Stars Dancing [Dreams-To-Lovers Romance]

Will I be a song?

And stay with you

A breeze

The hum of bees

The morning bird?

I'll be a song

And kiss your skin

And fill you

And flow with you

For always.

Collected Unpublished Lyrics

- Sibsil Creed, Stories of Shurwinn (2790)

Dream Journal

There was thunder. It was rumbling. Rumbling. Everything was shaking. And moving. And I was running. I had to get away! There was a door. I saw the doorknob. It was my house— no, not my house, my mother's house. I reached for the doorknob. No! Not that house! Not that way! Run. I turned to run. There was a terrace. There was snow. I ran through snow. My barefeet were sliding. I was slipping. The terrace crumbled. There was an avalanche. I was falling. I would be buried. I had to get away. I reached. I reached for something. I had to grab hold.

An arm caught mine. He pulled me to him. Everything was still. And warm. I was okay. He held me. There were words. I didn't know them. Words. Comforting words. "Melthena."

I woke up.

Journal

"Melthena." He said "Melthena." I can't find the meaning of the word. I can't find a language where it is a word or a name. It doesn't translate. No where in the 9 Galaxies is this word! Did I mis-hear? Am I just making it up? It felt so real.

I can't remember his voice. It was just a feeling rolling through me. Longing. Longing. Belonging.

I felt like I belonged with him, the presence who came to me in dreams. Like we're always reaching out, and just barely grabbing hold. Now I have a word, and I can't find it anywhere. There were other words too, but they slipped away, like a whisper just out of earshot.

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The Normal Monk

An animated version of me—no an animated video game version of me— looked out from the stream. I was in 3/4 length black tights covering my too thin waist and too wide hips with a black tight tank stretched over my overly busty chest, accented by dark emerald diamond-shaped stripes under the breasts.

I pulled my hair up into a bushy pile on the top of my head. It looked like I had desert pampas grass sprouting out of my cranium!

And that was normal, right? I had to be so normal, so unremarkable that no one would notice me. No one would notice the off sphere. I was so normal that I was practically invisible and no one would ask why I was there. No one would say, "Is she an off-world spy? Thief? What nefarious plots caused her to secret herself away in a desert monastery?"

I went about the monastery being totally normal. Boring. Unnoticeable. It was normal to pile a plate full of only raw broccoli. That was normal, right? Everybody ate only raw broccoli for lunch. I was practically invisible.

It was normal to avoid the dining hall and eat a whole plate of broccoli outside in the baking hot desert sun alone, right? I was the wind. No one could see me.

Normal people prance about the library, needing to pee but not asking anyone where the bathroom is. That was normal, right? No one even knew I was there, clutching myself, sweating, desperate for a pee.

And there it was, the real reason I'd snuck into the monastery! All my secret hopes and dreams. All my plans and scheming! Chaludra! Chaludra, my queen! My everything! Her special edition print graphic. The only one in Shurwinn! Chaludra! I stuffed the graphic down the back of my tights. That's what everyone does with library books, right? No one could see me. I was invisible. It was all very normal.

I fell asleep on my bed reading Chaludra. Chaludra came to me in my dreams. My queen! Chaludra! Only she was a broccoli-shaped crazed version of Chaludra. She was a mad warrior broccoli goddess hell-bent on avenging the vegetable kingdom for my offenses! "Pay, you monk! Pay! Know the fury of the broccoli!"

Animated me woke, sweating, panting. This was all normal, wasn't it?

Side-splitting laughter. Tears in my eyes— soooo funny! Stars, I had to stop laughing, or I really would wet myself. Gold. Peydran had been right—it was GOLD! My curry video was also fine, so I approved the Living Foods from Shurwinn site exactly as Peydran had prepared it.

And that was it! I was launched! Citizenship, and a new business. And friends. Family. I felt positively giddy! I wanted to celebrate and go out or do something normal — ha! Not hide away in the desert surviving on raw broccoli and doing unspeakable things to library books. Haaa. I cracked myself up.

I had to do something to thank Jasen and Alen. I started wondering what I could get to thank a couple of guys in Uni. My thoughts took a decidedly weird turn. Oh stars, would I really do that? Hell, yes! I was ready to break out and break free!

"Peydran, I have an idea for a thank-you-gift for Jasen and Alen," I said into the video. "But we don't have much time. It'll be some work, and travel. But I think it's just insane enough to rock their boats and shock the two comedians who called me The Normal Monk." I explained my idea.

"Haaaaaaa. SANDS! Ohhh. You will break them, Ryst Nova, and I'll be there to catch it on video. You get the outfit. I have plans to make. Actors to hire. Invoices and airships and itineraries forthcoming."

I had a tailor to see.

"I'm planning to shock the stars out of two young, single, heterosexual male comedians," I explained to Mauren, my tailor, as I rushed through her shop door.

She grinned wickedly, "You are a wildfire, and they will burn."

Magic Hour imagining of The Normal Monk