I Dreamed a Dream

I stood in an empty, circular room of white-washed walls. Beneath me was a ceramic floor that was so clean, it could’ve been a mirror. The smallest and the slightest of noises echoed and bounced about me, the way a rubber ball might. There was no hiding for there were no corners in the round space that I stood in and when I looked up, the roof was so high above me, I could only just see it. It was there, but my vision could barely make it out.

“Sally!” a voice boomed around me. It hadn’t shouted, but I covered my ears. The voice was not loud, but it was piercing. It was neither male nor female. It just was. The windows shook slightly and the mirror-like floor beneath me threatened to crack.

And then, almost as though being drawn by a magnet and quite against my will, I started to move. Like a chess piece being shifted on a board by an invisible hand, I was made to move in large circles, along the large curving edge of the room. And as I looked to the walls, they began to alter. No longer opaque, they had the consistency of water and the sound of my movement throughout the room caused slight ripples to appear on their surface.

What I saw was not discernible and certainly not something easily articulated. I was made to witness a feeling, almost as though I was stuck in a giant mood ring where the overall feeling was indicated by more than just colour. Hunger, poverty, corruption, hatred, war, greed, selfishness, materialism, murder, genocide all surrounded me, enveloping and overwhelming all of my senses.  My insides began to shrivel up as the life in them slowly drained away, like moisture evaporating off the surface of a leaf on a hot day. The shades of injustice that are splattered on the canvas of our existence grew clear before me and my human form could not cope.

But just as it had begun, the feeling ceased and life was restored to my form. Still being drawn, involuntarily and magnetically round and round, I realised I wasn’t alone. Others were with me though I couldn’t make out any of their faces. Some danced, some wept, and some looked entirely lost, but we all moved together steadily, rhythmically on the invisible chessboard.

The ethereal voice spoke again and, as before, I had to shield my ears from it, except I didn’t know what it was saying this time, even though I was just as certain as before that it was addressing me. I looked down and saw that I held a sword in one hand and a shield in another. I extended my arm to view the blade and though it was not ablaze, perceived that it was forged of fire. But when I blinked, the sword had disappeared and instead and in its place, I held a quill.

The quill began to quiver and so I reached forward to the wall and dipped the tip into its water-like consistency where it promptly came to life. It wrote of its own accord and every time it wrote, the surroundings were altered. It wrote in mid-air and it wrote in fire.

I realised then that the quill was more magical than all of my surroundings. I saw that it was an instrument of change and I tightened my grip on it. I took control of what was being written and I used the quill to slash through the liquid walls around me.

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