The First Time I Saw

The First Time I Saw...

This is a new and [hopefully] improved version of a story I have written. Any critique is requested and hoped for.

A cold mist... Dancing about my face... Kissing my cheeks lightly as delicate fairie wings...
... Where am I?
Now spread yourself, formless, across the area above me. Look down to see my journey throughout these strange events and watch, listen, as I unfold my tale to you. You see I move to get up.. What is this beneath my hands? It's clear and smooth. It feels like marble... it glitters with stars that go on forever. As if I am lying upon a glass that shelters the heavens themselves. As I struggle to hoist my body upright, I leave fingerprints. Traces of myself that disappear as quickly as I could see them.
When I am steadily on my feet, I notice I am wearing a surprisingly beautiful array of garments, a sort of which I have never seen.
It is a lovely, deep purple, loose fitting dress that flutters to an end about my knees. Layered and ruffled, the fabric itself has a pompous air, refusing to touch the tops of the dark, soft, forest green boots that almost reach it, but stop below my knees as if they feel themselves unworthy.
The sleeves of the dress reach down to gloves covering my hands to my fingertips, which are bare. The brush of my hair against my back tell me that the dress itself has no back at all.
It all appears fit for a princess.

A slight crackling sound.. Wait.. What's happening?
The stars beneath me seem to have gained a consciousness and energy. They shimmer brightly until the faucets of light become vines, leaves, then trunks of trees that spring up all around me, knocking me to my bottom onto soft green grass that was not there a moment ago. I find I am suddenly in the center of a bright, warm forest.
A canopy above me allow only the thinnest and nimblest of sun rays to pass. Tricksters. They come down to tickle the earth with the gentlest of touch.
I scan over the surroundings. There is a lovely, yet terrifying air about this place. I brush my dark hair from my eyes and instantly sense that there is life beyond these trees, a secret. Yet something sorrowful has happened here. It is as if the very air is unclean... The feeling is palpable like someone trying to warn me of impending pain.

I reach toward the nearest tree. Do not ask me why I do so. In a moment of grief for the heartbreaking sight of this place, I feel compelled to reach out and offer some sort of comfort, like how one reaches out to comfort a crying child that they have never even met.
Where my hands touch, the bark slides away, slipping past my fingers in droplets of a vivid blue. The bark.. is melting. I see with a surge of panic that all of them, every tree is sweating blue. Bright, dazzling blue! I am suddenly washed away in this, a waterfall of nature's tears.
With a splash I reach the bottom. The water is no longer blue here, it is natural. Or at least I believe it is, for it is so dark I can scarcely see. I am trapped in a chasm... So dark... And the water.. The water is rising fast!
Must think... I must act. I scurry along the walls with my hands, feeling for a gap but I find nothing, I thrust myself upward from the water and find above me only air.
Air that is quickly leaving me.

Soon I am choking, I need to breathe please please I MUST breathe! I am fighting for the surface but the water has consumed everything, there no longer is a surface to find. Everywhere I look I see only darkkness that is becoming a pure torture, I feel only craggy damp earth surrounding me.
Earth... A cave? My hands are certainly brushing over rock and mud. But I haven't the time to think about it. My lungs are burning I have to get out I have to get out I have to get OUT! A sharp pain through my head... Tighter and tighter... I'm going to scream and then, with a terrible gasp.....

-------

... I am awake again.
This happens all too often.
I am awake in the familiar, cold sweat, slipping from my damp sheets to place my bare feet onto the familiar rich and smooth dark hardwood floor.
I make only the softest of sounds as I move past my father's bedroom. I never choose to be around when he is in a concious, or worse, less than sober state of being. The man is no longer my father. More precisely, I am no longer family in his eyes. No longer the daughter that he raised alone. He made it clear long ago that my presense is no longer welcome, but he can hardly throw me out into the streets. He cares too much for his public reputation for that. If you were to stay with me for more than a day you would see him as everyone else sees him: the cheerful man with a jolly laugh that enjoys a drink or two before coming home to his only child that he works so hard to support. I have never bothered to tell otherwise. Why bother? Just let it go on as it is, for I can usually stay out of his sight as we go about our daily lives. Were you to merge yourself with the woodwork of our home, you would laugh as you watched two people such as he and I avoid one another so completely while living in the same house with a deft confidence so it seems almost accidental. As if neither one knows that the other is there. We have constructed it like a dance, memorizing each other's steps. Taking our meals at seperate times and never walking toward the same room. He could never have been described as a loving man, even before my... sensitivities. Therefore the loss of his love was no great burden to my heart.
At least... that is what I continue to tell myself.

However, what his eyes see and what his simplistic mind concludes is no longer a concern to me, because my own eyes have seen things far beyond anything he could ever imagine. What he could allow himself to imagine, if he were ever to give himself the chance.
To each his own I suppose.

Now I step outside to greet the new day, to see the dew rise from the grass and green leaves and playful light peek out from behind it all to meet my shining eyes. Are you watching it with me? It is truly beautiful. I often come out here alone to watch the dawn break, to taste the sweet moist morning airbefore I must go out and face what my father would call "real". The provincial life I am subjected to by day.

