The dreaming

Joah wakes suddenly from her narrow bed, sitting upright in the darkened upper regions of the Library. The crescent moon streams through the window, barely illuminating the sparsely furnished room. Just by looking at her quilt, she realizes she's had another night of tossing and turning and inexplicable dreams: the covers lie heaped on the floor, the cotton sheets in a crumple. She thinks, "Maybe I should read," and as the thought crosses her mind, a small candle holder and the stub of a lit candle appear on her writing table. Still lost in the dreaming and the waking, she seems oblivious to what she's done. She rises and walks lightly to the little wooden table, bare feet graceful on the cool floor, her thin cotton chemise moving softly with each step. Her gaze wanders from the book she'd been reading earlier to a small ebony writing box banded with brass. Running her fingertips along the edge of the box and then lifting the lid, she takes out a sheet of opaque ivory vellum and a gold, eyedrop-filled pen. She settles on a small, three-legged stool as her mind wanders hours back to Abi's dream, of being with Abi in her dream in the Tainted Earth, floating above the ground, dream dancing with the Magician. The memory is otherwordly and soothing, the effects of a magical place. She closes her eyes and watches Omega floating and drifting, her skirts swirling as she rises and falls. Grr had seemed . . . free . . . dreaming on the air wtih joy. But she remembers the frown that creased his countenance only a short time before as he sat by the fire and said in a quiet, distracted voice, "I try not to dream." Joah knows about the dreaming, and about trying not to dream. She licks the nib of her pen and puts it to paper. "Brother," she begins, "Perhaps this will speak to your spirit." In her neat and old fashioned script, she writes the words of an old poem. She debates for a moment, then simply signs her name. Folding the vellum in half, she tucks it into an envelope instead of tying it. "Grr," she writes on the front, then treads silently down the stairs, placing the envelope on Omega's desk.

"Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep-while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?"