The world tumbles in a whirl of greenery, mud and falling water. After what feels like an eternity of sickening revolutions, the boy thuds to a halt against a tree sticking out of the hill at an absurd angle. He doesn't move at all. The rain drips off of leaves above and patters on his head, slowly washing his thoroughly soaked brown hair away from his face. His eyes flutter slowly, once, twice, then open. He coughs, a deep, gasping noise that hurts me to hear it. His next few breaths remind me how small he is - they come from the bottom of his lungs, but they're still such tiny volumes of air. Children are not meant to make that kind of effort. It's all so out of place, bizarre, surreal. His predicament does not allow him the luxury of such thoughts. The tree that stopped him is behind his shoulders, but his waking movements have dislodged him, and he's begun to slide down again. In panicky jolts, he grasps at the tree and his feet try to find something to anchor themselves against. The wet has made everything slippery and mushy, and the bark of the tree disintegrates where he grabs hold of it. He cries out as he begins once again to gain downward momentum. He's sliding, and the tree is now out of reach. He spreads his limbs out wide, maximizing his contact with the ground and searching for anything to hold him. His left hand hits something solid, he grabs at it, loses it, but then there's another, and he clamps down hard this time. It's a fallen branch, not lodged in the ground, but large enough to slow him. His own momentum pulls it a few feet, but eventually he gets his other hand onto a limb and he and the branch once again come to rest on the steep hill. For a moment he just closes his eyes and catches his breath. After a short rest, he carefully inches himself up past the branch and rolls over, groaning. He sits up, anchoring himself on the branch, and looks around to assess his newly dire situation. He's fallen far down the hill, probably ten times his own body length. He pauses a moment as he looks at the muddy smear that marks his rolling path down. He turns to look at where he might have rolled to. The hill continues for a while more, putting him maybe at the halfway mark from where he had been before, before it ends abruptly in a silvery line. A river. He puts his head down on his knees, wraps his arms around his legs, and begins to sob. This is the part where mom or dad is supposed to step in and pull him out of this nightmare. This is the part where this boy, who has no place alone in a forest, needs saving. These thoughts are floating around my head, clear and loud but useless, not manifesting themselves in any way. Everything becomes a smear of dark, desperate gloom, with only the patter of the rain as a marker of time passing.
When his image swims back into view, he's straining to pull himself up the rocky slope, grasping at wet stalks and vines. Every time he reaches up, I wish someone was there to grab him and haul him up, give him a break. But there are only slippery rocks and tendrils of vegetation, and for every hard fought step up, he slides two down. I can hear his breathing, coming in short little panting gasps, speeding up in frequency as he gets more and more frustrated and... Scared. I can see in his eyes and the scrunching of his mouth that he's being brave, that he knows he can do this, that it's just an adventure that he can be the hero of. But the rain keeps coming, and there's more water pouring down the rough incline, and despite all the energy he's throwing at it, he's not conquering this hill. It's beating him. I'm yelling encouragement, but there's no sound of my voice. Thunder rumbles instead. The boy looks up, peering through a thick canopy of leaves to an evening sky that's growing dark. He glances down the slope, his eyes following the rivulets of water that race past him to jump off a short drop into a swift and swollen river. He squeezes his eyes shut and turns back to face the incline. With determination, he finds a solid foothold in a large boulder and shoves himself further up, away from the certain doom below him. He doesn't look left or right anymore, he's fixated on the spot just up, beyond his reach. As he grabs onto an upturned tree root, I can see him whispering to himself soundlessly, "One more. Just one more." It becomes a chant, and he's starting to make some progress. Another rolling rumble of thunder shakes the earth around him, and then a sharp CRACK sounds like the sky itself has split open. The boy flinches but doesn't stop his steady climb. The rain is now pouring down in torrents, undeterred by trees and leaves. It's no longer just little streams running past him, but a steady wash of water directly in his face. My heart feels like its dropped out of me. This isn't fair, this shouldn't be happening to him. I want to stop this goddamned rain, and flatten this goddamned hill, and I want him to walk out of this goddamned forest into his warm home so he can grab a mug of hot chocolate and sit under a blanket like kids are supposed to during storms. But it doesn't seem to matter. The rain doesn't stop, and the slope doesn't flatten, and now he's just clinging, with all his might, to stay where he is. He can't let go to grab the next handhold for fear of being washed down. And then something above him on the hill breaks loose. Some rock or tree or bush had enough of its foundation washed away to come loose and start a small avalanche. He watches with horror, and I watch him with anguish, as a wave of debris rushes toward him. He has nothing left to do. He lets go... He slips down the hillside, but not fast enough to escape the growing rockslide. I hear the prolonged crash into the river but everything is black. Black and horrid...
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And I woke up. Shivering, covered in sweat and tears. The forest and the rain faded almost immediately into my cool, dark bedroom. The pain of losing the boy, however, didn't fade a bit. It still weighs on me, even now, after I know it was all a dream. Koko is beside the bed, whining at me. I must have been thrashing in my sleep. Maybe it's just that I'm writing this all down right away this time, but this is the first time I've been able to recall one of these dreams in any amount of detail. The feelings are certainly familiar though, if more intense this time. He wasn't anyone I know, but I could feel what he felt, see what he saw, and to watch him tumble down... It hurt so much. Aren't dreams supposed to symbolize something about my real life? I've never felt this much agony in real life! Nothing this terrible has ever actually happened to me. I don't understand. And I've never been in a forest like that to know it in such detail. I don't remember dreaming much as a kid, but it was always sort of like reliving memories in different ways - never like experiencing something entirely new. It was all so real.
Has anyone else out there had dreams like this? Should I be drinking some warm milk or something before bed? It's nights like these that wear me out before I even start my day... Not only am I losing sleep, but the grief will stick with me... It's exhausting. I'm hoping that at least writing them down will help me deal with it a little better. It's only a dream. It's only a dream.
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