SHORT STORIES: The Dream
By Anne Errington
It was a cold and damp morning when she looked over the hills.
“ Winter is coming,” she thought. “How I wish I was somewhere sunny and warm”.
The sidhe, a fairy, went back to the warmth of the fire and the next thing she knew she was on a large silver bird flying over hills and lochs, rivers and fields, forests and mountains, and seas. The silver bird landed in a warm golden land.
“ I must be dreaming”, thought the sidhe.
She was on a roof top. The sky was blue, the breeze was warm and the sun shone. She looked around, it was not a kind of roof top she knew, it was flat and ran around a large rectangular hole in the middle. She looked down, there were other galleries running around below and right at the bottom there was a small fountain, a tiled floor and a tree with birds flying among the branches. She went and joined them in the branches, they had never seen anything quite like her and fluttered around. Then she heard voices and went to hide in the shadow of the wall.
People were coming up the stairs onto the roof. They were greeting each other, happy to be seeing each other again. They sat down and began discussing a Festival of ”Visions and Stories.”
“What are these visions and stories,“ thought the sidhe.
“I hope this dream lasts long enough for me to find out!”
Soon she was walking the the streets of Marrakech, watching everyone meeting old friends and making new ones. There were workshops, talks, photographs and stories. A photo exhibition had images from all over Morocco. A photographic talk took them from the warm climes of Morocco to the frozen beautiful land of the Antarctic. There was music and stories. In the stories there were big white bears, clever women, tricksy men and creatures that the fairy had often met in her world! The music had her toes twitching. One afternoon there was a meeting only of women and the sidhe listened to their stories and their visions for the future.
Of an evening the group would get together in different restaurants and talk about their day - she was sad that she had missed a bicycle tour of Marrakesh and the stories.
The fairy loved sitting quietly in a corner soaking up the atmosphere and the food smelt so good, but whenever she tried to nibble bits off plates she kept on getting brushed away.
At the end of the four days she was sitting on the wall of the roof terrace blending in with the shadows of the glowing lanterns under the purple blue night sky. The warm air and the sound of voices in different languages flowing around her. “How special this is,” she thought, “this is how the world should be. Sharing stories and visions of cultures past and present.” She was so excited that she forgot to hold on and fell off!
“Oops,” she thought, but before she could sort herself out, she was a fairy after all, she was back on the silver bird flying over hills and lochs, rivers and fields, forests and mountains, and seas.
The fire was almost burnt to ashes, outside it was still misty but the leaves on the trees had a golden glow. “That reminds me of my dream…or was it a dream?” she wondered as she bent down and saw that her little feet were covered with a dusting of gold.
