Floating Forever
Eyes wrenched open, I stared at the purple twinkle lights arranged randomly on my ceiling, and blinked in epic frustration. "Are you kidding me!?" I kind of huff-growled, knowing I was alone in my blustery blast of disbelief. Neither my sister, Mabyn, brother-in-law, Sequoia, nor their love child, Wyatt, were around to witness my typhoon of teenagery trauma.
Drama.
Llama.
Ugg. Whatever.
"FRAK! Freaking FRIK Frak!" I kicked my legs and punched my fists at the ridiculousness of my human brain to sense stress where, to my knowledge- there was none. Or so, I had thought. But dream Moswen, well, me, flip.
I… was apparently, very stressed.
I blew out a sigh and stood up, righting my jammy top, finding my morning focus shifting as always, into the trees. Stressed? Moi?
“Pfft. Not hardly.” I thought I was at least aware of myself enough to know when I FELT a feeling.
I thought…
Or was there a deeper meaning? “Gasp! Yeah, and why was Murph on the green, with me?" That was odd. “He’s only supposed to be in the pit!” I reminded the orchard. It didn’t seem to care.
I reassured myself, “I have to. I simply have to know." I had to look it up. Find out if there was a deeper, magical or ominous meaning.
"No. Don't fester over it. Get on with your day. Do not look it up!”
I could look it up... and then I would be over it. Super quick.
I put in my search term, "What does it mean to dream that you forgot something?" And then I read several of the choices in interpretation. One stood out.
Well... Frak. I sighed and shook out my muscles, jumping baby jumps in a circle.
"There's nothing to it, Wen." I consoled myself out loud. "Dreams don't have to make sense. Just think kind thoughts and let it wash away. It does not mean you want to release your band burden. Doesn't mean you want to quit your very Marching Guard and Color Band life. Nope. Don't believe everything on the internet." I sighed in partial misery. Was Marching Band really so taxing on my life force? Was I giving up too much of myself? Was it taking a toll on my future body? No. Nope. Wash it away. I sighed heavily.
But I couldn't shake it off so easily. My marching-mare felt like a message. A warning. A freaky kind of foreshadowing. But what exactly? And why Murphy... standing on the football field with me, a weird forest- which wasn't anywhere close to being an organized orchard of almond or walnut trees- springing up around us at the end, the stadium no longer there, stars glimmering overhead, the hush of a life far removed from motion and music and magic?
Far from what used to matter.
Because in the moment before I woke up- all that had mattered to me was him.
Murphy Manners.
My Murphy.
Not that he knew my predilection for claiming him for my future. Not right now now. Perhaps soon soon. Or sooner than that. But when color guard was no longer my ultimate source of joy and belonging and fun and friends and sometimes like. When I was no longer devoted to my flag, rifle and saber... plus whatever other guard equipment Nox or The McCrae came up with.
Murphy could be my future...he just didn't know it yet. Mmm. What a future. Who cared about college? Why wait so long?
Why wait til senior year was over if I could give in to my secret priority shift now, try to date him, make him mine. By the time we graduated, we could be engaged or on the cusp of marrying. Like my sister. Speaking of...
I stabbed my pointer finger into Mabyn's tiny face on my phone and waited for her voice. "Wen?" She asked, worry in her tone.
"It's happening… again." I quickly lamented knowing she would understand what I meant because we had already been through this each season of my three years of color guard. Well, without the Murphy stuff. We hadn't even had band camp yet and the nightmares were messaging me, like a dreamscape stalker. Frak.
"Oooh, already? The Marching Mare huh?"
"Yes! I haven't even been stressing about the show because I literally haven't learned it yet."
"I know. This is ultra quick."
"Go float, Wen Wen." Wyatt calmly advised from the back seat, ever the eavesdropper, being that he was six, and Mabyn's old FJ now had Bluetooth capability.
"Wy has a point. Float. It. Away." Mabyn giggled at her son. "And breathe."
"You're right. Both of you. I just need to float." Float my irksome and happening waaay to early feelings away.
I snagged my suit from the shower, where it had dripped dry since my last splash down outside as Mabyn muttered something to a drive-up window, probably buttering up Wyatt with hotcakes and chocolate milk.
But my sister and nephew were wise. I just needed to float it away and not fixate on what my dream meant.
"We have mucho errands, and my needs some more books so we'll see you this afternoon... unless you decide to so-cial-ize?" Mabyn sang the last word like an invitation and a tease.
"I want to social eyes." Wyatt said in the background, to which Mabyn answered "You are socializing with me, right now Wy. Hello? Mom's count."
"You're right, Mother. Mom's count." He agreed easily.
