Siding with Wonder
Flash Fiction
A Submission for Iron Age Media’s Prompt: The Ketch
Fearsome stories were told to me when I was a child. It did not matter if it was believed to be real or fake, the warnings were taken seriously, primarily because they were not of this world. My Mother and Father passed down the tales that they too were told, and they always warned me, like I am expected to warn my own children one day: “Do not dream, do not learn from dreams, do not fight in dreams, and do not trust dreams.”
Our way of life is dedicated to the whims of two things: the sacrifices we make for the sea on our horizon, and the food the sea gives us should we be brave enough to set sail. Anything else was superstition, and the beliefs of a traitor as declared by those who lived without a dream to their name.
Our rulers had the habit of sending dozens of ships to their doom if they felt doing so would solidify their rule and cull the herd, so they say again: “Do not dream.”
In my youth, I tried to doubt these teachings, for I felt the wonder in my veins slip away never to return with each hour I was shaken awake, the rulers knew that to sleep in phases was to deny dreams, and with each hypnic jerk that was evoked either by spirit or by fine herb, the ones that ruled without a dream to rule by gained more power.
My parents were eventually punished, for the rulers saw the signs of what they believed were my sordid rebellion.
In truth my parents too wished to dream, and left behind materials to aid me in my journey.
In the wake of my parents’ lambent destruction at sea, I and many others had no choice but to dream.
In hidden caverns beset by tides other than those on our horizon, we took the time, and patience to relearn how to capture that ethereal vessel called wonder.
Wonder knew that we could not learn such lessons all at once, so in each dream it gave us a vessel to maintain by our own craft, a way out of tyranny molded by our dreams.
The more I interacted with the worlds that blinked in and out of existence in my mind, the more I was tutored by the very thing the rulers claimed was the source of all evil.
Crude metal blades were made, traps, and distractions were planted in order to buy more time for me to dream.
And then one day I dreamed in hiding for the last time, for this particular dream taught me how to live.
Thus was the end of the life without a dream to one’s name, and the end of those who thought to rule without a dream to rule by. A new ethos would encapsulate the new era: “Dream, learn from dreams, fight for dreams, and trust your own dreams.”