a dream, a search...
The world around me was white noise and silence being strangled into submission. My vision was swirls of constellations, that I'd never been lucky enough to visit in person, and now they'd come to visit me. I was a fish out of water, gasping for words, but only finding air.
I needed words. Why do they elude me like slippery fishes, leaving behind only the glint from their silvery skin? I gasp, and chase and clench my fists over empty air.
Suddenly, I remember. I look at my open, empty hands, and I remember. My words have always loved my hands better than my lips. How foolish. How could I have forgotten.
And then my hands begin to search. Clawing and grabbing for anything in reach. The white begins to fade, and the noise slowly builds up around me. The silence becomes sound, then the sound turns into voices.
They cry out reassurances. They want to know if I can hear them. They ask if I see them. They keep calling my name. They say it over and over, until my name becomes a stranger to me.
One voice reaches out to me better than the rest, and I allow my hands to reach for it. I grab something, I tug, the voice stops a moment. Then I hear it again, this time closer to my ear. My name, a question this time.
I whisper, let me borrow a few of your words. I am met with silence, but for short raspy breaths, that feel hot against my face. The rest of the noise has receded to silence again. I open my mouth.
The words are not my own, and my tongue can tell. They are heavy and crippled, but they are with intent,
"Where....my..words..."
Things borrowed must not stay away from where they belong for longer than they're allowed, and I had no wish to make them. So I let them go. The fishes, the voice and the last of the noise.
.
.
.
My eyes shot open, and I sat up with a gasp. I hadn't meant to fall asleep, and now people at the adjacent tables were giving me odd looks. My coffee had grown cold, and my entire left arm was numb, but had somehow miraculously kept hold of my phone.
My laptop showed a blank screen. I tapped it back to life and checked my phone while waiting for it to boot up.
I'd dozed off in the middle of mindlessly scrolling through my feed and the last post I'd read was still on the page. Something about our dreams being the unfulfilled wishes of our past. I took a moment, trying to recall the dream I'd just had. But all I could remember was muffled sounds and the odd sensation on my tongue once I'd woken up. Like when I got allergies and couldn't form a single coherent word.
Brushing off the thought, I turned to my laptop and groaned. The cursor blinked on the word document, that still sat on page 1. The only words being "Prologue".
The groan had earned me a few more disapproving looks, so I pressed my fists against my mouth and sat glaring at the screen.
After a few seconds, I gave up and typed down the first words that popped into my head.
"Where...were...my..words?"
