Demon Dream

I dreamed this:

It is past midnight, pitch black dark and I am standing in a graveyard, leaning against a large tombstone and smoking a cigarette.

In the black misty distance, I can hear growling and howling, scraping and scuttling approaching rapidly.

I note that I am not at all afraid, just vaguely amused. As though this has happened many times before and even has a slight touch of being quite predictable and boring by now.

An encircling wall of demons of all shapes and sizes surrounds me out of the mist.

Grr! Argh!

I must be a light source because I can see them all clearly, with their scaly snouts, big teeth, huge moth eaten wings and claws as they come closer, growling and hooting menacingly at me, but they do not swarm me. They stop about 3 men's lengths around me and the noises they make crest higher, but then it stops. They're standing there, staring at me with their creepy eyes.

I say to them, "Is that really the best you can do?" and here, they all hang their heads, having failed in their mission to terrify me, and turn around, dragging their scaly tails and motheaten wings behind them.

I watch this and feel sorry for them.

I call after them, "Hey guys, you were really very scary, you know."

They stop and turn around, a little hope awakened.

"You're ... quite terrifying. Impressive demons, all of you."

They prick up their ears and come back to me, come closer.

I keep praising them and the first one, about the size of a horse, approaches me carefully. I touch its snout and the wounds and blisters on its scaly head begin to heal, a light ripples across the entire demon, it becomes smooth and beautiful, iridescent, its wings heal so there are no more ragged edges, no more holes in them, it's just beautiful now, strong, and shiny, radiant.

It throws its head back and gives a sound of fanfare, flaps its new wings and the light spreads to the others there, the same transformation occurs for all of them, radiating out into the night until there are only these glorious winged creatures remaining, and they take flight like a huge flock of birds, their wing beats driving away the mist and I watch them fly, into the starry sky, becoming sparks of light that do not diminish in distance.

I take a deep breath and when I look back down, I am no longer in a graveyard, but on a hilltop with some stately trees behind me and grass and flowers at my feet.

Something shimmers in the grass, catches my attention - it is a large opalescent scale, shaped like an oval shell, it feels warm and vibrant in my hand for a moment before it melts into me, ripples up my arm and all through me.

I feel happy and slighly embarrassed that I should have called this boring. It really never gets old. Never.

The Demon Dream, 1994, Age 35

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From the StarFields Book of Stars