The dream was constant. It was never ending, never changing. And in our dreaming, another day was dawning. The glow on the eastern horizon chased away the last of the stars as the sun rose over the dark world below. The light pooled, brightening slowly from dark purple to a golden yellow, before it finally rushed out, spilling across the land.
In the dream, we soared with the light as it tinted the leaves of the massive and ancient trees in the many forests that covered the continent. We were with the light as it hit the mountains, painting their snow-frosted peaks with reds and golds. When the light hit the broad grasslands, we ran with it as it sped and played and glittered in the occasional lake or river that dotted the countryside.
At certain points on the terrain, some of our dreaming minds would linger. Memories tried to surface, tugging at us from the dim past. But the land below was unbroken, the scars long since healed and the damage forgotten, and those temporarily caught would move on.
We dreamed of the rivers, ever flowing towards the sea. The rivers would dance along the land, sometimes alone, sometimes joining together, other times breaking apart again until they finally spilled themselves into the vast and dark sea.
We dreamed of the ocean, and of the myriad life contained therein. Fish, crustaceans, invertebrates, all manner of life striving, competing and thriving. Our minds would sink to the deepest depths, where in the dark the largest of the leviathans soared like floating submarine islands, enormous mouths gaping wide as they drew in food of all types. As they drifted on the currents, they were accompanied by schools of smaller animals which scavenged from their leavings. The leviathans roamed the sea and countless lives roamed with them.
We dreamed of the land, teeming with life of its own. Flowers abounded amongst the grasslands, growing with wild enthusiasm in reds and greens, blues and yellows. They were attended to and fed upon by insects of all descriptions. The reptiles that made up nearly all of the animal life fed on plants and insects alike, and sometimes upon each other, as well. These reptiles on the land came in almost as many varieties as the fish in the sea. Large and small, some slow and plodding, others quick and fast.
Of these reptiles, the most active and beautiful were the flyers. They streaked through the sky in all colors of the rainbow, flying on shining wings while surveying the land below them with eyes that gleamed like precious gemstones. They soared above it all, taking in the occasional insect for sustenance and resting in the branches of the trees, safe from the larger predators below. And, every day as the daylight began to wane, the flyers would settle into the forests as the last light faded, draw the air into their lungs, and sing the sun to sleep.
The song came from millions of throats all at once, starting as a low hum that swept from east to west as the light faded, drowning out all other sound. As the sun set, some of the flyers would get carried away, trilling or crooning with joy that introduced motion into the song, a melody that would soar and leap, dance and spin. But always, always, they would return to that same simple harmony that echoed across the entire world.
And then, as the darkness took hold, the singing would fade, leaving behind it a peaceful calm to welcome back the stars as they reappeared in the night sky. Along with the stars came the moons, three of them, the smallest two a matched set of light blue and the largest a ghostly pale white that would sometimes eclipse one or both its smaller sisters. Sometimes, when the relative position of the sun was correct, no moons at all would be seen in the night sky, leaving the stars to light the land below on their own.
And as we dreamed, life went on like this, years upon years uncounted. If anything ever changed, it was in a small, inconsequential way that made no difference in the larger scheme of things. Life simply went on as it always had; a perfect rhythm, an unchanging dance. Nothing happened that wasn’t how it should be, how it had always been, and therefore the days passed by unnoticed as we slumbered.
And then, on a day that had started like any other, on a small hill that was in no way different than any other hill found on the land, the air shimmered. A sound, like a tuning fork being struck, echoed through the nearby stand of trees, stilling the song of the flyers and bathing the area in silence.
In the shimmering air, a window resolved itself. The sights and sounds from the other side of that window were completely alien to the world, all hard angles and gleaming metal. A short while later, various black and whirring things came flying into the world, the harsh sounds of their passing startling the local reptiles into flight, the harmony of their song broken and scattered.
Following the flying devices came one that trundled along on treads that smashed the flowers and tore at the grasses below. The flying devices immediately began spreading out, while the land-based one simply stopped, lights blinking and servos whirring as it angled the panels on top of it to catch the last dying rays of the sun.
This was something different. This was something unexpected. This was not as it always had been. And it most definitely did not go unnoticed. The Dreamers began to grow restless.
I stirred in my slumber and slowly began to wake.