The Dream

   

    His face was contorted, as if by a childhood fire, but he had tried to disguise the deformity by tattooing his face with an ageless blue color. From his forehead to his neckline where a loose white tunic hung, this blue color was etched deep into his skin. It was a blue of depth, of reason, and why he chose it to disguise his deformity I could not imagine, as it only caused the eye to linger even longer on what it might have earlier dismissed in a few seconds. Along the ridges and contorts in his face strips of tattooed-silver sparkled in the light that the soggy afternoon sun provided. His eyes seemed to disappear into his face, small little slits with a similar blue in the small bit of iris that was still visible. His mouth curved to the side of his face to form a diagonal snake from the right side of his chin upwards towards his left cheek bone. But what really caught my eye was the way he held himself. It wasn’t a posture of bitterness, or scorn, or hatred, but rather of a knowledge, mixed with pride. It was as if he had unlocked a key to some deep mystery and was simply sorry for the rest of us that we had not yet discovered it.
    For some reason, in that strange midday mist, the blue caught my eye even longer than it did my companions, who had kindly looked away after a moment, in pity for this monster who appeared amongst us. Kahape stood beside me and I could feel him watching me, could sense his confusion as I stared at this strange man before me. The man’s eyes were locked onto mine, though my eyes roamed over the contours of his skin, and I knew he was not from this place.
    Not that that in itself was such a shock. Peoples from all different worlds and cultures came through that area everyday, and though we’d only been living there for a short time, I had grown accustomed to the everyday differences that different races and species possessed.
    But this one was different. Though tattooing of even an entire body was not remotely uncommon, his seemed to simply draw more attention to his twisted face. And yet, it felt as if that was exactly how it should be. The silver and blue created a contrast that made me feel as if I was looking into the cosmos themselves. I was suddenly overcome by an overwhelming urge to touch it. I simply needed to know…needed to feel the flesh underneath my fingertips. It was just so…
    “Beautiful,” I whispered, unsure that an actual sound even escaped my lips. “Your face is beautiful,” I said, slowly, feeling my mouth form around the words and pause before ‘beautiful’. My eyes met his. I meant it. With everything in me, I meant it.
    At first he simply continued to look at me. Then he smiled, though I don’t know exactly how I knew he did this. Nothing on his face seemed to change at all, but I could feel his smile, reaching out to me. He asked in a cautious, yet curious voice that made me think of a young child, though it was by no means a young voice, “Would you like to touch it?” Something inside of me leapt. For the first time the stranger broke his gaze and looked into the receiving hall, where two chairs sat across from a bench, with a low glass table in between. I understood, but I didn’t move at first.
    Kahape still stood by me. I thought I even felt his fingers brush mine, searching for a physical response. I wondered if he understood, if he would understand. I wondered if this man had ever been called beautiful. I wondered if Kahape would feel threatened.
    He didn’t need to. It wasn’t that kind of beauty.
    But still. I followed the man in a dream-like state, lightly tugging on Kahape’s finger with my little pinkie to indicate he could come, should come, needed to come. He took his place at the bench, facing me the entire time, his off-white tunic falling around him and trailing on the floor. I slid into the chair across from him and noticed that Kahape had indeed trailed along and sat next to me, staring no longer at me, but rather at the strange intruder on our plans.
    I still couldn’t take my eyes off the man’s face. Something in the color made me think that if I dared to glance away, for even a moment, I would miss something terribly important. I knew I was getting close to crossing the line for Kahape. He would only stand for so much, but I couldn’t stop. Not yet. 
    Staring at that beautiful, timeless, blue I was struck again by the beauty of it. He looked as if he had simply stepped out of a painting, one of the old paintings, from back when they understood how to truly bring life to a painting, to show the inner turmoil, or the inner triumph, or the inner soul of the subject.
    He sat, unmoving, and the strange, tingling urge to touch his face coursed through my veins again, starting at my arms and moving to my fingertips. My arm rose, seemingly of its own accord, though I knew full well what brought it off of that table. Slowly, ever so slowly, excruciatingly slowly, I reached my arm out towards the man. As I reached, my palm turned upwards and my fingers curled slightly, as if I had no strength to extend them. I had a fleeting thought of how the sight must look to Kahape before my fingers were close enough to feel the breath of the man. It shocked me for some reason, and my fingers wavered. I swallowed. I didn’t know what to expect. I imagined his skin, soft and scarred, giving slightly as the back of my fingernails brushed along his jaw. I imagined turning my palm toward him, and feeling the curves in his flesh with my fingertips.
    But when my first finger touched his face, something changed. There was a white flash, inside my head, and images rushed to me, one after another. A river, an old Amazon River, with ferns and trees crowding its banks. A sunrise, then a sunset, in fast motion, as if someone had recorded it and pressed fast forward. Stars twinkled over a couple, a mountain poured lava onto a burning city. People screamed. They laughed. I saw huge canyons, and vast oceans, a locked door, a shattered window. Trees grew out their leaves and threw them to the ground; flowers turned their faces towards me. Lightening struck. I heard moaning. Farmers danced in lines. Cities bustled. A giant blue eye loomed before me on a white background.
                        Everything went black.