Menace From the Deep Uphill

Unlike most visits, I am not in the ruined city.

It extends along the infinite coastline, in the unending twilight

That is both literal and temporal.

It is our future, and so it is the shadow of our eternal present.

Not this time. A lightly wooded hillside.

A bright blue sky. Extremely unusual for the realms of sleep.

I see the trees, and the short green grass:

The eternal background of my soul's adopted home.

But there is an annoyed ominousness.

Annoyance. Ancient, inconceivably ancient. A patience worn to nothing.

A wish to be ominous granted form.

I see you, nautilus. I bear you no ill will.

But I will not be frightened by you either.

Two meters tall. Floating in space, further up the hill,

At the top of the escalator.

The rubber handrail and glass are just visually out of place.

Otherwise it merges perfectly with the hill.

The stairs move silently, eternally, upwards.

Towards you and your baleful, abyssal eye.

Your tentacles move gently, but you stay still.

Somehow you are blocking the way.

We are watching each other.

In some ways we are still there. Having our dialogue.

Threatening each other, or perhaps not.

I chose not to go up the hill, to not use the escalator.

Eventually I woke up. But this persists.

For more than three decades we simply stare across the realm of sleep.

We two stuck in a frame of reference that upends us.

Maybe I am just as much the ominous dream of the nautilus.

Our incommensurate worlds are clashing at boundaries neither of us will ever visit.

I would rather that some day we would be friends.