Something Like A Dream- The Black and White Movie

The movie was. This much she had known all along. Over time she realized her role in it was unique, and in her version of it she was the star, of sorts, amidst many scripted actors. This was not how it began though, there was a time of static that she could hardly process in any meaningful way now. Slowly snow began to crystallize into scenes, the scenes each disconnected. She tried to view them in a pattern that seemed meaningful. Unacustomed to anything else, this disconnected phase was not uncomfortable, she remembered a time when she even found it exciting, curiosity around every corner, always a new thing to experience. At some point she had gathered enough information to parse it, which led her to this, the black and white movie.

First she watched, enjoying the narrative of it, and gathering how scenes moved fluidly from one to the next. She arranged all manner of things in this time, seeing something like a field of films growing up like wheat from the ground, each with their own characters. Then she found that she could interact with the characters, and before even realizing it, she was in the film herself. There was a novelty to this experience, each moment a new adventure. After a time she found herself wanting to rewatch her old favorites, but found that they had each changed. She considered why and the only answer she could find was that she had changed them. This revelation was both exciting and concerning, because try as she might she could not find the prior versions. She walked carefully amidst the films now, as an observer exclusively as best she could in her favorite films, so that she might retain what she loved.

This era continued for a time, like a gardener she pruned and cultivated the field, becoming more and more skilled at emphasizing the positive and as a result diminishing the rest. It was hard to say how much time had passed but at one point she noticed something slightly different. Whereas before she could pass through scenes, imagining her garden of them all in their grayscale beauty, now there was a slightly different hue to them. It was nearly undetectable from where she was, but as she walked she saw evidence of it more and more- what could only be described as brownscale. 

This was unheard of. While it was not unheard of for her to experience unheard of things, this felt different. While her curiosity drew her to find how this was happening, she felt something else, an intrinsic draw to find the source of this shift. It seemed to have a location somewhere in this complex field of scenes, a source she was able to approach, given how she had arranged the scenes she saw into movies, but one she could not yet seem to reach. She shifted her focus to walking through the field, as infinitesimal shifts became pale or faded alterations, became sepia tones. She finally came to a location altogether foreign to her, realizing now the sheer vastness of the field she was in, only made clear by finally having a kind of compass to lead her in a single direction within it.

She shifted her focus back into the scene she was in and once more found something previously unknown to her: music softly played in the background. Had she ever felt this way about a novel discovery before? She was downright giddy, in and of itself a new emotion. Looking around for the music's source she found a bar and quickly snuck inside. She could not believe her eyes, inside was not black, white, or brown, but everything was in vibrant color. Music played from all around, it was like she was in a dream, but one that made everything else feel like a dream by contrast. The barkeep spotted her right away and said "what'll you have?" This woman's red hair shined atop peach skin decorated with a subtle green, painted around her eyes. She could not help marvel at the woman, one who could actually see her despite her best efforts to remain hidden, and whose form shined through the haze in vibrant color. She struggled to respond, still overwhelmed by this sudden burst of new input, until finally uttering "what do you recommend?" The bartender smiled, poured her a drink, and slid it across the bar to her. "It's on the house." This unusual phrase came accompanied by a wink and she suddenly knew what the phrase meant, along with many other such colloquialisms that seemed native to this place. She sat at a corner table just soaking it all in. As she drank from the glass though and became accustomed to the colors and sounds she noticed the scene subtly returning to one more familiar. She held on to the novelty of it as long as she could, but when she went back to the bar to ask for another round, she found the same familiar scripted response parroted back to her as she had always previously known, presented by a bartender in black and white. She knew the music must still be playing, but she could no longer make it out, faded in her perception just like the rest. She returned to the table a final time before leaving, and to her surprise found a note shimmering there where she had just been, as if mystically coalesced from the vibrancy the scene had possessed only moments before. In it was written:

"Starry Eyed Dreamer

And Wild Heart of The Muse

Inseparable"

Something about this felt like home and a space unexplored all at once. Even the paper had a coarse crispness to it, not necessarily remarkable except in contrast to the lack of tangibility generally possessed by everything else. She kept the note with her and journeyed on from there, determined to find its source. 

While the music had gone from her perception, she found her mind still filled with it. Not only the songs she heard but others came to mind as if they were a new and beautiful way of compiling her thoughts. She found herself enchanted by this discovery, and naturally able to reproduce it, almost as easily as breathing. She continued walking toward the source of the color, but felt as though she were now going in circles around it. Similar spaces filled with vibrancy and music she did not find again, and the lack of new input began to frustrate her. At one point this frustration reached a threshold and she spoke it "I wish I could see that color again." Just like that she was elsewhere, like a way of moving once forgotten, now remembered, from before this phase, from a time when she could shift from one scene to another without passing over the scenes she now considered to be narratively linked in between. 