“Ugh. What’s with the Mother thing?” I could hear her asking, thrown by his adultish wording.
“No more books, Mom! You is always sucked into your words, laughing at your writing. Why not read it to me? I’m here.”
"Okay. I get it." I tried to get a word in, "I'll call Ace." I claimed, hoping I meant it. I felt out of sorts and Ace wouldn't comfort me. It wasn't in her to be empathic. She was too busy for emotional bolstering. But she was a blast to do errands with, so efficient and straightforward plus she was fierce on the field. We just didn't do girl talk stuff. I would call her. Later.
"YAY A-ce-li-aaaaahh!" Wyatt sang her name, much like his mother's tendency to make our names into music.
"Only you get to call her that Wy! Good thing you're cute!"
"My know." He quickly agreed.
"Total YAY!" Mabyn agreed. "Sometimes your world away from guard is too small Wen, gets to you. You need your people."
"My people. Hah. You're my people but o-kay." I rolled my eyes hearing my people from Mabyn again. The tease that my band and guard people were my people. My only people. Let's face it- that's a lot of people. Two hundred give or take, depending on the day and which kind of practice we were having. But maybe it was true.
A bit.
Or like a lot.
Considering the lifestyle... yeah. They were my only people. I mean, I had some friends in my classes... nice friends, though we didn't socialize outside of school. But that was okay. I didn't crave more people. Non-band people, showing up out of nowhere thinking I had all the time left in my teen years to socialize outside of my universe.
"Today is a good day for pie!" Wyatt growl yelled in the car, probably earning a dessert for himself just by being a young Trekkie.
"You honor my house!" Mabyn yell snarled over the speaker almost sounding like a Klingon. Almost. We were learning Klingon together, well, separately together on our phone app and it was not going well. But it was fun and someday, out in public, we would be able to talk about private and perhaps weird stuff without others understanding. Like tampon sizing and nipple chafing, everything about sex, oral, hands, all the things. Well, we already talked about those things, probably too loudly amongst strangers but we had to talk while we were out of the house or Wyatt would hear and repeat whatever adult thing we said. Plus, it was awkward to talk about sex with my sister while her husband was in the kitchen winking or giggling. But we could talk while swimming at night, after they both went to bed. My sister and I had been talking about our sexuality since before I got the red haze. Like when she did. Now it was just an aspect of life. To talk about it. Doing any of it could wait until I was devoted to a husband person instead of a high school extracurricular.
"Make it so!" Wy added, trying his hardest to sound like Captain Picard while at the same time demanding pie. Seriously adorable.
"Shut up,Wesley." I responded, running out of lines other than command codes to set off the self destruct and something about phasers to stun, and our call ended.
I went to strip down and get into my suit, to float my irksome and happening way too soon feelings out of my system.
I was floating starfish style, taking a moment to flip off the sky, watching some suspicious cumulus clouds float by overhead. The air was death-valley hot already having not cooled down at all overnight, for too many nights in a row to bother counting anymore.
It was deep summer.
In the valley.
Hot. Roasting.
Speaking of HOT. Murphy standing so close to me out on the field, when everything stopped mattering, beyond wondering why there was a veritable forest of trees- that didn't really grow naturally down in the valley- feeling like time was ours and he was mine and I was his and we would go on forever...
No more Marching Band.
No more Color Guard.
No more Winter Guard.
No more competitions.
No more away trips.
No more band council.
No more band room.
No more music and motion… and magic.
But there were trees... stars... a low repetitive beat beyond the forest and a deep, glimmering happiness.
Frak. Where did the glimmer of happy come from? Murphy? Hmmm. Mmm. Yeah, I could get behind that. But wait! We weren't even dating! How would I get from sort of band friends to kissing and forever? And forever in a forest? Where was that place? Canada? Washington? I had never been to either, how would I come up with that imagery on my own?
Oh yeah.
Stargate SG-1. Dang it. Frak.
So much forest in that show!
Flip. I growled, grumbled, really, but it was a harsh vibration while my ears were submerged in pool water. Breathe. “Breathe. Just float it off, Wen." I spoke to me. To the clouds. They didn't care if I was feeling angst. They were just clouds.
I blew out a raspberry, growling, "FRAK!" to the sky. It was growing rather stormy up there. Dark and brooding. Like me.
The world of water suddenly rumbled, sloshing, shaking, I gulped in some water, going under, surfacing again, sputtering for a breath. Finding purchase with my feet to push off and grab the side of the pool, I attempted to make my way out. I pulled myself over the side onto cement, rolling onto my back, coughing and then scrambled upright.
“Grasping Galaxies!”
That wasn't just a thunder storm.
It was an “EARTHQUAKE!”
