Em fell asleep in Africa. I should have transported her home, but she was exhausted, so I watched over her as she slept on the open plains wrapped in a masai blanket. She didn’t stir as a cheetah and then a zebra sniffed at her still form. An elephant snuffled at her and lumbered away and still she slept.
*
Everything was blanketed in deep wet snow that clung stubbornly to trees, weighing heavily to break branches or fall in small avalanches trapping whatever was unfortunate enough to be underneath. The same texture that trapped tires and created moving ruts in the road, but was perfect for snowmen and snowballs.
She tried desperately to keep her mobylette upright and moving forward and wondered vaguely why she was riding such a flimsy little motor bike in these conditions. She was subliminally aware that she wasn’t cold with no coat or mitts or boots.
It was imperative that she get to the main drag. She could see it in the distance, sloppy wet with melted snow and sand, much dirtier but easier to drive on than the pristine white of the side streets. She checked the street signs looking for 100A. The signs changed each time she looked – 1,000,000 – 1,000 – 1,000,000,000. The numbers made no sense.
She looked for the main street again but it was no longer there. A maze of side streets, clogged with cars stuck in the snow, surrounded her. She looked again. The main drag was to her right, then to her left, and finally directly in front of her but miles away, so far that she could barely see the stream of traffic that flowed on it endlessly. She started to panic, sure she would never make it. Still she struggled with the mobylette as she negotiated the ruts and dodged snow-laden tree branches that threatened to sweep her off the bike.
Birds chirping merrily in the brush, and the low rumbling growl of a lioness alerted her finally to the fact that she was awake. Her sense of relief was disproportionate to the dream that hadn’t been particularly frightening.
*
Weird. I thought Em’s dream came from various experiences in her life: winter from her childhood isolated on a farm and often snowed in, the roads and traffic and street numbers from the trauma of moving from the farm to the city and getting lost on her way home from school. As for the mobylette, it was just like the one she owned when she lived in West Africa.
Mentor disagreed, told me I lacked perception and insight. She said the dream came from Em’s search for self, from the disconnect between her life before and her life working with me. I grudgingly admitted that would explain Em’s extreme reaction to the dream and her relief when she woke.