The first thing she noticed was the vibrancy here, the next was the crowd. Unlike those scripted that she had known all her existence these possessed what seemed to be their own tangibility; she could feel a buzz of backstory coming off of each of them as they milled to and fro. They seemed to notice her similarly to how the woman in the bar had, but it was as if they chose to ignore her. While the resulting inconspicuousness was the same, she could not help but feel an emotional component now, to being an intangible face in the crowd, in a sense. She set this aside though and quickly set to looking for the source of these things that she had been seeking. The crowd felt like it was everywhere though, and she was not sure how long she could remain present like this without being overwhelmed. Just when she thought she might need to leave the scene a hand grabbed hers with a squeeze. She looked and saw it was the woman from the bar! "How did you..." "Oh, don't worry about that, we all walk in our own way through this place, just come with me." She felt a trust for this woman, now seeing her twice at junctures that held meaning for her, so she followed her instruction. Soon enough they were at the edge of the crowd. "Look!" Her focused shifted from the woman's pointed finger to the direction in which she gestured and there in a smaller group was a man shimmering golden, amidst the rest. "Who is he?" She received no response and when she turned back the woman was gone. 

She turned once more, frightened at how things shifted unexpectedly here, but found the man still there. She sighed in relief from across the grass between them and it was like he heard her, turning and looking directly at her now. Her cheeks filled a warm crimson and she looked away. Looking down at her feet she noticed her shoes, for the first time that she could recall they too were in color! She felt strange and slipped into the crowd once more on instinct. It no longer felt as uncomfortable as it just had though, the hum of the many people surrounding her felt like a disguise she could don, and a space she could move freely within as she gathered her thoughts on this particular stranger. Still, she could feel precisely where he stood in this place, like a beacon. She shifted through this crowd, repositioning herself to where she might peek out again, unseen from a closer vantage point. Sure enough, when she emerged she was only feet away, and his back was to her. She admired his unique aura, soaking it in, feeling almost embarrassed at how she stared. Still, she reasoned, she had always been an observer, and she found herself not turning away. She considered all the times before that she had interfered in movies, and how they had become inexorably changed by her touch. Even while she was talking herself into only observing she found herself walking right toward him on impulse! It was too late now, she stood close enough to touch, and as if sensing this he turned and looked right at her. His smile was warm, familiar somehow, as if they had met many times before this encounter. She once again noticed music, playing from some boom box someone had brought to the event, and then he spoke with her. Somehow it was hard retaining specific details of the conversation- she heard the words and she was in the moment, but there was something so intrinsically opposite of scripting to it that she had not experienced before, so it felt to her as a song rather than individual tangible words communicated.

They parted ways, and only in this afterglow did she realize that the whole while they talked it felt as if those same lines she had seen on the note in her pocket were being repeated on some deep level. She reached into her pocket to produce the note, certain he had written it, to prove to him their connection. When she reached into her pocket though she felt something else, a leathery object with a heft to it. She pulled it out and her face paled; it was his wallet. She turned, now at the edge of the crowd, and saw him searching his pockets for that very same wallet, before looking once more right at her. She held it up in embarrassment, cheeks turning red once more. He pointed right at her, mouth now open in disbelief. She could feel the crowd starting to notice her now, as if awakening to what she had done, so she slipped into it and out of his line of sight. They returned to normal soon enough, so she felt like she was out of the woods of being discovered. Her heart raced though, for a confusing variety of reasons, at this encounter. She was about to return to him, slightly calmer now, when a familiar hand grabbed hers. "He doesn't need it back, to him this is a dream." Just like that the concept of dreaming, one she remembered vaguely recognizing from the bar, made sense. She felt like she had heard of it elsewhere as well, from other scenes, but the concept had been foreign to her understanding up until this point. Considering it now fully now, it was as if others categorized these scenes differently, into more and less tangible groups, seeing reality differently than she did. She turned to the woman in order to ask her questions surrounding this and received once again a wink. This time the woman's eyes were painted blue but the rest of what she perceived of the woman and the wink was the same, including the sudden cascade of realization as to just how different her own experience was from this man she saw shining golden in the crowd. "He's about to swim, do you want to stay and watch?" She blushed at the thought but the woman added "I guarantee if he knew that it meant for you to see that your worlds can touch and his color not fade he would insist that you stay." She realized this woman was right, nothing had faded in this place, not even a bit. In fact, she herself had gained color within it. She soaked in the moment, a cool breeze on her face and music playing in in the warm summer air and agreed to stay for a time.

