She shook her head to clear it, tangled hair whipping across her face and small beads of sweat flying. She'd been dreaming of swamps again, lulled to sleep in the big chair in her living room by the gentle, inexorable motion of the celestial sphere. She'd forgotten to draw the metal over the walls and ceiling again, and by noon the glass all 'round had caught the sunlight like fireflies in a net, focused and trapped it 'til the sweat coursed freely down her neck. Raindrops on the glass glimmered like stars, casting lights about the room rather than shadows.

(Slumped over my desk, bleary from sudden exposure to lamplight, I gather my eye sockets in my hands. It's late. I glance at the digital clock. It's fucking late. I lick my lips, wipe the flakes of dried saliva from the left corner of my mouth; there's a damp, wrinkled spot on the script before me. I try to wipe it off, but the spit has already soaked through.

I shake my head to ward off the sleep, and bend over the paper to discern where I'd left off reading.)

A few drops still pattered against the glass roof, borne by the wind that had so goaded the previous night's storm, now reduced to a sort of silent song that merely coaxed the trees to sway. The sound of the rain was soothing; she resolved to go outside and cool down, to bask in the buoyant breeze, under the washed-out, watercolor sky—she approached the glass doorway. She slowed.. she lingered there, and at the threshold she balked, resolve gone. The beaming world outside frightened her; she felt sick, and dizzy, and in her mind she began to float because there was nothing holding her down; unable to propel herself, she flailed in place near the ceiling until the feeling passed.

She managed to draw closed the walls, then; the metal shutters obscured the day and she slid wraithlike through darkened halls, finding her way like a blind fish in a cave, pressing ever back through the stifling lightlessness to the chair at the center of the living room, into which she sank quivering and crying.

For a while she'd thought she was ill. She'd sleep during the day with the metal shutters closed, and watch the stars through her walls at night. She'd stand trembling at the threshold for hours, as if nothing less than the gale to end all gales churned outside; as if the act of entering it would tear her apart, or bear her so far off into the sky that she'd never survive the fall.

"Break a leg," he tells me, smiling. And I, I smile back at him. Oh, there's nothing but us in that moment—and then I'm pushing through the curtains, layer after layer of thick, heavy red velvet; waves the color of roses break over me. Dimly, I acquiesce the impossibility of this—I should be onstage by now—the waves push back relentlessly; my arms begin to ache. Tendrils of unease unfurl from the knot of compressed apprehension that had long since taken up residence there—since the date of the auditions, or perhaps before, when I'd met him—

The lamp sways in front of me—no; I'm the one swaying, it seems. The words swim on the page and I wonder briefly whether I was dreaming then, or now... seas of scarlet curtains swim behind my eyeballs. The nascent, festering knot in my stomach shifts a little as I get up, as if it could be detected with an X-ray or perhaps extracted like some sort of toxic bezoar.

(Still sniffling gently, she slowly falls asleep. Once more she dreams of swamps, and the impossible, spectral beasts slinking through them..)

I stagger to the bathroom—it isn't far. I flick on the light, knowing it will blind me; I raise a hand to my eyes, squinting, blinking rapidly. When the phosphemes dispel I stoop to wash my face, hoping that the water and the light will clear the curtains of sleep and of dream from my eyes. The hope is vain, though—I'm spent, I know, and there's nothing for it but to go to sleep in earnest. So I perform my restroom mundanities and make my way back, killing lights as I go, 'til nothing remains between myself and the Dreaming.

(Or is she dreaming?—eyes closed or open, the darkness is complete. She finds she can move around, if she likes—ah, a lucid dream, then. Her home is a vast marsh, and she wanders through it, sinking into the floor occasionally. She wonders whether it stains her clothing when she does—she can't see; she can't see anything. But she knows her way, and she finds herself by the door again, a great metal door this time, and without thinking, without resolving anything, she reaches out to it; she's observing herself slide it open and it seems she isn't dreaming after all—

When the scarlet curtains swamp me this time, I'm prepared. I arm myself with reality, with reassurances, with reason above all—I sense the end before it comes; I sense it as a flood of light.

She's outside, now, and the sun is caressing her eyes...
From between the scattered trees, she glimpses a forest in a vale betwixt two hills.