Nightflower Candor

My dog always found them. We walked the forest every evening and he found them. Twilight was captured inside the petals of this pale flower, and it seemed like our little secret. Until he stopped finding them and our search poured into the night.

            We walk the forest and he keeps his nose to the ground, but still no flowers. I try to remember their preferred spots. Damp, rocky soil, under branches where sunshine is scarce and unpredictable. It all felt so normal and effortless until they could no longer be found, until they became unfound. That’s when I began questioning my sanity.

            I started lucid dreaming about a year ago and since then life has gotten weird. Dreams and reality used to remain in their proper places. Now I stay awake all night and sleep all day trying to find where one ends and the other starts.

            Memories or imagination?

            My feet drag across the carpet of my bedroom in a sleepy daze. Wakefulness floats in open spaces around me blinking like fireflies until I am in the middle of the woods with the faintest itch of having just missed something.

            I almost see my father between the trees. His signature stare under thick brows, cloaked in fog and moonlight. He appears nervous like a werewolf who understands the moon will die someday. Does he see me? If he does, he ignores me.

            A crunch underneath my boot.

            My mother is now standing next to me. The fangs of a vampire shine brightest under this full moon. The blood, always the blood, the thirst and the taking. Like my father, she doesn’t seem to witness me.

            My dog sniffs about as I behold the petals crushed colorless. I drag my sole across the carpet of torn leaves and dried needles. My dog whimpers softly until I see it.

            I kneel to lift the destroyed beauty from the floor and look closer. A tiny seed shines against the moist skin of my palm. The whimpering stops. Mine and the dog’s.

            Maybe I’m crazy, but if this seed is found, then so am I. The shaded beasts of the night may not see me but I do. I see me. They say nothing beautiful can grow in rotten soil but the seed reveals the way back.

            My dog follows me as the forest darkens with the dipping sun. The seed wants to jump from my hand as if opposing its own domestication. Everything is telling me it belongs in the forest, but our own innate tendencies are too great to be ruled by logic.

            I rest a moment and study the seed.

            It seems to smile at me and reveal its belief in me. This aching feeling of trust and kinship originated from my hands but danced through my bones. This is almost certainly a dream. It must be…

            I trip in the dark and the forest keeps what belongs to it.

            My dog noses the ground for hours but cannot find it. Nor can I. Perhaps my dog has unknowingly eaten it and now we search for what has already been consumed. I scratch under his ear and tap him twice on the butt to let him know it was time. Time to go home.

            Time to wonder why.

            We walk the long way home and it takes as long as it should. We squeak through the front rusty door unnoticed. I slip off my boots and see a little something. A little something so little it can barely be considered there but there it is tangled in a bootlace. I reach for the beauty and the hope and everything else it represents but again find myself back in the forest, dusk creeping in, my dog licking me awake. I hear them.

            I hear the beasts again.

            I search the bootlace but there is no seed. I take off my boots and check my socks. I take off my jacket, my pants, and my underwear. I search my skin.

            I notice my boots resting on the floor in a peculiar way. The grooves in the soles seem endless, spiraling into impossible patterns. The quest and the seed. The soil and the way. Things never meant to be held. I rub my eyes and get a little older.