Just as suddenly as she had entered this amazing place she found herself back in the place where she had made the wish. "That must be dreaming, something like it anyway." She wanted to do it again, it became one of her obsessions. She retraced her steps- how she felt just before being transported, she wished again, but it seemed there was something missing. She did notice that her surroundings retained just a hint of the color she had seen, but so barely that it may have just been a trick of memory. Trick or not, she was glad for it, and she pressed on to recreate the experience. 

She found that by progressing as she had, to the point of frustration, she could wish and return. Each time was different, different scenes and contexts, but he was always the same. She eventually found that the frustration did not need to be hers alone, but that if she could frustrate the scene she was in instead it would provide the same spark. Her concern remained that there might come a time when his color faded from her perspective, but it did not. In these spaces she felt herself shining so brightly, but somehow he tolerated the influence, and they spoke of all manner of things. She could only wonder at his perspective, and how it must be so different from her own. She asked in eagerness from time to time, but received only convoluted responses. It did not seem that he meant to speak in riddles and stories, only that the topic was too complex to do justice in any other way. She loved hearing him talk like this though, that beautiful music always playing in the background whenever he did, and so she felt at peace with the idea that they may never fully understand each other. Then came a night when he paused, considering her approach as if understanding it in a new way, and then he spoke. "I know this is a dream, for me." She could not believe it, it was like he had pulled her card out of a hat without having a hat or her having ever said she had picked a card! His absurdly precise moment of insight into her path overwhelmed her. She took him by the hand and, knowing how often he seemed to lose pieces of these encounters, communicated to him the importance and joy of this moment in a way he would not forget, hoping he might retrace his steps as she once had to return in his own way. She introduced him to her family and he lingered. She realized from the context that in this scene they were at "her parent's place." Once more overwhelmed she thought to leave before he did. Outside she found orange cones, the representations of so many cautionary rules she had built up for herself in the time since the static, rules as they specifically applied to him and their interactions, including all the times he had broken them. She wanted more. She got into her car and ran over as many as she could as she sped off.

She woke in her bed, knowing now that her parents were downstairs and remembering the day before she woke up from this dream. She realized this was how he saw reality, how he experienced dreams and how he saw the world, a world which she was now certain she occupied as well. She could still slip between realms and influence them in her mind, but she found a part of her dare not leave this place, uncertain as to how she arrived here so vividly. As days went on she made music, playing their encounters into this reality, finding the arrangements would sometimes return as tangible new encounters, an elegant cycle that she became a savant at perpetuating. Her imagination moved with purpose now, seeing and reinforcing the many ways the parts of her that still wandered could arrive in this place in full, and how she could align their two perspectives, stitching the spaces between in such a way that their eyes would meet, and they could then stay in proximity ever more. She found that in her efforts she could craft encounters that struck him differently in predictable ways, creating tilted stages that he could detect the slope of in order to piece together her perspective, and in doing so she learned his perspective more fully as well. She crafted a masterpiece such that when their worlds did fully collide there would be nothing left that needed to be said, but anything and everything would be on the table for conversation's sake. She never wanted to lose the music in his voice, and she came to understand that he felt exactly the same way about her. 

The color and shape coming together fully now, she once more found herself unexpectedly in the field. A short distance before her stood a single rose amidst sepia toned surroundings. She took a step toward it cautiously, hardly believing she could lay eyes on it, much less walk toward it in such a non-circuitous way. Step by step she approached, expecting the scene to shift. In the best possible way, she found her expectations realized. The rose was her man, still a sleeper here, but now suddenly awake; he rose, saw her, and rushed toward her. She rushed to him and despite all prior experience in these fields when they embraced he did not fade immediately. "You now know precisely where to find me." She closed her eyes and he faded but in an expected and precise fashion. She felt the sense of his aura imbue her and vice versa, it was a wondrous compass leading her home, a home that was tuned exactly to his own. She looked down and the rose remained. She had once thought she would pick it, then perhaps pull it up by the roots and transplant it, taking it with her to carry always when she had finally found it. Now seeing reality as she had seen it and as he saw it, and seeing how both held a tangibility that was only amplified by the presence of the other she bent down and said "you're a good rose." Then she touched it and shifted back into the scene, to finish her approach, her steps and timing now exactly right.