To Vivlio ton Oneiron

Darius was a poor young man in ancient Roman times, but a good and loyal Roman citizen. The only opportunity for a young poor man was to join the army. The pay and benefits were good enough to make a promising future and the possibility to fulfill one’s dream, who dared to dream. His family originally came from Greece hundreds of years before as philosophers and dreamers, thinking they would spread knowledge and enlightenment. What they found was prejudice, General Lucius Mummius and the total domination of the world and all they left behind in Greece. Darius could read and write and that was worth more than its weight in gold and also a way to possibly rise in the ranks as a Centurion. Darius was being talked about around the camp as the soldier with a pen in the right hand and a gladius in the left.

Being a Roman Legionnaire was not easy. Sometimes, marching 20 miles day and fighting through towns and cities was a basic soldier’s day. Setting up camps, digging ditches and patrolling half way through the night, but his new family was worth it, because at the end of his service, he would be given land and his family would be proud land owners. No more living by other’s leave. He wrote home faithfully to his wife Danae and their 3 sons and shared his day and his dreams. On such an occasion the biggest mole he ever saw burrowed through the ground opening up a hole and stuck his head up. The startled pair looked at each other until the mole grew bored and dipped his head back in the hole without a glance back. For the next several nights the mole would come and keep Darius company as he wrote and Darius would repay him with some worms he saved from digging ditches around the camp. On the third night the century got their marching orders and hoped that he would see his faithful companion one last time. It was past the time his friend usually appeared, so he went and looked into the hole and saw his friend had died, wanting to see him one last time also. Being the son of philosophers at heart, Darius decided to not allow his friend to be left to perish in such a way and decided on a way to keep him with him a little bit longer by creating a book and honored his friend to cover and protect all his and his descendants’ hopes and dreams within those pages for generations to come.

The book was made with love, every stitch, the choice of red dye for honor and courage and precious papyrus he used to write home with, was laid with care. A coin of Alexander the Great was glued to its inner cover. Alexander was a hero and kinsman of his and hoped this would bring good fortune to fulfill their destinies for all of his descendants who wrote their dreams down one day in this book. His delicacy in which he constructed the book and his fighting prowess were not lost on the command and within a few years he was promoted to Centurion. He fought hard and fair and never joined in the raids into the cities or gambled as other soldiers did. He was a man of honor and did not judge those who chose other ways to fulfill their past times, which made the men in his century loyal and obedient to his every command. Each year passed as if a month to him, he pushed himself very hard so he wouldn’t have the chance to remember that his sons were growing up without him and his wife lived a very lonely life, even though she had the boys, who were now the same age he was when he left them.

Now that there were no more enemies of Rome he had to conquer, he had to conquer the enemy of guilt of his own mind. Every step closer to home weighed heavy on Darius. What would his wife think of him or his sons? He knows his absence has been felt, but how deeply? And could the love he felt for them fill the gap enough to begin again? But, he need not have feared as soon as we walked through the door, it was as if he never left and now it was time for his dream to begin…

Darius and Danae were sitting at the table together as they have done for last 5 years, when their three sons came into the kitchen with the same faces he knew as well as his own. His boys were men and wanted to start their own lives. Thanos, the oldest spoke first about his dreams to serve in the army, the middle child Alexander wanted to go and study philosophy in Greece and Hermes the youngest wanted to get married and stay and farm the land with his parents. Darius and Danae knew this day would come, but there was nothing to prepare them for the separation of one’s children. The whole family wrote their dreams in the book and it was decided that Thanos being the oldest would take charge of the book. With his brothers settled in pursuit of their dreams Thanos joined the army, being welcomed as the son of the soldier with the pen in his right hand and the gladius in his left and was quickly sent to Britannia to help with a new rebellion by Rome’s new Emperor, Nero.

Thanos thrived in Britannia as a soldier and later as a merchant. He married and had children and he told them of the Book of Dreams and the mole and the coin was of Alexander the Great their kinsman and this story has been passed down with the book and their dreams through the centuries flourished in the book which now had pieces of faded papyrus, vellum, animal skins and different modern day paper added as the book passed down generation to generation. Different dreams from land ownership to marriage to children to even learning to read and write asked for by the bold X that took up half a page. The book had lived through peace and wars. Calm and storms. Love and hate. Kings and Tyrants and never was the book needed more than in times such as these. Then for centuries afterwards the entries became less and less as dreams were being manufactured more than dreamt. And the Book of Dreams became just something that was thrown in a box and passed down just because. The story of Darius and Danae was lost to antiquity and the book of dreams had become a book of dust. It could take a new millennium for the family to see the endless possibilities of dreams as pen once again touched paper.

The new millennium is coming, Matthew told his 5 year old son Nicholas as they tended his small little garden in the back of house. ‘What does that mean’? he said barely listening as he poured way too much water in the dirt to make a nice muddy mess to play in. It means that our family has been living on this land for almost 1000 years and now it will be lost because me, he said to himself, but to his son he said he smiled and said,’ it is time for you to make a muddy mess before mum gets home’. They both laughed and made deliciously sloppy mud pies before bath time. Matthew was a dreamer, a philosophy professor at a small private school up the road. The pay was not what he would be getting if he went to work in a larger university, but then he would not have a chance to develop eager minds that wanted to heal the world with thoughts. The bills were always piling up and the bank was not going to give him any more time to pay on the back taxes. But, something always came through he told himself trying to will it to be so.

After a nice warm bath before bed Nicholas finished his favorite chicken soup and instantly went to sleep before his head touched the pillow. Matthew watching his son dream the dreams of contentment could only breathe in quietly as he went to get the mail. As he opened the front door, there is was the dreaded eviction notice. His wife Amy took a full time job, just so he could keep on teaching where he loved, but this time it was not enough. This time they will have to move and now he thought was his academic satisfaction worth the uncertainty that he was now putting his family through. When Amy came home he showed her the notice. ‘Notice or not, we are still a family and whatever is next we will still will be a family’, she said with all the love for him in her eyes. As he held her tightly to him, all he could think of is he did not deserve her, but more to the point of his sinking heart she and their son did not deserve him.

For the next few days it was time to throw out somethings that would not fit into a smaller place. Nicholas loved this new game. He looked into all the boxes and found this old smelly black book. Matthew said, ‘he hasn’t seen that book since he was around Nicholas’s age. Taking the book and sitting his son on his knees, he re-tells the story, that it is thousands of years old winking at his wife and it was called the Book of dreams and all their ancestors wrote their dreams in that book. And Matthew innocently tells his father to write his dream, so it will be answered. Matthew writes down that he wants to pay off the taxes and not live by another’s leave. The next day Amy was watching an Antiques tv show and told Matthew maybe they can find something of worth to help pay the back taxes. They took everything they could stuff in the car to the Antiques tv show and everything they could shove into the car was worth a few thousand pounds, nearly not enough for the £10,000 back taxes. Nicholas wanted to take the book to the table that had all the books and be a part of the process. The appraisers looked at the book and told them it was one of the oldest books that they had ever seen, but, it was in such in bad condition and didn’t have any historical value or persons names and if it did it was faded long ago, but they valued it about £1,000 to insure. But, they noticed the book had a coin in the front and sent young Nicholas to the coin table, it could be quite valuable, not wanting to dash his hopes. The table asked to clean it thoroughly and spoke with a few other appraisers and the coin was appraised at over £10,000 and an American coin dealer offered to buy it from them for $20,000 US . Matthew and Amy just looked at each other and then their son and then the book and then back at each other, both quietly thinking, ‘This truly is a book of dreams.’