"why the long face?"

I watched the clock ticking in the kitchen. I sat at the table from a 3 hour battle with sleep. The monotonous droning of the clock telling me that I'm wasting it's precious time. It watched me with it's eyeless, lipless face. 5:01 it read. I couldn't sleep as usual. Too early to get up and too late to try to go back to sleep. Far too many things plagued my mind. Lies, disease, cruelty, Deirdre. With my "coming back" she was mentally plagued. Of course, I was and to this day am no better. But because her dreams had told of my "death" and other perturbing phenomena, she was seeing a counselor regularly and I felt at fault. Spring had dismembered us like glacier and by summer we were frozen stone breaking off and flowing in different directions. Soul mate friends, yes, still close sisters, of course. but changed as well.
September had just hit and early this morning, a chill set in. I wrapped my warm grey sweater about my nightdressed, thin shoulders. 2 months since they'd told me I had leukemia. 2 months since I'd refused to believe it. Now the reality, medication, and weakness was setting in. My hair hadn't started thinning out yet. I walked out to the willow tree and lay beneath it, seeing the bright holes in the sky called stars through the willow branches fade away making room for their father the sun. Wondering if stars fell ill. Wondering if they sang, if they talked and dreamed. If they loved. My harp had been dismembered. I plucked a string far too hard and it coiled up in a most disturbing manner, like a shriveled appendage. I almost cried when I saw it, for these days it didn't take very much at all to set me off. I lay beneath the tree feeling the exhaustion set in. Which also didn't take very much. My eyelids drooped within a half hour of being there. I fell asleep and found myself on a grassy knoll. a young girl with a long white tunic and beautiful white hair and soft rose colored lips was kneeling down. Her eyes were the same sea green, sea blue as Deirdre's. She was young but with white hair. In front of her was a white glove, wire and glue. She had pliers in her hands working together these things. Stuffing it with sawdust & diamonds, she put them all together and into the likeness of a bird, her fingers nimble and careful. A dove.  Looking almost like a kite. in her sleeve, she reached her hand and drew out what looked to be string. She tied it to the dove and ran down the knoll and with being a few feet in the air, seemed to come alive! The bird flew down to the girl and perched in the palm of the little one's hands. She kissed its chest and sent it off. I ran after and followed and before me a barbarian man, decked out in armor and weaponry had caught the bird in a metal and glass cage. He took it to a great  and terrifying dark tower of a castle. Up thousands of stairs, the bird so terrified, blood dripped from the tip of it's perfect, white wings. The man took it to a room, pinning it down to a stone table and took a small dagger, examining it between his fingertips. His eyes black as night and none but evil lurked his heart. He walked over to the dove, who frantically tried to escape but to no avail. His eyes and hands took the dagger and cleft it through the bird's center. Blood poured from the beautiful beast and I covered my mouth with my hands. It was all I could do to keep from crying and making a scene. It fell limp, and he placed it into a tank where a giant python lay, curling through and through itself in its sleep menacingly. The man left and I hurried to the cage, and drew out the darling bird. When at the tip of the tank, the python latched it's large fangs in my hand. I refrained from crying out, though everything on my person pulsed a shriek. I punched its eyes and snout and pulled its tongue to the point of unbearable and it let go. I found myself with wings and flew out the window, the bird in my grey sweater, now soaked bloody. I took it to the bank of a stream near a waterfall I saw from overhead and knelt down placing it before me. I watched it. Lifeless, red, beautiful. Tears welled up in my eyes and I covered my face and cried. I cried for the dead beautiful bird in front of me. I cried for thousands of orphans. I cried for hungry and homeless. I cried for myself. I buried the thing and left to swim in the stream, cool and refreshing. Then a strange bubbling occurred not ebbing from the waterfall. Then, in splendor and light, a figure rose from the waters and stared at me with blue eyes and translucent body for mere moments and then flew over to the spot where I buried the bird. The creature pulled the beautiful little beast up from its final resting place and it came in an orb of blue light. the creature blew on the bird and it metamorphosed to light, all wounds repaired. The creature then set it off to be free. The creature then burst into flame and it seemed the land had been given over to a hideous drought. Trees charred and cooked by the sun. No flowers. Dead grass. And carcasses of deceased creatures lie all around. Everywhere I turn. I hear screeching up above my head and a vulture is bombdiving straight at me

In a cold sweat, I jerk awake to the kisses of my dog Broderick, the alaskan husky who took to me like a mother. I scratch his ears and rise, walking back to the house, very perturbed by my vision. Broderick cocked his head at me and his eyes seemed to say "Why the long face?"
I knelt down and kissed his head and stroked his muzzle. "Because my wings are made of cardboard and old magazines. There's no glory in man-made material posing as the real thing"