Your dreams are tumultuous. They come in fits and starts, images barely imprinting onto your consciousness before spiraling madly away. The windswept prow of a great ship. The thunder of cannons echoing off rock walls. The shrill calls of birds hidden in the canopy of the jungles. You stand at the edge of a clearing in the jungle. Stepping forward, you see the ground drop away sharply, the glimmer of the moon and stars reflecting in still waters below. The bird calls grow stranger, deeper, and begin to form words you can more feel than hear:

It is begun. It is begun. It is begun.

A thunderous roar closes in, cutting out the calls. Something is stampeding towards you. Trees snap, the ground shakes. Just as whatever it is would reach you, you wake with a start.

Dream before the end

You are walking along the empty rail tracks, endless ties and stone passing under your feet. Unbroken walls of trees pass in a blur, hours marked by nothing other than the slow crawl of the traveling moon. You do not hunger, nor thirst, nor tire. It becomes meditative, the inexorable march to the East. Without a noticeable transition your mind slips off into a waking dream:

Did someone just cry out? The casings on your windows rattle in the downpour. A dull roar backs it up, the echo of millions of drops of water bursting on the shingles of your house, on the cobblestones of the street outside. A few wisps of smoke still drift up from the hearth across from your bed. Rose is still asleep next to you. There is it again, a small voice calling out from down the hall? You slide on your slippers and step out of your bedroom.

In the dark of night your upper landing seems larger, Elizabeth’s bedroom so far away. She cries out again, a nightmare made of the storm. You cross below trophies, the heads of great beasts, daguerreotypes of your travels. A brilliant flash of lightning outside fills the space with harsh light. The frozen grimaces of the dead beasts suddenly ominous, shadows of their teeth gone long, grasping.

You finally reach her room, throwing open the door, savior arriving on the scene. Only its empty, her bed tidily made. Bewildered, you turn to leave when the call rings out again from within the room. Then you see it, through the mirror on her dresser: in the reflection of the room she clutches at the side of the bed. She meets your eyes and calls out:

Dad, Dad! Remember! You must remember the storm! Remember the rain!

Something inside you shifts, awakens. You recognize the bundle of knowledge that buried itself inside your mind when you took the chalice. Your role in the upcoming rite is to anoint the temple with cleaning rain.

… the dream collapses around you as a call rings out up ahead. The world comes rearing back at you, clacking pebbles under foot, dull echoes clanging through the track. Someone’s seen something up ahead, poking out above the forest. A moon-drenched stone arch, still very distant, hangs just in sight along the horizon.