents to whom they passed them down to. Here is proven that we can all change, renew ourselves, and come back better, stronger and more powerful than anyone could have ever imagined us to be. However, change still remains relative to who does it. In this case it was me.

Like any dream we desire materializing, maybe through our faith, or maybe through our wishes which we utter silently when we see a shooting star, this dream became a reality, my reality. The rainbow reappeared, and I thanked him from the bottom of my heart. There was no need for any leprechauns at the end of the light beam, Hope was enough. This Hope gave me a world I could finally enjoy, a new world, where everything worked as I commanded.

There is but one thing I did not mention in this magnificent creation, and that is the waterfall. Just in front of these flowers spurting from the ground, emanating pleasure and delightfulness, and of these trees breathing the purest air known to Man, and of this Human who accidentally discovered this place so magical, fantastic and marvelous – the difference between these words being the least important thing in my life at that point – stood a waterfall. Its water was just as blue as the sky's when the Gods are not unhappy, and so limpid that you could see your own reflection, a miracle of our days fatigued by war. Even more surprising was the fact that you could see underwater, if we dove in the small lake the waterfall created. Dripping water and time passing, I couldn't stay here forever, otherwise they will find me. But I was too distracted to quit this place entirely, and like any normal person, not being able to think properly, I chose not to do what might've granted me a few more moments of being able to breathe. I had no choice yet again.