Creative Writing "The Dream Sender" Ch. 1

Her first month, she was Amy. Without a memory in her head or any knowledge as to who she was or what she was doing in the little stone cabin along the river, Amy had chosen not to be scared. There was a settled sort of calm in the cabin, telling her she belonged there and was safe there, so she wasn’t frightened of being alone even though she’d seen her reflection in the warped, old mirror she’d found in the washroom and saw the face of a girl who couldn’t be more than thirteen years old. It explained why she could remember what a thirteen-year-old looked like, how to count, read, write, and multiply fractions but couldn’t recall how to work the wood-burning stove in the kitchen. At thirteen, she’d probably never been allowed to.

Amy was shy, though still not afraid. She made no attempts to venture outside of the cabin or the cabin’s little yard and garden, thought it best not to bother with working the stove and instead ate what she could eat uncooked. She read the ten or twenty worn-out books on the shelf in the front room for entertainment, and occasionally she went outside to watch the clouds.

After a month, Amy became bored of being Amy. While flipping through an old, hand-written book of the alphabet that she’d probably used when she was two or three or however old she’d been when she learned to read, she chose to be Bonnie instead. She figured that going in order would be the best thing to do.

Bonnie was a bit more venturesome than Amy had been. Rather than simply eating the stored, cured meats in the cellar and the raw vegetables from the garden, Bonnie had learned how to work that wood-burning stove and cooked herself a nice meat-and-vegetable stew. It was delicious just because it was hot, and she hoped that one day she’d be able to cook something that was just plain delicious. Bonnie was a hopeful type of person.

After Bonnie’s month, there was the month of Cara. Cara was even more curious and courageous than Bonnie had been – she’d found a cookbook in the cupboard next to the sink and decided to bake a loaf of bread. It’d been doughy and charred on the bottom, but Cara chalked it up as a learning experience and knew she would do better the next time around. Cara was the optimistic sort, tossed out hopefulness and replaced it with assuredness in her learning newer, better things.

Cara had also found a fishing pole in the cupboard and caught two fish from the nearby river. She’d used the seasonings she’d found in the pantry to cook one fish, and used salt to store the other for another day. Cara, she figured, would be the type to save and preserve food for another day.

Each month, the name changed in the order of the alphabet. She had strange names (Firelily, Juniper, Isle), she had pretty names (Darla, Gweneth, Kiandra), and she had simple names (Eve, Holly, Lee). Twelve months and twelve names flew by in what felt like a flash, and with each new month she changed just a little, just for that one name and one month, but also each month she learned something new that stuck with her no matter what the name, that she knew she would keep forever.

She learned that she didn’t like the hot summer days as much as she liked the cool summer nights, and she learned that she could whistle a tune very well, but couldn't snap her fingers along with it. She felt that she had a truly terrible singing voice even though she couldn’t really tell from inside her own head, which is why she’d started whistling in the first place. She didn’t like swimming, no matter how hot the day was, but she didn’t mind heights and really enjoyed climbing trees, or on top of the roof of the cabin in order to repair it. It took her forever to chop wood for the stove, but she’d learned how to use the stove well enough that her food never burned and was never undercooked, and she learned that different types of trees and wood gave the food different kinds of flavors.

They were all things that could have been new before, but were definitely new now, and with that thrilling knowledge she learned that the thing she loved most was learning new things.

In the thirteenth month, which is the month that things began to change for her, her name was Mist. Mist was quiet like her name would imply, but she was the most adventurous because it was in the month of Mist that she decided to go to Market for the first time, in order to attend the Harvest Festival.

As Bonnie, she’d been able to see the smoke from the city across the river and she’d been able to see the fireworks every night of the Harvest week. She’d missed the last one because she’d just been Bonnie for a few days and she’d been too new at not knowing herself. But as Mist, a year had passed since she’d woken up without a memory and she’d adjusted quite nicely to not knowing what had come before. She was happy, in fact, to know everything she did and still look at the world with somewhat new eyes, and though she was curious to know how she’d been before she was Amy, she didn’t feel she needed the information in order to be happy.

On the third morning of the Festival, Mist set out wearing a tattered-looking brown cloak and carrying a jar full of little bronze coins, both of which she’d found in a wooden trunk in her room. She walked the meandering path along the river that lead to the small, rickety bridge that lay across it, and as she walked she whistled. The sky was bright and blue and the breeze was light and cool, and carried on it was the smell of cooking food and burning wood from the doubtlessly bustling, joyous festival a half a mile ahead of her. The scent made Mist’s mouth water and her stomach growl, and she regretted not eating a better breakfast than toast and an apple before she’d left.

“I’ll get some when I’m there,” she spoke to herself – a habit she’d gotten used to over the year, having no one else to talk to other than a long-haired black cat that occasionally watched her from the garden.

She jangled the jar of coins as she walked. The sound of the metal coins against the glass jar was, she thought, a good accompaniment to the nameless tune she whistled or hummed, but apparently those around her thought differently.

“Could you stop that noise, please?” said a voice from behind her. She jumped, startled, and looked around – but she saw no one there.

“Here,” the voice called, and Mist looked down to find that black cat from her garden looking up at her, his wide, bottlebrush tail swishing and his bright green eyes slanted in annoyance. “You have no idea how annoying a sound can be when you have better hearing than most,” he said.

Mist frowned, kneeling down to get a closer look at the cat. “I’m sorry… But I don’t remember you being able to speak before.”

“In the garden, I can’t,” he said. “It’s only on the outside that I can communicate with you. The garden is a different world.”

“What does that mean?”

The cat gave her a contemptuous look that only a cat could pull off and said, “Exactly what it sounds like. The garden, the yard, your entire property – they’re all a different world from this one.”

Mist blinked, looking around. The trees were either green or brown and gold from autumn cold, the butterflies that fluttered across the path were regular butterfly colors – mostly white or pale yellow, with the occasional orange. The air, even with the smells of the Festival floating on it, was still the same air she’d felt during her lazy days watching clouds. The sky was ‑blue and beautiful, and looked no different from any other sky she’d seen on any other day in all of a year.

“It looks the same,” she said when she turned back to the cat.

“You’ll see soon enough that it doesn’t,” he said. He got up and trotted along ahead of her, fluffed tail curved into a swishy ‘S’ as he walked. He stopped mid-stride and turned back to Mist, “I told you this before, but it was in the garden so you didn’t hear me – my name is Samson.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Samson,” Mist said. She followed the cat, being sure to keep the jar in her arms still and quiet. “Well, it’s nice to know your name, anyway.”

“I know,” Samson said, because even if he could talk, he was still a cat and cats knew (or thought they knew) how blessed humans were to associate with them.