B
Beak
Guest
Original poster
art by Cody Foreman
In a dream, you are drowning.
Your body floats suspended in warm murky water. Dim sunlight glimmers above; and below, weedy tendrils reach hungrily out of darkness. The water presses against your ears, fills your nostrils, burns your throat. You're sinking.
A bright yellow point of light flickers through the water. It zigzags through the green murk, leaving a serpentine trail of gleaming gold dust in its wake. It pauses in front of your face, just long enough to stare with a curious beady eye -- and then the golden salamander zooms off again, to the surface and the open air.
Somehow -- through your own power or by the grip of another -- you break the surface and take in a lungful of sweet air. The breeze is sharply cool on your wet skin. The sunlight filters down through rustling trees, from behind the silhouette of a mossy mountain. The midday sky is full of stars. You've emerged at the center of a rippling pond quietly guarded by weeping trees and the darker cliffs behind them.
A frog creaks. Birds titter and warble all around you. A deer pauses mid-drink and freezes, watching you warily through reflective eyes.
A thin shimmer of gold dust floats like a current in the air, swayed and turned by the breeze. It drifts endlessly overhead, weaves among the branches, skirts the lichen on the mountain, dips behind the rock.
The shining salamander slips away under the root of a gnarled tree.
Your body floats suspended in warm murky water. Dim sunlight glimmers above; and below, weedy tendrils reach hungrily out of darkness. The water presses against your ears, fills your nostrils, burns your throat. You're sinking.
A bright yellow point of light flickers through the water. It zigzags through the green murk, leaving a serpentine trail of gleaming gold dust in its wake. It pauses in front of your face, just long enough to stare with a curious beady eye -- and then the golden salamander zooms off again, to the surface and the open air.
Somehow -- through your own power or by the grip of another -- you break the surface and take in a lungful of sweet air. The breeze is sharply cool on your wet skin. The sunlight filters down through rustling trees, from behind the silhouette of a mossy mountain. The midday sky is full of stars. You've emerged at the center of a rippling pond quietly guarded by weeping trees and the darker cliffs behind them.
A frog creaks. Birds titter and warble all around you. A deer pauses mid-drink and freezes, watching you warily through reflective eyes.
A thin shimmer of gold dust floats like a current in the air, swayed and turned by the breeze. It drifts endlessly overhead, weaves among the branches, skirts the lichen on the mountain, dips behind the rock.
The shining salamander slips away under the root of a gnarled tree.