Dream

   It might be just a type of strange bluffing, but Lei says they don't dream. They claim they're a deity sent to spread the wisdom from the heavens. I think they're too chicken to admit that they dream about dancing with puppies and rainbow unicorns. 

  Last night, I dreamt a peculiar dream. Lei insisted that I tell them about it. They love dreams; they say it's the most subtle message from our subconscious. Self-awareness is the clearest for people who have mastered the meaning of their dreams. 

  Look at my roommate and all their bullshit! I sat with them and told them about it. 

  In the dream, I was standing in a great field of what used to be California poppies. Someone had drawn a circle around him and me. He had no face. 

  I looked around me. The circle seemed to form a protective bubble, shielding us from the ruins of London. London? I looked back, stared the other person in the face. His face was my face. 

  "Who cut up my lavender garden?" he asked, turning to Percy, who I hadn't noticed standing behind him, "was it you?" For a silent moment, he studied Percy. 

  "No, it wasn't you. You've also lost your garden." James takes Percy's place. James' hair was shorter than I remembered. 

  "You burned his garden," said the person with my face. His name was Eden. 

  "You burned his garden," Eden sang, pointing an accusing finger at James, "you burned his garden. And destroyed your own." I looked down a James' hands. His long, graceful fingers were stained with wine. Thinking back, it was too thick and too red to be wine. His long, crooked fingers were stained with blood. 

  Eden sprouted wings. They weren't white wings like the dreams that Christians paint in their churches about saviors, but dark and inky ones like an angel drowned in tar. 

    Eden's hair grew white, and his face morphed into someone much younger. 

    "You are not the one I look for. Tell me, Eden, am I wrong to want to be saved?" he asked. His grip tightened on an oak staff. 

    "No," I answered. 

    "Then why am I being punished?" he said. 

    "My name is," he began. I woke up. 

    Lei stared at me intently as I finished my story. 

    "You are turning into a bird," Lei concluded immediately, "A very black, immortal bird who likes to torture innocent passerby for a living." I liked his interpretation. I want to become such a bird.