Bad dreams, vivid dreams, and I’m also up because of hives. It’s 6+ am, so I’m glad I had… about 5 hours of sleep?
It’s already better than the 4 am nights.
Just to get things out of my brain…
Blessers
My name is Attraxa. My sister’s? Elexa. It takes some time to get used to, I know. Most names have just two crosses in them. The superstitious tend to add an extra mark on Elexa’s name, so much so that she’s unofficially officially “Etexa” on most papers. When I was born, my mom decided to even it out, and to stop the editing, by giving me three crosses.
Since then, we’ve always been “Attraxa and Elexa”, never the other way around. Even though she’s older. It’s as if the superstitious want to make sure my extra cross covers her, and them, too.
Elexa doesn’t mind. She knows that it’s an act of kindness, of protection. That’s probably why she’s part of the Blessers, going around helping expectant mothers.
When it’s time to push, women half-submerge themselves, so that babies go from the water of the womb into the water that is holy. Blessers are there to help with the birth, and to read from the book. No one knows why, but every Blesser’s book ends up looking the same — the cover can shrivel and tighten in the hot winds, the pages can yellow and become spotted, yet the chapter that tell the story of the Blessing will be the last to age. They won’t look perfect, but you can tell where the story is in every book, whiter and straighter than the rest, even when those pages are the ones most touched, and most opened.
We don’t understand why, or how — we don’t even really understand the story, when so many of us can repeat it verbatim — but everyone took one look at the pages that last, compared it to the hellscape of red dust and arid ground that we call home, and decided that since every book of holy is marked with a cross, every child would carry a cross in their name.
It’s… stupid, I know. Every time I tell this story to one of the Outsiders they look confused. They ask about the story, and try to find some deeper meaning, but there is none. People have built their lives here on superstitions.
As for me though, maybe the extra cross in my name sent me a different direction.
My team and I are Blessers, but we deal with the physical. And right now, we just stepped off a service lift, judging by the cracks that run along the lifted concrete. We’re here to make sure the guests from neighbouring planets have a safe place to luxuriate in.
As we walk towards the main building, brushing off the dust from our cloaks to look presentable, I notice the address — 653 — and I jolt from a not-so-distant memory. We used to live here, not far away, before the planet was shaken by quakes and reclaimed by red dust in the winds, and we became a people of tents.
The buildings that still stand became uninhabited, as we moved away and ahead of the worst winds, and somehow, they became the playground of the inter-planetary rich.
I’m glad, because that meant my family had an income. Blessers are blessed with gifts in exchange for their time and skills. We had more food and drink and cloth when there was a baby, but the main everyday edibles and needs were my reponsibility.
The doors to the main building admit us in, and as much as I’ve been up these places often, I’m still stuck by awe.
Green trees, deep waterfall pools, chilled clean air to breathe. There’s gentle music in the air as people lounge about, laughing the way only the rich and relaxed know how.
We get a few curious glances our way, but when they see our simple cloaks, they turn away. Just a few servicepeople. And not the kind that will bring them drinks or food.
I’m envious of the way food comes to them so easily, but I don’t mind the anonymity.
We spread out, each one of us with our tasks, and check grooves, ceilings, beside the pools. There’s as much note-taking as there are blessings to mutter, to keep the buildings intact. We don’t use actual material or tools, and it’s not like the hairline cracks immediately seal before our eyes as we say the blessings. But the next time we come, any place that was overlooked looks worse than before, and any place that was covered looks… healed.
It’s the reason why this building, with all the cracks in the foundation, still stands, still holds water, still contains so many languishing guests. They look out to our red world with either superiority or curiousity, and then go back to their planets of blue and green, or so I’ve heard.
I don’t much care for colours, but whoever thought of trees and waterfall pools is a genius.
8:23 am, and I’m starting to get sleepy…
Perhaps it’s best I get back into bed… I no longer remember the dream I had that woke–ah, I do.
Okay, write and release.
It was a fire. A car that caught fire. Me running in to help, tossing a burning cannister far away, as I tugged at the release straps, my friend’s wife in the car they shouldn’t have taken for a drive, because it wasn’t yet ready to be released.
I get his wife out of the car, and I hear the ruckus of the media — we were famous, my friend, his wife, me, my wife. I realise I’m a guy. And I also realise that the cannister that I flung away had exploded, releasing a red heart-shaped cloud into the air, as it also took away my wife.
I had saved his wife, only to have killed my own.
She had probably seen the cannister, and moved towards it to try and remove it, or extinguish the flames. She was the only one within range. The only one killed. Trying to save others.
I woke up then, unable to regulate, knowing it was a dream but the confusion and the freeze from the emotions are real.
That’s what brought me here, to type.
Plus the earlier dream, from a day or two ago.
I really am tired now.
Can I sleep?
🩷🌧️🌷
