A couple of months ago now I ventured to the weird side of the river in a dream. I wasn’t aware there was a ‘weird side’ but according to the dream there is. I walked along the path beside the river and to the left side of me was a quite dark, mysterious looking forest and to the right, a few trees, a large expanse of grass and a road lined with houses in the near distance. I somehow ran into a boy, dressed all in black and just like that, I fell in love with him. I never told him, nor were there any particular clues that told my sleeping self that I was in love, I just felt it. I don’t remember anything particularly special about him that made me fall in love. I don’t remember any striking personality traits or anything overly stunning about him. Not that any of that would have stopped me falling in love, but I’d not even talked to him yet. As far as I’m aware, he was quite ordinary, whatever ordinary even is. I just fell in love. Maybe that’s just how love works some times, maybe that’s what my dream was trying to tell me.
Anyway, we talked and hung out and still, it wasn’t anything special, but still I was in love. But the thing is, he was a shape shifter. He could turn into a bird whenever he pleased. However I think it was that he could turn into a human whenever he pleased. It seemed his main form was a bird because he didn’t seem to have belongings, a human family, or a house. He didn’t even have proper clothes. As far as I’m aware, he lived in one of the trees by the weird side of the river. This love at first sight thing was slightly problematic for me because of this. He didn’t have a phone or basically anything that we could contact each other with, so my dreaming self deemed the only possible way of seeing him again would be to return to the weird side of the river. But every time I went back after our very first meeting, he wasn’t there, or at least didn’t change into human form for me. If he was there, he was there as a bird and was completely ignoring me. I woke up after venturing back to the weird side of the river a couple of times in search of my love. I found myself feeling oddly sad when I woke up. Both because I’d only been able to see my love at first sight once, and because now I’d woken up and realised he didn’t actually ever exist anyway. Weird how these things work.
That’s the end of the dream. I’m not sure where most of it came from or why I dreamt it. But even though it happened a couple of months ago, I find myself thinking about it time and time again and I still remember it very vividly. That’s why I thought I’d write about it I guess.
Lauren Kathleen 