Sometimes, in my dreams, I wake up in cobblestone streets, the path ahead weaving as far as my eye can see, between washed out yellow walls caked with grime and dust. A car rushes by, spewing a cloud of smoke into me even as a lady two floors up on a balcony whips out a red cloth and folds it over the metal railing. She sees a neighbour two units away, and calls out to her in a language I do not recognise. I hear the distant wail of an ambulance siren, and somewhere around the corner an accordion is playing a melody that seems all too familiar, and yet all too foreign. I walk past an ancient store. I know not what it sells behind the dust caked windows with dull red lettering, and I hear a bell chime as the door opens and closes in tune with customers entering and leaving.
I close my eyes again, and now I am atop a mountain. To one side I see the sea, the surf lapping up the beach, the clouds floating by in the breeze. The sun hurts my eyes as it filters in through the clouds, and the strong winds whip against my face as I make my way to the other side of the summit, where an ancient city sprawls below me. I feel a sense of awe flooding over me, as my eyes take in the vista that now unfolds like a carpet before me, of buildings and roads and everything in between. My eyes follow the railway, a giant scar upon a sea of land parcels, as it leads out of the metropolis and over the hills beyond.
And my dreams change again, and I am on a bus in a highway, half awake. I must have slept. I look out of the window, and I see rolling pastures of green, and fields of yellow flowers that stretch out for miles on end. I see hillsides flocked with specks of white, each a grazing furry sheep. I see chestnut mares cantering alongside, and cows swaying their heads slowly to the rhythm of the afternoon breeze. A road sign in green rushes up. Another twenty minutes.
And I am in the city now, in a railway station somewhere. People rush by me, and the air overhead is constantly punctuated by an operator calling out the timings of the next few trains. A big board with orange letterings appears in the distance, and my eyes squint to follow the small line of running text below to see if my destination is amongst them. I smell a waft of something buttery from a nearby patisserie, and I see a florist in the distance wrapping up a pretty bouquet of yellow and purple flowers in plastic. A commuter in a hurry bumps into me from the side. He rushes off without saying sorry, another face that melts into the crowd. A cold sharp wind blows through the whole station, whipping my ankles and sending scraps of paper fluttering askew. I suddenly feel as if I'm standing alone in the middle of a rushing sea, frozen in time, out of place, as the sound of the bustle around me begins to fade.
And suddenly I'm climbing a wide marble staircase. I feel my feet sink with every step into the carpet below, and as I ascend a great hall looms into view. I see floor to ceiling windows on both sides with drapes of velvet, and portraits of great men long dead interspersed between each. Above these portraits I see swords, crisscrossed into coats of arms. Several chandeliers hang overhead, and a long table with chairs in golden frames takes up the middle of the room, set as though waiting for a great feast.
And I wake. And I realise it was all a dream. And I realise that perhaps, my life was once a dream.