Such lovely feathers

A golden gondola floats echoless through honey lined orchards. Suzie Tuesday waking from a lifelong dream studies her surroundings with slow intent. She is not alone on the gondola, which sails silently through starless space: always night here, yet so alive. Such brilliant color explosions burst tear stained pillows apart, showers of dissolving dawn feathers. “I had a dream,” she said to her companion. “A beautiful thing and the Ugly Spirit were playing chess. They were playing for beauty.”

Peter’s lazy upturned eyelids shifted, milky gray iris takes in her form. “Who won?” His eyes are lined with flowers: orchids, lilies, gold cast ivy lines spiraling around his face. Cybernetic face jewelry. She once knew an inventor and painter with the same routine: her thin fingers tracing invisible patterns along his cheeks. The first of many carvings. Shh. You can see me there, behind your closed eyes. You can cross the translucent barrier, to a land of grass without doors or mirrors. We exist in space now. Sung to each night by speaking trees. Boundless and infinite, there are no reference points on this side.

“We did.”

Suzie Tuesday sails boisterously across into a land of grass without orchids or lilies. Gold eyes are lined with ivory spirals and bone bled memory. They were playing chase for beauty. Shh won. Rivers of night unfold her, tell me secrets I never gnu. Brilliant Peter dreams tear stained feathers playing for dissolving Sundays.

“Where are we now?” Suzie asks through speech fog muddles all words. All worlds start here. There are no enemies. Too old for that.

“Right here, start,” swirls of colored hexagons spin out of Peter’s grass thin lips, take on matter and meaning. You exist in space now. Like dreaming all the time, reality a shifty blur of colorful experience repositories. “Such lovely feathers.”

Silver bird people spotted with gray eyes descend upon the gondola, make idle conversation with the travelers. Their bodies are lined with hundreds of blinking eyes: some human, some stranger. When they speak, it is like the sound of cold water being poured from a clear glass pitcher. Liquid melody language. “What do they want?” Suzie asks, and Peter laughs delightedly. “Such lively fathers.”

“Drink this,” the tallest of the bird people tells her. “It is made of memories, distilled from the sweetest teary eyed dawns, stirred with old lusts and lost enemies.” The liquid looks like language, like dreaming around the sides. Its taste is that of mercury and melody.

One of the older bird people held five luminescent ultraviolet eggs in an ancient palm feathered with age and time. “This is what human beings look like, from those who have eyes in space,” he gargled hoarsely like a garden hose with rocks lodged inside, the water flow unsteady. Gush. Clog. Gush. Clog.

“I had a dream,” Peter Monday told the smallest of the bird people. “Drink This was playing squash with a beautiful thing. They were playing for memory.”

The silver chick’s million eyes blinked on and off, open and shut, in anticipation. “Who won?” it bubbled.

“He did,” Peter pointing to a face unseen behind a land without mirrors. A face familiar to anyone but known by none. The face of time, and memory and dawn. Fingers you will never feel again trace out the shape of its lips, then vanish forever.