For the most part, people don't seem to mind. In fact, a handful of them seem genuinely happy in their routines, letting their fates just carry them away, following the paths they decided for themselves.. A mystery to me I will nevre know the secrets of. There is a certain irony in that, for I know things that they will never ever know, that I cannot share. Sometimes I question whether this is a blessing, or a curse..
But any thoughts of the latter are banished, when I think back to the moment my life changed. When my heart was claimed forever by something that nobody else can see.
And that, dear one, is what my story is really here to tell you.

--

Now settle yourself in aa comfortable form as I tell you that I can trace my dreams back to the moment that I first gave into pain, leading to the only way that my heart could heal.
Now come with me into my memory, and hover above me as you watch the events occur that must be shared, in the only way that I know how.

It us raining. And I am running. Running as fast as I can to get away from the house, away from my drunk, screaming father...
Away from my nightmares.
I woke up from a horrible nightmare, screaming in fear of goblins and delvers that held me prisoner in my sleep, and are still holding their grip on my mind as I fight my covers to get out, to run away, to be freed. My father-never one for "fairy tales"- drunk after his long day, burst into the room hollering at me that he was fed up with my nonsense, to stop speaking devil's tales. Trying to beat me senseless.
Now watch with me in my memory as i am running aimlessly through the woods, wet grass, leaves and mud splashing up from beneath.
Eventually I break down, my knees failing under my weight and I collapse with tears streaming from my eyes, gasping for breath. Each raindrop seemed to be insulting me, trying to force me to become one with the soil beneath me and convincing me it would be better if I simply ceased to exist. It is the only time I can remember feeling so helpless in all of my fifteen years.
Realize, as you look around at my pitiful bidy and the woods surrounding it that I have led myself nowhere. I can no longer hear my father's cries nor can I see furthrt than the twigs around my hands. I stretch my body its full length across the ground, soaking myself but I don't care anymore. My body aches where father hit me, and my mind is still catching glimpses of the horrible creatures that still tried to hold my mind and keep me in a dream.
It is now, in the most horrifying of times... That I cry out from the very center of my heart... The very esscence of my soul. Not with words, but with everything else that I have left in me.
I wish for anything to help me banish the pain nd the darkness. Or if not, then let the world be done with me toss me aside so that I never have to feel anything again.
Now hold yourse;f, steady, inside the trees where you can catch the best veiw of the next events, and brace yourself for what can never be prepared.
I look up, and just beyond my vision I catch a glimpse of a creature so beautiful that it very nearly breaks my heart.
It is the first time I saw a unicorn.

----

It is nothing like the image one might have of a unicorn. There, you can see now from your position in the trees that is is not a picture of innocence, gentleness, or purity.. it is not a beast you you would picture prancing with rabbits in a meadow. No. This creature is one of pure life and fire.

In appearance, it is much as you would expect. Horeselike in body, but lacking a horse's sharp, defined lines. Smaller and somewhat shaplier than a horse as well. It's feet are cloved like a goat's, tufts of silk hanging about the ankles.
I do not blink, I can hardly breathe. I am terrified that if I look away, even for the slightest moment, the magnificent being will be gone forever.
After a while, however, I get the sense thatit wants me to move... Wants me to do... Something. So I lift myself from the ground. The rain has stopped for a while now, and the moon pours buttery moonlight down on the unicorn's gossomer flanks. I must have appeared like a mouse in comparison, covered in mud that is, as you see, falling off of my clothes and drying hair. I moved slowly toward the unicorn. I do not move so cautiously because I suspected it mayy be skittish, oh no I do not think that for a moment. I cannot imagine this beast being afraid of anything. I am more frightened that I will do something disrespectful, and he will turn and leave in discust.

Finally, I am close enough to look into his bright eyes that do not reflect my image. I cannot see myself in them. I want more than anything to touch his flowing mane that looks like liquid fire, threads of light.
For a long time we stare into each other's eyes. He feels my pain.. Somehow I know this. The very air around him seems alive with all emotion, anger passion and joy, everything that can reside in the soul save for sadness or lonlieness.
He seems to speak to me. Without a word I reach out to touch his brilliant horn.

My hand feels as if it has caught fire,, but oh.. my heart fills with joy!

This is th moment that can only be described, for you cannot see it. Every fiber of my being filled with a sense of promise... A sense of untouched hoy waiting just past the next moment... quivered  a love of things unseen..
I felt myself being cleansed of everything that haunts me, an ecstasy none can fathom.
Then, in an explosion of light and fire...

---

I wake up again in the woods near my home. I am safe, warm, and suprisingly dry. I can still hear the unicorn's peircing cry in my ears. Follow me as I walk home, pass the dozing figure of my father... feeling better than I had in a long time.

I have left this story to you to say that every dream is real in its own way.. My hand still bears the unicorn's mark, and I know I will aee him again. I heard that promise the moment before I awoke that day, and our souls connected.
That, is enough to keep me going until that day.
And enough to keep me believing.


Now my story is at an end. Now float yourself, formless and free, above this place. Look down as you fly up and up and see the rich green all around you, so that my home looks no bigger than the trees, blending into the scenery.
Now look strait ahead. Turn a circle. Feel the light, cold air around you as you see nothing but beatiful, perfect light sky blue. It is quiet and still up here. Perfect.
Now take a deep breath

And disappear.