I dream of Wheat, and a wife in a past life.
It always plays back to me in flashes like a memory of a past life. Her ankle length Azure dress, the blue sky with so few clouds. Her pale skin and bare feet as we walk. I carry her many brass-buckled sandals as we walk, these are things that always come back to me in echos, these things always remain constant. It started when i was a little girl, maybe six or seven, I started having a series of recurring dreams. The one I tell you about now always feels like it happened before, I call it “Woman of Wheat.”
Sometimes I am a grown man, I wear leather bracers with lions or a tree, an old oak design. My hands are calloused and as I look down to step over a root I see my maroon tunic and leather breeches and buckled boots I wear also. I am tall and strong. My blades are heavy and familiar upon my back.
Sometimes I am a Grown Woman, I wear Iron rings upon my hands, and brass wrist cuffs with a chiseled vining flower design. My hands are scarred from my previous life of war, my arms are scared and I feel the pain of the fire under my brass arm cuffs even still. As I look down to step over a root I see my white knee-length dress, secured with a brass chain belt, the buckle is chiseled leather with a Lion head, a mane made of Serpents. My thin yet deadly blade bounces on my hip. Why do these things stick out to me so? I was once able to bear, but cannot any longer, yet our children are strong and beautiful.
Her face, always seems out of focus as we walk upon the worn path through the golden, harvest ready wheat stalks. They come up near out chests and waists, I run my hands over the grain as I pass. Her shoes dangle always in my right hands, my Sword hand.
Her hair falls in Ringlets down to the center of her back. The Sun lights her up, making her seems like a Seraphim or Valkyrie. It shines Golden, red and caramel in the light of day, like blood stained gold, soft as silk she sometimes lets me braid it.
Her laughter sounds like joyous chimes around us. Sometimes, their laughter, the laughter of our children joins in, as they rush through the wheat just out of sight. I catch glimpses of them as they run past me, they are so beautiful and fill me with love. My sons and daughter, our three children, my little lion cubs.
When she turns back to me, she doesn’t say anything, just smiles an joyous smile upon her crimson painted lips, and her laugh twinkles through the air like soothing chimes in the air once more. Her eyes I cannot remember the shape, but I will always remember the color; A clear emerald, seafoam green. It is these eyes I fell in love with when I first looked upon her, and do so every time. Her soul shines like a lighthouse, to a sailor lost in a hurricane through them to me.
It is so peaceful as we walk, just walk though the wheat on a clear day as a cooling breeze shuffles the land. I don’t know how long the five or so of us walk through the fields, just walking through our harvest with a purpose to be somewhere, but us in no hurry to get anywhere. Only laughter from her and the children ringing around me, and I chuckle at their antics.
It feels as though I had waited lifetimes to have this sort of peace after all I feel I have done.
When I wake I am always happy but a little sad. I never know the shape of her or my children’s faces. I only know their eyes and hair and laughter. I have never known them in this lifetime, in this reality. But I miss them as though I did.
Written: Monday Febuary 20th 2017
I wrote this based off of a prompt a friend gave me when i was going through a rogh patch. this is one of ten and one of my best from the series.