Seraphim

It had been months, at that point, of her never ending nightmares. The nights seemed darker than they were, even tucked into her blanket cocoon, as she had learned to dread the animosities of her dreams. They contained monsters, and spiders, the usual stuff that makes your heart palpitate and your mind precipitate. Fear-based experiences command a fight-or-flight overdrive, and in that dream world, she fought for her survival nightly. Oddly enough, through the endless quantity of these nightmares that pulled her back in on repeat, she somehow began to find solace in the surrealist worlds that she was entering. They became a test of her willpower, and her intelligence- how will she navigate the never ending torrent of sinister situations, the foreboding feelings? Because ultimately, that’s what these horrible moments were to her- feelings. It was the energy contained in the worlds that she was dropped into that spoke to her the most, over the literal monsters that may be contained there. There have been plenty of times where, instead of a straightforward bad situation, she instead found herself alone in an uncanny pocket of her mind. These dreams manifested mainly as haunted houses, filled with ghosts that she could feel, but that she could not see. Walking around the rooms of these mansions, with their pristine art deco design, she felt the ominous presences around every corner, watching her from across the room, sensing that she was not supposed to be there and quietly emanating a reminder of the power that they held over her existence. Curiosity is what led her here, and the pull she felt to explore these homes, hollowed out of their humanity, was more potent than the insidious energy that radiated from inside their shadows.

Needless to say, these dark encounters impacted her waking life. It didn’t matter how she had interpreted her day- good, bad, boring. The dreams always came. And in the morning, jolting awake, and struggling to reinterpret her world as the incredibly detailed quality of her experience melted back into her room, the feelings lingered. It felt like the ominous energy she had inside of her head had bolted itself to her soul, reminding her of the traumatic encounters she had just moments ago. The goal, upon waking, was to simmer into the air she was breathing, hatching out of her cocoon and stretching her limbs as far as they will go, until her tensed muscles released their prickling anxiety. The first thing she saw as her lids parted was the shape of her cat laid next to her, sunlight reflecting off the holographic tape that she had cut into interpretive shapes and stuck to her window, creating rainbow prisms on the animal’s striped fur. Seeing her sanctuary reminded her that she was safe again, that she had made it through another night.

This girl had an active mind, but an inactive life. Her past was her ghost, her mind, the mansion. In these dreams, she knew that what she was really facing was herself. Out of anything, the girl wondered why she had been gifted with the immense world building potential contained inside her head, but burdened by the inability to have even one positive experience with it. It had been years since she hadn’t woken up drowning in sweat and sorrow. What she craved more than anything was adventure, and peace. She wondered if she had been cursed by an unknown entity, forced to explore the most hidden and wounded parts of who she was. She knew, however, that she contained more than lingering betrayal and fear-based fantasies. She knew that there was a deep, entrapped oasis of purity and contentment, contained in a sort of snow globe inside her soul. She knew of its existence because she was able to see into the glass dome, she could shake it, and she could feel the buzz of her own potential rise up. However, that was where her senses betrayed her; they couldn’t access what they couldn’t yet understand.

One night, many more months into the girl’s nightly admittance to a movie not of her own choosing, she found herself in a place she hadn’t visited in a very long time. She was standing in the entryway of her childhood home, gazing out of the floral, stained glass windows of the front door into a yard filtered by the setting sun. She opened the door, expecting to enter the quiet world she had just seen, when sudden movement interrupted that fantasy. Entering the space, like it was an expected guest arriving late for a dinner party, flew a giant moth. It was the size of a crow, with pale green aventurine wings and large spots towards the tips that mimicked the deep gaze of a pair of soulful eyes. It was a species of moth that didn’t actually exist, as if the girl was a modern day Darwin who had cracked the code to life’s existence, pushing the boundaries of creation. She could acutely feel the wind brought on by its large wings as they quickly whisked past her head. Shocked to a standstill, she felt the familiar buzz of fear trickle from her upper chest into her fluttering abdomen, pooling into the sensation of racing anticipation. The moth flew through the entry way towards the back of the dining room, a long flight to make as the room seemed twice as long as when she was a child. Never wavering from its course, it became smaller and smaller with distance. The girl suddenly realized that her fear had dissipated, that she was now only looking on in uncontrollable wonder at the scene in front of her. The moth, reaching the windows of the back wall, suddenly turned around and came rushing back towards the front door. Its small, distant form coming nearer, the girl realized that the creature had transformed- flying towards her now was no longer the moth she had let in, but a stunning, creamy white barn owl, its simple, yet complexly aware, heart shaped face staring directly at her. It had happened so fast, the transformation, that all the girl could do was stand there, attempting to take in every precious moment she was witnessing.

