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It’s 3 o’clock in the morning according to the bedside clock, it’s faint red glow pulsating lightly in the dark. Outside, the city is surprisingly quiet. Even the usual sounds of airplanes above and cars on the freeway are faint. Nayeon lays in bed, one arm over her forehead, and groans. Somehow, she has managed to not sleep a wink since she went to bed at 9. She had shifted from one side to another, kicked off the blankets then put them back on, stuck one foot out the blanket then immediately retracted it because of some silly fear that something was going to grab it, re-arranged her pillows… she’s pretty much done everything short of taking sleeping pills and yet sleep eluded her.
I should not have had that 3rd cup of coffee.
However, hindsight is 20-20 so here she lays, wide awake, tired but not sleepy, alert but dazed. Dazed because a few moments ago, just as she was on the cusp of sleep (and she felt it too, her eyelids had started getting heavy and shutting her eyes gave her that feeling of an itch being scratched, and her thoughts had started to mesh into one jumble of words and feelings), she suddenly felt like she was being pulled to another place. It was, well for lack of a better term, magical.
She saw (and she was still processing this as she lay in bed confused) an island with tall, green mountains, surrounded by an ocean so blue it almost looked fake had it not been clear enough that you could see the fauna living within. The mountains were so tall, the tips were hidden by clouds so plump Nayeon could imagine falling on them like a soft bed (but they aren’t soft, they’re clouds, Nayeon would plunge to her death if she fell on them). At the very edge of the shore was a rainbow, one were you could actually see both ends and probably be able to stay in between both ends. Far from the rainbow, way behind, shrouded in the darkness (of course) was a cave, whose opening almost looked like a mouth. Above the opening were two recessions of stone formation that looked like eyes in the right angle. (Basically, the cave looked like a skull). As she ventured deeper into the island (while rooted in the same spot, dreams are weird), Nayeon stumbled upon a misshapen tree. At least, she believed it to be a tree. It was bald, with no leaves or any signs of life whatsoever. It looked like it should have had more branches than the few that were sticking out, ropes hanging from the limbs, but where the branches should have been were what looked like windows. Or rather, holes with covers on them. It appeared to be some sort of house, as she could see the faint glow of orange lights within.
Yup, I really should not have had that 3rd cup of coffee. Or whatever else I ate that apparently gives psychedelic dreams. Taco bell?
But what had struck Nayeon the most was how dream Nayeon was not in awe at all of what she was seeing. Rather, dream Nayeon felt… home. This was weird especially considering Nayeon had been living in her solo apartment for years now and she’s never felt home. She could acknowledge that this apartment was the place where she felt most comfortable but there had always been a disconnect between her and her living space. She had always attributed it to how maybe she just wasn’t a sentimental person. But here, in her dream, standing in the forest, her face lit by the warm glow of the lights from the tree, she felt a peacefulness that she couldn’t place.
Yet, as she lies awake, heart hammering from being jerked back to reality, she is aware that she does not know where that place was. Or what it was. At least, she thinks she doesn’t know.
But a tiny voice in the back of her head, a voice that’s both foreign to her thoughts but familiar to her ears, whispers a name that resonates so deeply in her core that it shakes her.
Neverland.
Neverland? What the hell is that?
But Nayeon could feel the answer at the very edge of her brain. It feels so close to her but even as she stretches her hypothetical arm to grab the answer, it just evades her fingertips. It’s so familiar, it feels too close to home but detached, like maybe she read it in a book when she was a kid (but what kind of book had that kind of impact on her, that she could remember the details vividly, decades from then?)
What piqued her interest, however, more than just the sheer absurdity of her surroundings (it was a dream after all, and what are dreams if not creative explosions of visuals we otherwise would never see?) was that just below the tree sat a young girl. She had short blond hair, messy and all tussled, peeking out from under a green bonnet-looking thing with a bright red feather sticking out (Nayeon had no experiences with hats and their classifications). In fact, her whole outfit was green, different shades and made of different materials. Like it was put together and constantly re-sewn, probably from wear and tear. She had an impish, mischievous smile as she absently toyed with the tips of her almost elven ears.
Behind her head was the twinkling of something flying around. She initially assumed it was just a dragonfly but the twinkling thing flew closer to her face and much to her surprise, the twinkling thing was actually a tiny human. (Well, a fairy, but Nayeon couldn’t have been bothered by semantics and political correctness in her dream). The fairy, also in green but instead of scrap fabric she appeared to be wearing foliage, buzzed around her, a high pitched noise following her around. As she flew, she left trails of glitter that glowed brightly against the dim night before disappearing before it hit the ground. Nayeon watched her fly around, mesmerized by this tiny being.
She began to follow the fairy, not fully understanding why but her feet just seemed to move forward without her really having to think about it. As the fairy led her closer to the tree, the young girl sitting underneath it jumped up and, instead of landing immediately, seemed to float weightlessly before touching the ground. Nayeon was in awe, and yet she wasn’t at all in disbelief. No, it was more like, Nayeon was in awe because no matter how many times you see something like that, the wonder never really fades. (Which made Nayeon wonder, just how many times has she seen something like that?). The young girl stretched out her hand, just as her feet were starting to lift off from the ground again. Nayeon reached over and attempted to grab her hand, pulled by some invisible force to follow this strange girl and her little red-headed fairy.
Just as she reached her, she was jolted awake by God knows what.
And so brings us here. To Nayeon, staring up at the ceiling, wondering what the hell happened. She checks the time again. It’s 3:30. Only 30 minutes have passed since she woke up (though it isn’t really waking up if you were never asleep to begin with, but then it isn’t really dreaming if you were never asleep to begin with). Nayeon feels an ache in her heart, a sort of longing she couldn’t really describe. She has no idea what she’s longing for, it again just evades memory.
She decides to sit outside in her little balcony that overlooks the city scape below. She gets up, puts on her robe and opens the sliding door that connects her bedroom to the balcony.
Her dream continues to gnaw at her. It was so vivid yet so surreal. They say people can’t really make new faces up in their dreams, so every person that appears in your dream is someone you’ve met before. So Nayeon wonders. Where has she met that young girl and the little fairy before? She can’t quite place their faces as faces you’d see every day or run into at the supermarket. There was almost fantastical air around them, an air you’re not likely to run into in the world outside of dreams.
Nayeon decides to shake it out of her mind. There’s no way she could ever get any semblance of rest with those kinds of thoughts. Sometimes people just appear warped in dreams, that’s all. (But she didn’t really believe that, she just had to because it would have bothered her endlessly, it’s a question with no foreseeable answer).
She looks out at the city below her, quietly bustling, ever awake. From here the lights looks like blurry balls of color. Following them with her eyes almost makes her sleepy. In fact, she decides to give sleep another go, stretching her body as she prepares to go back into her bed room. Maybe she’ll dream of this Neverland place again. She makes a mental note to ask her mother about any of the books she’s read as a child to see which one mentions Neverland.
As she turns to enter her room, she sees a twinkling light in the corner of her eye, and a light dusting of glittery crystals fall down, disappearing as it touches the ground. She pauses for a moment before deciding it was probably just remnants of her dream and her sleep deprived eyes creating hallucinations to push her to sleep. She smiles and enters her room, bits of the dream already disappearing from her mind once more.
Below her the city lights twinkle, moving slowly to the path of its source (cars, buses, bikes, it’s a metropolitan city and it never sleeps), moving further and further from the view until what remains are specks of light that look like dust.