What We Dream For Ourselves and What We Dream For Each Other

I never dreamt that someone saved me. I always hit bottom before waking. Always outsmarted death on my own. I never dreamt that someone saved me.

She dreamt I stood in a ring of yellow, darkness thick all around me. All outside that circle. She dreamt she watched as limbs flailed out of not so hollow black to strike my face, take me by surprise. She watched as humyns who wore their ugly things, their monsters, on the outside slid into the yellow ring with me. Watched as I fought with all I had and my blood spilled anyway. She watched me push them back, win, take a breath, get hit again.

She said she screamed. Said she pounded her fist on invisible glass that hung between us. She said she clawed and cried, wanting desperately to help, to warn me, to give me relief. But I could not hear her. Her voice echoed off bodies that stood beside her in the darkness. Bodies who had long ago given up the clamoring of aid. Bodies who stood tired and bruised with the effort it takes to try and break through. Bodies that took small steps back from that struggle, fading further and further away.

She told me she needed me to ask, no shout, for help. Needed me to accept defeat. Needed me to reach out. And without that the glass would remain intact. She would be forced to remain distant. She prayed for me to see her. She watched the yellow circle turn red with blood, some theirs but mostly mine. She watched their numbers increase, their size swell. She watched me keep fighting.

And in the end when there was only black and red, when there was no one beside her and I was still, she laid a gift at my feet.

She said, I know you couldn’t hear me but I screamed anyway. I know you couldn’t see me but I stood anyway. And I know that if you had paused to search for what you didn’t know was there you would have died. Because in your dreams nobody saves you, but in mine I tried.