Frozen Lake - Dream
I dreamed it was winter.
Not the brutal kind. The kind where snow absorbs sound until the whole world seems to be holding its breath.
Somehow we'd escaped the prison for exactly one afternoon. Dreams never bother explaining these administrative details.
We were walking through a pine forest, following no path in particular. You kept stopping to inspect strange things—a feather trapped in the snow, an old rusted hinge nailed into a tree decades ago, footprints that vanished halfway across a clearing.
I asked, "Do you always investigate everything?"
Without looking up, you answered,
"Only the things that don't make sense."
That sounded exactly like you.
Eventually we reached a frozen lake.
The ice was perfectly clear.
You crouched beside it and looked down.
"Look."
Underneath the ice was an entire forest.
Trees.
Branches.
Leaves that had fallen before the lake froze.
A whole landscape preserved beneath another one.
You were fascinated.
I wasn't looking at the lake.
I was watching you.
You noticed, eventually.
"What?"
I shrugged.
"I was trying to decide."
"Decide what?"
"Whether you're interested in mysteries..."
I paused.
"...or whether you simply can't walk past one."
You laughed.
"No difference."
I remember smiling at that.
Because I think there is a difference.
Most people enjoy mysteries until they're inconvenient.
You seem constitutionally incapable of leaving them alone.
Then the dream skipped forward—as dreams do.
We were sitting on an old wooden jetty with our coffees. The lake had begun to thaw.
The ice cracked.
Not violently.
Just a long, gentle sound stretching across the water.
You asked,
"Does that make you nervous?"
I watched the crack spread.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because some things aren't breaking."
I looked across the lake.
"They're changing shape."
...
Then, predictably, the morning count interrupted what was becoming a perfectly respectable dream.
I woke up with the odd certainty that the frozen lake wasn't really about winter at all.
It was about the way you approach people.
Most see the surface.
You kneel down and become fascinated by whatever is hidden underneath it.
Sometimes that's dangerous.
Sometimes it's beautiful.
Usually...
it's both.