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Euneirophrenia (Noun):
The peaceful state of mind after a pleasant dream.
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I received another Wind last night.
A Wind is what I call the ethereal thoughts that flow into my mind under certain circumstances. Normal thoughts have reason, purpose, or inspiration behind them. Yet my Winds always come on their own accord. I call them so because they resemble a wind—effortless, pellucid, and graceful. They flow into my head, carrying a dash of an exquisite hue, a scent of unworldly beauty. The thought itself is always different each time it comes. It doesn’t depict clear pictures or words. It’s impossible to explain, but I believe it carries a faint perfume from something beyond earth. I’ve received eleven Winds so far, ever since I was a child.
The Wind I received last night came when I was lying in bed, the warm darkness of a summer night filling my room. Through the cracks between my curtains at my window, as the perpetual noises of cars rushing down the highway entered, so did the moonlight. It stretched as a pale and defined path across my ceiling and pooled in a square on my opposite wall. Just as I was falling asleep, the Wind came, through the moonlight-path leading into my room. It carried a velvety shade of dark blue, sprinkled with silver and gold. It sounded like a humming harmony and was piquantly fragrant. All this was filled with something I can’t describe, but I believe it was something supernatural. That was what consecrated all my Winds to be so enchanting.
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The next day was another mellow summer day. A long stretch of golden hours. There was only a short time until school—the crude, crowded, disorientating space I was shoved into—started again.
I was dreaming the last dreams of summer, mourning that the late August air was getting heavier. Autumn and September were approaching. The end of the golden luxury was nearing. I went for a long walk that day, my feet stepping on cement while roaming aerial grounds in my head. That night, I sketched out a landscape that was adequate, but there was something missing in it that I was unable to instill. As much as I loved art, it frustrated me that I could never express my thoughts perfectly. So I simply signed my name—Lilith Starr—in the corner, and went to bed, unprepared for what was to come.
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It was during the morning—no, dawn, really. I woke up in my transformed room. It was lit with a lovely light that my room seemed to be illuminating itself with. The light’s indescribable color clothed everything it reached in magic. It was 5:17 a.m. I should not have been so awake; such a beautifully tinted light should not have existed. Was I transformed amidst this wonder? I went to my mirror and looked.
It was a door. A slender door, hanging. The mirror’s white frame being the doorframe, its glassy surface displaying the vibrant colors of the world beyond. I put my hand to the glass, and it went through. It was as simple and natural as extending my hand out an open door. I felt the warm light of that shining world upon my hand. That light, I realized, was what was flooding my room with that ethereal color. It seemed so natural that I could slip into another world through my mirror.
I eased myself through the mirror, into that world. Immediately I was surrounded by warm winds of unworldly colors—light that contained both heat and cold—and a flooring below my feet, cloudy and flowing, yet firm. When I concentrated, I felt the millions of misty particles in the air. My sensitivity was at full power. Silvery lights perched on my hair. A fragment of air that I stretched into a wind. The sky was a great arch of diamond. There was a perpetual harmony of tinkling silver notes, perfect golden tones, and a silky flow of melody. Everything was perfect. Speech was nonexistent, insignificant, unnecessary. It would be a sacrilege to break the shining harmony by uttering things in the crude human voice. I never belonged with humans, I thought. They didn’t deserve this unworldly beauty. I saw, heard, felt, and yes, I thought. Yet I did not think in meaningless, fragmented words. I thought in colors, forms, wisps, music.
This world of wonder was the source of all my Winds, I realized. This world had continued to send me tiny samples of its magic, and now had opened to me its secrets. I was happier than I had ever been.
This could not be a dream. Why, it was more real than anything I had experienced. I had never felt so completely alert and awake and wholesome. Yet—I suddenly felt a nagging worry about my other life—my human life.
I looked around and located the dim white outline of the rectangle of the door, around which the colorful hazes faded. I moved towards it; the winds parted for me. I slipped through, and suddenly I was physical and tangible. My room was still dimly lit. I felt the cold, smooth wooden floor under my feet. I was human again. I felt cold and desolate without the fairy-like caresses of the colored winds. Everything was gone—oh, was it? I turned to my mirror.
That marvelous world was still there, beckoning. If I entered that world again, I knew I would never return. Was I prepared—did I truly belong there? It was true I’d never belonged with humans, but I was scarcely certain I was part of this world, either; it was—beyond me. I was Lilith Starr. The name I had borne since I had come into existence. Was I ready to give up my name, my face, my identity to enter that lovely unknown? More importantly, was it right to? Was it better to plunge into that beauty that I did not know if I deserved—or to stay among humans, whom I always felt were overly rough and harsh?
Suddenly, I realized, as I wildly paced my room, that the world was fading. The colors were growing paler, the glow was growing weaker. I had to decide. I rushed towards my mirror—but then stopped. No, I didn’t stop. Something in me stopped me—and held me still as the world in my mirror faded until everything was gone. My room’s glow faded into dawn’s darkness. With this, my sleepiness returned, I collapsed onto my bed and I remember nothing more.
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Submitted to Age 15 Short Story, The Power of the Pen Writing Contest 2018, Hamilton Public Library and The Hamilton Spectator
