3WW

My 3WW offering. This week's words: phase, stumble, grimace.

Stars

Fallingfallingfalling—

She grimaced and danced away from that dream. It hurt, that vacuum beneath the dreamer’s plunging self. Even if they always woke up before they hit the ground, it did her no good.

Pink flying hippos! I can fly with them, and mum and dad are here flying with me and they aren’t fighting anymore—

She phased gently into the child’s dream, unknitting herself from the aether souldrop by souldrop. For a moment she flew, and took the memory with her. Another piece to make her. The hippos she left for someone else, but she borrowed a giggle.

The next one confused her. She wasn’t sure why the men with black-and-white faces were there, nor why they drove with the dreamer in a horse and buggy over the ocean waves. But she took the word “kiss,” because she liked the sound of it.

It resurfaced, one mind over. She tried to ease into the tumble of sweat and heartbeats, but the intensity made her stumble. Some souldrops were left behind; she lost the flying (the new ones were the easiest to lose) but kept “kiss.”

And then she understood “kiss.”

She was most reluctant to draw away from that dream. From it, she gained hands, and touching, and a kind of happiness she’d seen in no other dreams.

Back to the aether, slipsliding into her place in the universe.

She substantiated back into herself, dark as the night sky between the stars. Fitting, for she was the night sky between the stars. Each tiny drop, glimmering with dream-joy, came alight as she scattered them over her hips and thighs. Around her, other angels returned to their places, absorbing new ecstasies to project during the day and light their planets.

She wondered if any of them had “kiss.”

***

I'm not really sure where this came from, but I like it. Critique welcome.