I'm falling. It doesn't bother me at first. I know I can catch myself. I even enjoy it for a moment, taking in the visions passing before my eyes and the feel of the breeze, the currents flowing around me.
Then I realize I can't feel the breeze. There's no air. I look around and see that I'm falling through the empty void of space. With no air to command, I feel lost. I know that if I hit the ground - the ground is there, somewhere, but I can't see it - it will kill me. I start to flail wildly, but it just makes me fall faster.
I fall past a derelict ship floating in the black. It's a heavy trireme. There's a crack across the rear of the hull, and razor-edged pebbles floating in a cloud around it: the ship hit a rock, less than a hand's length across. I remember: the sensors didn't pick it up. Dead faces stare back at me from the portholes. I recognize them all. They were my crewmates once, on the Dysaeras. I look closely at the faces as I fall past. I see them all: Kaoptes, Genimon, Ranjit, Aristotheres, Natlowella... my friends from the survey team.
The last face is my own.
That wasn't the way it happened. I was trapped in the forward hold. It was sealed. There was no way out, but lucky for me because life support failed almost immediately and the others suffocated before the rescue ship could arrive. They only got to me just in time as my organs were shutting down from hypothermia. I remember looking up into the light and wishing I could fly into it...
I continue falling.
The ship disappears into the void, and I am lost without a reference point. I try to identify the stars, but I seem to speed up, and the little points of light begin to blur and swirl before my eyes. I shut my eyes tight, and when I open them again, I no longer see any stars. I am surrounded by water - it looks like water, but I can feel an electric thrill as the currents pass over my skin. I see waves of deep blue in every direction, crested by bright sparks that leap from wave to wave like lightning. I am floating, not falling now. I can control my movements again. I float in the direction of the deepest blue I can see. I hear voices around me, but I cannot make out what they are saying. They are speaking a language I cannot understand, and yet... it seems as if I know the voices.
I look around as I swim through the thalassa. I see the safe currents that ships travel between the gates. I can also make out smaller currents, roads untraveled by humanity. Curiosity overcomes me and I make my way toward one, diving into the whirlpool. I swirl down it, and at the bottom I see the pale, transparent reflection of a world no human has ever seen before. I come closer. I can see volcanoes spitting on its surface, sulfur fumes fouling the atmosphere, poison seas and barren land. And yet there is life here, of a sort: organisms with no dreams or intentions but to eat and reproduce, building as the world builds until perhaps, one day, it leaves its own world and travels among the stars as we have. I feel as though I have seen this many times before, and am suddenly sad, for I know that it will not come to pass.
I swim back up the waterspout, and as I do, my fingers touch the sides with a jolt. I look to the side, and realize that I have wings - enormous, fibrous wings that seem to stretch into infinity. I am startled, and look down at my body. It is no longer the shape I recognize. I can see myself as if from a distance, a great black shape like a cross between a moth and a spider, dancing from one stream of energy to the next. The sight fills me with terror, but at the same time, it feels right.
I feel hunger, a hunger for something I have yet to identify. My legs - feelers - tentacles reach out, testing the streams. There is a vibration. With a single beat of my wings, I move forward, seeking the source of the vibration. It lies ahead of me. A ship: enormous, a heavy tetreme, painted in white and gold, with a great gryphon on its prow and a sixteen-pointed star emblazoned on each side. These symbols mean nothing to me in the dream. All I know is that I feel the pangs of hunger. I must have this delicious morsel, caught in my web, its massive engines struggling against the pull of the energy streams. I reach out one claw to grasp it --
And I wake up. My memory of the dream fades even as I write these words. I remember. I have had this same dream every night for nearly a week.
I cannot even begin to imagine what it means.
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