The Fire Lord's Wife

Dream: I've been chosen to be the bride of the Fire Lord, our godlike lord and overseer. This is exciting, and as I am being led to his residence by his stern minions, I am both thrilled and terrified at the idea. Not for any normal reason, but because the Fire Lord is the font of technology. He's a technological deity, and as his wife I will have access to all his top-of-the-line computers and such. This is my passion, and no amount of hardwork or education could have given me what the position of Fire Lord's wife will.

His residence is the same dark, forboding building I remember it being from the glimpses in my youth. His minions push me through the door and then leave, bolting it behind them. I am left inside, alone, terrified. There are a thousand things vying for my attention. I'm a virgin still, and the idea of being anyone's wife is frightening. But even as scared as I am, I can see something is not right with my surroundings. The house is sterile, full of technological equipment and barely anything else, but that's to be expected. It seems, though, as if it is in a vast state of dissarray. There is dust and decay everywhere, and there are thick shadows in the corners. The place seems alive with malice, and my fear intensifies.

The Fire Lord appears, and he is a shock to me. He is not the god i imagined. He is a tall man, but he is old. His hair is white, and there are dark secrets in his eyes. He does not smile. He grabs me by arm and drags me into a hallway, where I cower beneath his dark gaze. He says things to me, things I do not understand at first. He tells me he is a prisoner here the same as I am, and that the house is not safe anymore. He tells me of dangers, and to stay hidden and quiet. He leaves me for a time, alone in the dark house. I can feel the malevolence of the place as if it were a tangible thing. Cold dark beasties hiss nasty things in my ears, and follow me from room to room. It is a long and panicked time I spend there, and I lose track of time.

The Fire Lord returns, with his compatriot who does not have a name. He is a serious looking man of slight build, but he radiates concern, and it's evident he is not one of the Fire Lord's (or my) imprisoners. They gather me up and we escape out a back entrance. And then, to my shocked horror, they get on motorcycles, and the Fire Lord sits me behind him. It's terrifying; there's so much wind, and the cycles are excruciatingly loud. All I can do is dig my fingers into his clothing and hold on, face pressed against his back as my hair is whipped around me.

When the cycles stop, we are in the middle of a forest. It's Fall apparently, the ground carpeted with brown and gold leaves. We are being followed already by a nameless evil, and the men abandon the cycles and rush into the woods, me in tow. There is a path there, and we follow it deep into the forest. Our footfalls are muffled by the leaves, and the forest is menacingly silent. I am wracked by bouts of terrible, bone-freezing fear. My entire life has fallen around me. And now these strange men are leading me away, making me a refugee in my own country, leading me deep into a foreign forest, and there's no end in sight. We walk through the woods for a long time, and it all looks the same to me. The path changes, but nothing else does, and my panic and despair are rising. Finally, I stop walking and burst into tears.

The Fire Lord and his companion begin to argue. The companion is angry; he wants them to abandon me here if I won't keep walking. He says they owe me nothing, and that I am only a burden. The Fire Lord disagrees, and sounds compassionate, but I am too scared to care. He comes to me and grips my elbow and looks into my face, and he tells me that there is an end to this journey. He knows it is frightening, and I will never have the life I used to, but he says at least it is a life free of captivity. A free life, to do with as I will. He tells me that if I want to take this chance, I have to come with them, but that I am free to stay if I wish.

His words calm me down, and when they start walking again, I follow. Slowly first, but then faster, until I am leading them down the path instead. I am increasingly urgent to get to our destination, to see this end, this amazing free place that I cannot comprehend. I would be running, but the leaves are slippery beneath my feet, and I am afraid of falling. The wind blows stiffly in our faces, and I open my arms and life my face to its touch. This is free wind, I tell myself. This is freedom. The Fire Lord's companion tells him that he thinks I'm insane, and the Fire Lord chuckles and shakes his head. I ignore them, and hurry onward.

The path ends in a sheer rock face. On closer inspection, there is a ladder of sorts carved into the stone, rough handholds and footholds scratched into a crease in the rock. The Fire Lord says it is the only way up. It looks dangerous. One lost grip, and a climber will fall straight down to the ground. There is no chance of not being injured should we fail. But I have already set my life on what lies over that cliff, so I leap at the wall and start up the ladder with a vengeance. I try not to think about what will happen if I fall. There's no point in thinking about that. If I fall, it's all over anyway. The climb is impossibly difficult, but I push onward. I can hear the men below me, inching forward. At last, amazing to behold, an end to the rock appears beneath my grasping hands, and I pull myself over the cliff onto the top of a mountain of leaf-blanketed earth. I am on a ridge, and below me, in the valley...my free life waits. The leaves are deeper here, and as I clamber down the steep slope, I am almost wading through them, pushing them away with my hands, swimming through an ocean of fallen leaves. Hope rises, warm and ebullient, in my chest. As I come closer to the Destination, I notice things in the leaves; books, all of them, my favorite books. Books from when I was a child, and an adolescent. All the written words that, when read, made up who I am, there in the leaves in this strange forest. The hope bubbles out of me in laughter, and it is the first free laughter I have ever felt, and I rush forward into a Free Life.