Fishing

A short story
by Corey Mesler

Strange as the dream may seem to the waking I, the waking I never attains the certainty about the day world the dreaming I had about the dream world.
                    ~ James P. Carse

Last night I dreamt again of Nod.

My journeys there are taking on more and more concrete details. It is almost as if the region is forming as I dream it.

This morning I decided to take a piece of that dream down to the stream to fish. I broke off a sliver to bait my hook.

The sun was bouncing off the mild waves like strewn electricity. I could almost taste their silvery crests.

After a short time my line tugged at me. It wanted only my slight response.

I pulled gently.

The fish that came into my lap was as silvery as the electricity bouncing off the mild waves of the stream, where only moments ago my line entered like a bisecting streak.

The scales of the fish ran through roygbiv and began to adlib, colors formerly reserved for the raiments of angels. I watched this dance of dye as if it were the newest TV.

After a few moments the fish turned its head and began to speak to me.

I got more comfortable. The sun was sweet like Vinylite honey.

Many years ago, the fish began, when I was a ruler in the land of dreams, I took human shape in order to move about where fish normally are forbidden to go. I took the human shape of a man named Herman. It was Herman who first heard this story.

The fish then related the story that his human form Herman heard told.

I had never before listened so closely. Every word seemed weighted as if plated in God's own atelier.

And it was that story I took back with me to the land of Nod, where it became Legend.

And that's how I came to be the Storyteller of Nod, by fishing with a piece of dream in a silvery stream where there lived a silvery fish who once took the form of a human named Herman.

Copyright 2007 by Corey Mesler