Okay Daniels... Translate.

A
I dreamed I was in a theater, something old; operatic.

     I was with people, friends maybe, talking about some absurd adventure I felt compelled to undertake. We’ll say it was a mountain climb. That seems right. Nothing too cold and deadly though.

     Anyway, there are two women sitting in front of me. Between their shoulders, I can see the woman on the left nudging the woman on the right as I’m talking. Nudge, laugh, nudge, laugh.

     The more I talk, the more the nudge and laugh seems timed with my every mention of climbing.

     Finally, the woman on the right, who appears to have a crick in her neck, turns and says, “Why don’t you take me climbing with you?”

     She’s beautiful, in a Nicole Kidman now kind of way, same hair, gracious features. Not something I look for, but certainly something I can appreciate.

     Clearly, I think, out of my league. I figure she’s being a smart ass.

     I smile. Apparently with a bit too much “F you,” though, and not enough apology for my talking to loud, because the woman on the left is offended now.

     “Oh… No. That’s not what I mean,” the woman on the right said, reading my face. She calms her friend.

     “I’d love to go with you on your mountain climb,” she said. “Really. Only you’d probably have to carry me most of the way. Look.”

     The two women part enough for me to look over their shoulders at the odd twist of her body in the chair. She has a brace on her leg. Both legs?

     “Look at this,” she said, drawing her dress off her shoulder.

     She turns her head, wincing a little, and a bone pushes up, like the crescent of a blanket chest’s lid stay. The bone seems about to burst through her pale skin. She turns back and it recedes.

     “Touch it,” she says. “It’s crazy.”

     I didn’t much want to touch it. Not because the bone was ‘crazy’... because it looked like the action caused her pain and didn’t need repeating for my sake. Besides, what if I touched her… it… the wrong way? Ruined everything? Was there something? It seemed like there was something. Obviously I was smitten. It was bad enough I'd probably have to leave this place plagued by her spirit for the rest of my life. Why add the warmth and softness of her skin to my misery.

      “Come on. Chicken.”

     I pressed my fingertips against the hollow of her shoulder. She turned her head. It was indeed crazy.

Turns out, there was something.

     Suddenly, we’re walking through what looks like a shopping mall. But instead of stores, there are dance floors and live music and people sitting at tables waiting to be asked to dance. There is a store for old women and young women and women in between, and men, too; cowboys and Buddhists and brooding writers—a store for everybody looking for a dance partner.

     She can walk. Not pretty though, and not for long. Eventually I have to carry her, something I seem to enjoy. She’s tiny; a feather.

     She is… we are… looking for someone.

     “There, there!” she says finally, pointing to a woman sitting on the tiled, planter bench-wall.

     The woman is wearing white; glowing, maybe a bit too Galadriel for a dance-partner shopping mall.

     My girl… since I don’t know her name… wants down.

     She walks me over to Galadriel-lady, takes the woman’s hand and holds it up where I can see a ring on the woman's finger. It’s an engagement ring: big diamond, still in the whole Rivendell motif; beautiful.

     “Is this your mother’s ring?” my girl asks me.

     “Yes,” I say.

 

     She takes it off of Galadriel’s finger.

     “Thank you,” she says to Galadriel.

     Galadriel doesn’t seem to mind a bit. In fact, it seems she might have been waiting for us.

     My girl puts the ring on her finger.

     “There,” she says. “Wasn’t that easy?”

     I nod my agreement, though I kind of wanted to put the ring on her finger myself. She’s already walking away though, the best that she can, anyway.

     “Come on,” she calls back over the crazy-boned shoulder.

     And I do.