The Sleep of Fall

Chaos is my water.

I need it to breathe.

I need it to dream.

Each breath too dry.

I surface to wake.

I am under stars.

I lie on earth.

Turn out from myself

And touch.

Caress the air.

Taste it.

Smell of earth.

Open other senses.

Feel my body.

Find my place.

Hunger burns.

The need to know.

It burns.

I remember.

My name is Fall.

Born from sleep I feel asleep.

I feel alone, my reader is not with me.

Stories drift by unread, dreamed no more.

What woke me.

Why alone?

Two purposes I have then.

Tasks to pursue to race's end.

Day passes to night as I stand.

Thought turns me as stars turn overhead.

Hope stirs as I spy an unnatural satellite

A false star twinkling in darkened sky.

Stood still I still move but not enough

Time to move, 

And I do.

Change rains down

My eternal dancer

In whose dance I could disappear.

Without my reader.

Journey forks.

Here I stand.

Do I move aside and on.

Or meet the stranger.

They are unlike.

So unlike I must change.

So I whisper goodbye

And walk forward

To greet the strange.

Something is wrong.

I cannot talk.

The change went wrong.

I blunder away from their eyes

Stumble and run

What happened?

Nothing felt wrong, and then it was.

Perhaps I dreamed too long.

Unused to the restraints of time.

Perhaps my guide read wrong.

Or has not read for time long gone.

I fall apart without the words.

Time to flee and think again.

The child saw it, it lay quiet in the shade.  She ran over and looked.  Its eyes were black like a birds.  They stared at her.  Skin shining metallically.

She knelt down and looked more closely.  She reached out to touch it.  It felt cool and smooth.  Her fingers felt numb and tickley.  She couldn't move her hand, and shook her arm but her fingers felt wooden and frozen in their hold of the little animal.

She cried out to Mommy.  And sat crying wretched-faced as her arm grew dead. She couldn't stand up and fell over stumbling towards the house.

She fell unconscious.

And the dreamer fell asleep.

...at this point we must stop this continuing work in progress.

I hope it's of some interest, and would welcome any comments.

I'm not quite sure what I'm intending to do but so far I'm so happy to be writing I'm just writing and not doing terribly much planning.

Not too happy with some of the technical aspects of what I've done, but I can't expect it to be perfect in first draft.  That way lies madness and a government job.