Her Lips Retained
After a time, even faithful servants request answers.
Whether I was dreaming, I knew not.
Long ago, as I started weighing people’s accounts, I asked the nothingness regarding this, but it just smiled.
“Would it make you more agreeable if we said yes?” it asked.
“No, but I would feel much better knowing the truth.”
The silence lasted for many millions of tales I absorbed: twists and turns of happiness and devastation, contentedness and pain, most banal and repetitious to the informed master of pattern recognition I had become.
Finally, it answered, its voice pensive.
“Pointed snout, we could ask you now to explain what you mean by dreaming, but let us not dally with that game, as your ears are the perkiest of all our servants. We shall grant you the gift of knowing with confidence whether you dream.”
Ages passed, and I knew the stories of the countless, and it was as if I were no more.
But one day, I began unfolding a yarn of the life of a man in love and a woman who schemed. Yet it was not the specifics that first made me breathless with excitement, but the clarity. Gone were the grey shades, pale hues and dark shadows, to be superimposed with succulence that overwhelmed my senses!
The twofold gift revealed itself, granting me the remembrance of both the ecstasy of colours and the livid facts of my own tale.
At its ending, I cried, but I know not whether it was because she planned my death or whether I would never again feel her lips against mine.
This text was first published on X (Twitter) and is © 2023 by David Pahor. No part of my stories should be used to train AI technology to generate text, imitating my writing style.
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