looks

The Bringer of Dreams

The Bringer of Dreams is an artist. She’s old, as old as humanity itself, but she doesn’t look it. Not always, at least. She changes bodies as the whim takes her. Sometimes she’s a little girl with red curls and freckles. Sometimes she’s a teenager dressed all in black, hair a mass of spikes and metal rings through every bit of skin that can hold them. Sometimes she’s a soft-faced woman, dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, hands rough but kind. Sometimes she’s an old, old woman, wrapped in shawls, knobbly cane at her side and eyes tired with the hurt she’s seen and the wisdom she’s acquired.

The Bringer of Dreams lives outside of time. Her home varies as her bodies do, changing from mansion to cottage to trendy apartment to wooden cabin to an abandoned squat full of dust. She feels comfortable whatever her home looks like – comfortable in her skin, in her surroundings, in her art.

Her media vary just as much, because all humans dream a little differently. There are times when she’ll paint pictures in oil, making the details perfect and the shades magical. At others, she’ll work in crayon, roughly sketching in shapes and rubbing the colors to look blurry and unclear. Sometimes she’ll snap photos, or film something, making the most life-like dreams imaginable and sending them off.

She does this over and over again. For each human, a few dreams a night. Every night. For all eternity. But she lives outside time, and her impetuous, playful nature means she never gets bored – or if she does, she’ll just change everything around her, and start anew with something else.

The Bringer of Dreams is an artist, and she’ll always be there, sending us dreams, night after night, year after year, age upon age.

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The Businessman

The Businessman sat at the same restaurant every day during his lunch break. Every day was the same for The Businessman, and one of his few joys was ordering a different thing for lunch every day. He would take the specials each day, and if the specials contained something he absolutely hated or was allergic to, he would take one his favorite regular dishes. In this way, he managed to keep the favorites special, and he never got sick of them.

The Businessman had the same routine at the restaurant every day. First, he would find a table outside. Rain or shine, he had to sit outside. If there were no tables available, which happened sometimes during tourist season, he would wait. The waiters, the servers, even the manager knew him, and they always managed to find him a seat quickly. Once he found a suitable table, he would sit down and reach into his bag. He had a worn black leather briefcase, one that looked dignified but not stuffy and too new. He would take three things out of his bag at first.

The first was a bag of tobacco. The second was a box of rolling papers. The third was a lighter. Until the waiters came over – and indeed, the waiters knew not to come over until this ritual was over or they would need to deal with a very flustered man – he would meticulously roll himself three cigarettes. He would smoke one before the meal, the second after the meal, and the third after his post-meal coffee. He felt that rolling his own cigarettes was the one roguish behavior that he’d kept from his college days when he’d been wild and carefree.

The Businessman considered himself to be rather homely. He didn’t think he had particularly interesting features, and he knew that he blended in with the endless flow of suited men in their late forties. He didn’t realize that his eyes were a beautiful and rare light blue. He didn’t seem to notice the fact that he cut a fine figure. He wasn’t entirely aware of the fact that his face, lined as it was, was full of character and intelligence. He only saw himself as The Businessman, a man who knew and understood his trade but couldn’t explain what he did to others very well. Because of this, he was convinced that he was boring.

The Businessman ordered a different thing every day at the restaurant. He hoped that one day he would take a last meal there, shake the waiters’ and the servers’ and the manager’s hands goodbye, and turn his back. He hoped he would have the opportunity and the courage to go somewhere different one day and leave the business district forever. He hoped.