A NEW George Sweet Doorway Mystery! – “Dreams On The Doorstep“ ...
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... was it a dream? How do we know that any moment we’re experiencing isn’t merely a dream? Isn’t every dream real, totally consuming and real in the moment we’re living in it?...well, “real” until some of them begin to amuse or sadden or terrify us to the point where our psyches or ids or egos, or our sense of self-preservation finally says “NO! NO! This is a dream! Nothing but a stupid, stupid dream, and I’m going to wake up! Now! I’m going to wake up, and you’re too silly, or you’ve hurt me too deeply, or you’re too horrible, but you’re not real, and I can escape by waking up! I’M WAKING UP!!!”… and you do!
Irina wasn’t sure when or where she was as she stood in front of the beautiful doorway. Had she been there before, or always been there, waiting for some unknown person to open it? …or perhaps for it to open by itself? That doorway covered with inlaid shells in glorious patterns…and …were those actual pearls? Real pearls in all shapes, sizes, and colors?... had she seen it before?... or knew where it led? Was it her own home, or the doorway to another wonderful unknown place? A place that filled her with a free, almost wild joy about something new… a new life in a new place…and a new her? ...Leaving everything that was the “before” in life behind. Everything that was the “before” about Irina behind.
And so, as she stood there, staring at that door covered…encrusted in millions of the most extraordinary shells, she began to float in a place free of reality, the tiresome weight of reality, and she floated into the colors, the swirling shapes, the artistry and intricacy of what stood in front of her. Some brilliant hand had taken the genius of Nature’s undersea palette and architecture and laid it all out to stand over her as she stood looking up in awe. Humbled and small and yet, somehow elated.
And as she stood just inches from all that detail, and leaned in to study it, she didn’t even question as the shapes and colors began to slowly swirl just out of the corner of her eye. Was it? In the frame?..No…did it move? Did something move? When her eyes darted to the left or the right, to the place where something… did it? No. YES! There! No… Always something on the door, in the lintel…some swirl or edge… a triangle of long thin shells..or had it been laid out as star? …the colors and patterns played with her...teasing. Dazzling and baffling her, almost as if they were merrily playing with a kitten, frisking and scampering just out of reach…
...and as her eyes marveled at what she couldn’t even begin to comprehend, Irina didn’t notice the small twinkling edge of water that began to seep from underneath the left edge of the door. It slid slowly towards her foot, and then pooled and crept over the inlaid marble, polished so brightly in the floor’s mosaic that the water’s sheen was lost in the glassy mirror of the stone. The water slid more and more rapidly, beginning to ripple almost as it moved in a sheet, past Irina’s feet, and beyond.
But Irina didn’t see. Her eyes were carried into the shells, the shells of all those magically ornate little creatures from deep in the dark waters of the world, evolving quietly away into new and stranger shapes and destinies, living or dreaming their own journeys… living or dreaming by the millions through the eons to be gathered and admired, honored and arranged, treasured and fastened in place…while Irina stood transported… dreaming. Seeing, yet unseeing. As the water, both warm and cool at the same time, trickling like laughter from a lover, yet somehow silent, rose slowly and steadily. Swirling like the shapes made of shells on the door. Water filling the room, or wherever. The place with the doorway….and the girl, dreaming, or not, as the water climbed and climbed, and the girl stood, rapt with what her eyes were seeing and believing. Nothing else. Just the visions of the shells, their colors and shapes, and the dreams of the shells and the dreams of the creatures that had built and lived in those millions of shells…. And the water that had held and carried all of them… Irina, the shells….through time, to this place of no place, and no time. To be… or dream…or… to dream of being… or perhaps, merely being a dream…
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