The girl had always had a very natural preoccupation with barn owls. A mated pair lived in the trees of her childhood backyard, behind the very same home she found herself revisiting now. She remembered when she first heard their night time calls, as she sat in the backyard with her father, staring up at the stars and occasionally hearing the rustle of the leaves as the owls returned to their nest. In the morning, if she returned to the area and pushed aside the dead leaves below their tree, she could occasionally find an owl pellet or two- never containing a full skeleton, only a jaw bone, or the rare partial skull, with random clumps of fur and bone binding the dry mass together. As she grew older, she found herself gravitating further to the mystery contained in their full-moon faces, wondering what life looked like through the eyes of something so different from herself.

As the owl approached her, wings outstretched and gliding along a current of air that only it could detect, the girl instinctively held out her arm. The owl gracefully settled itself upon her skin, as if they had known each other all their lives. She could feel every sensation, from the gentle pressure of the talons clenched around her, to the whispering rustle of its feathers settling into place. She immediately felt comforted, as if this owl was an old friend, someone she had not seen in ages- but with no memory of them ever meeting. The girl knew she had been dreaming this whole time, as one does not have the acute experiences she has had while sleeping without learning to understand the difference between the dream world and the waking, even with the immense detail of the situation in front of her telling her that she is really there. She reached out to the being in front of her, instinctively recognizing the intelligence contained in its gaze, and gently began to stroke its soft neck with her finger tips. The denseness of its feathers was a new experience for her, as she dug through the layers to scratch its neck, parting the plumage in a perfect fold. She was mesmerized that she had been chosen for the immense privilege of this owl’s company. Her entire body was now filled with the gentle love she had for the creature in front of her, an extremely potent sensation. Coming off of the endless spiraling nights of dark discomfort with her surroundings, the extreme contrast of this experience was not lost on her, and she felt at peace for the first time in her recent past.

Knowing that dreams are omens, the girl could innately sense that this owl was a higher being, and that she was being blessed with its presence. The owl stared at her as she stared back, and the girl started feeling some kind of indescribable communication happening. Feeling through the slender softness of its neck, she noticed that it was wearing a collar. A circular silver tag was attached, with a small pink crystal embedded at the top. She held the tag close, attempting to read the name written, but the emblem was noticeably worn and scratched and she struggled to make out the word. Letters were faintly visible beneath the heavy slashes, and, knowing she had limited time in this world, she stared at it for as long as she could in an attempt to translate the characters etched there, which had presumably been done a long, long time ago. Unsure if it was even written in English, and trying to see underneath the damage, she felt as though she could make out an ‘S’ at the front of the name. Upon this discovery, the owl immediately rose from her arm, and flew back out through the front door.

And the girl awoke, back in her bed, the vision receding into her memories. But this felt different- she felt different. She hadn’t felt so comforted by her subconscious like this since she was a child. For once, she actually felt the deep sigh of rest in her limbs instead of the cold tenseness she had become so used to feeling. One word settled into her mind as she ran back through all that she had just seen- ‘Seraphim.’ She knew that she had met an angel that night; that the owl was a traveler, and a friend. Whether this word that was in her mind was the owl’s true name or not, she knew it meant that there was more to her perception of reality than she could ever know, and that she no longer needed to be afraid.

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