She's dancing, suspended in the dark zone of ocean like a light on a wire, phosphorescent, on fire under her pale skin. She is moving like a fighter in a video game, precise and unwavering, but slow, pirouetting at half-speed, her foot reaching out to touch the lintel of an invisible doorway. She knows how to open doors in the dark.
There's no way back to the surface, no way to the bottom of the sea, and there's nothing all around her but the unknown cold, but she can open doors. Her skin shines like the lure of a fish. She's opening a door. She doesn't even know how she knows how. Without her, there would be no other worlds than this one.
I saw her once years ago, when I was asleep in a strange country. I dreamed I was walking along the shore of a gentle blue sea, where there were many strange and exotic colours in the sand that made the frilly waves warp like rainbows. She
was asleep under the water, floating just below the surface. SHe was asleep but awake -
aware of me, but not fully conscious, a being of function and symbol, a determiner of
meaning. Not like me. A different form of life, unaccountable, like the prince screaming, the girl who opens doors.
She stands up in the shallows, water pouring from her white robes. Her eyes are black. She holds up an unrecognizable symbol written in charcoal on a piece of paper, and says "I don't think you quite realize who I am." Behind her a door opens in the sky and empty space begins to pour through in great waves. I feel a growing lucidity, a weird awareness of what is happening. I realize that she is a part of me, always present in my psyche. I don't know what it means that we've met, but I know it's important.
I wake up.