I was in an autumn forest, searching for my love. He was close, close, I could feel it. I crept through thick drifts of rustling amber leaves, and the air was soft and damp and sweet, blue with moonlight and mist. I couldn't find him, and his brother was also looking for him, and kept telling me to leave, but I kept looking.
As the sun rose behind the fogs, turning the sky dove gray and rose pink, I wandered out of the forest onto the sea side, near Venice. I turned to head back to the city, where my huge and very rich family lived, in a white marble villa on the water.
As rich as they were, they were still greedy and grasping, and didn't approve of my love any more than his brother approved of me. But my twin brother was different. He understood. He was a brilliant engineer and builder, and while I was gone he had built for me the most fantastic floating house. It rose above the water in two stories of shell pink stone, with delicate support pillars, carved like forest trees, supporting the ceilings of wide, airy rooms, lighted by enormous windows. All the windows and doors were open, and the fresh morning breeze, tinged with salt, drifted through every room. Wide, columned galleries surrounded the central structure, with balustrades along the outer edges.
The most incredible part of this floating structure was that, while it nestled snugly against the terrace of my family home, where it met the canal, it also could be moved across the water to its own niche, across the bay, a new address where I could build my own life with whomever I wanted. For some remarkable reason, half the house was moved by a hand-cranked motor, but the other half was powered by the motion of walking clockwise around the galleries on that side, back in through one door, out an opposite door, and around the galleries again. My brother and I sailed my new house to its new dock and back several times, while we waited for my love to join me there.
I woke up for a bit, and when I went back to sleep, I lived in the upper story of a red brick house somewhere in Uptown (New Orleans). My landlady lived in the lower story. I had an outer stair up to the gallery, to get into my half of the house. There was a huge oak tree in the front yard, and the neighbors had three big long haired dogs that like to play and dig around our tree.
My family was now my normal, awesome, huge Czech family, and they came to visit. My great grandmother was still alive, and reasonably spry, but on a rainy day, the dogs tripped her, and she got cold and wet, so I had to get her into a warm bath. But after that she felt just fine, and she came out in a pink fuzzy night gown and wanted to play dominoes. Mom and Momo and one of my older cousins wanted to play, so as the youngest player, I let one of them have my place. Momo and Great-grandma totally whooped up playing fourty-two, and it was an amazing learning experience to watch.
Some friends of mine invited me to watch a movie nearby, so I left my family, pet the dogs as I passed by the tree, and met up with a friend who was visiting from Austin. We met the others in a pizza place, and watched the movie there, but it was Fellowship of the Rings, and the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy was showing on TV, and we decided we'd like to go to someone's house to watch Two Towers. We had to hurry, so we all ran, even me. I ran and jogged and trotted and sprinted blocks and blocks.
There were at least six of us, but we all piled onto one couch, without bothering about personal space, and I sat, cuddled up amid people who cared for me, and it just felt amazing to be that loved and safe and comfortable and welcome, and to have my family back at home, where I was also loved and where I always belonged. And then I woke up.
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