The Sun Shines Green

Long, blue grass swished in an oncoming breeze, creating a rippling wave effect that spread across the entire field. The sun peeked out from behind a cloud, bathing everything in a greenish light.

Ukiyo’s fingers twitched and hit a piece of cold glass. His palm curled around the spherical object and then he heaved himself up into a cross-legged position. He glanced down at the marble and the dandelion in the center of it. A small piece of the glass was chipped off and a petal stuck out.

He still felt like his mind was not a part of his body…no, that was not right. It wasn’t like what monks felt during meditation. He had his mind and body but his thoughts were jumping out of his head like gas molecules from a boiling liquid. He was thinking, but his mind was practically unconscious. His eyes were open and he had a full range of motion in all his body parts, but the feeling of dismemberment was unsettling.

Ukiyo stood up and raised his head towards the green sun. Is this what being colorblind feels like? Probably not, but this is so…beautiful, he thought.

He raised his hand, palm outstretched. What if I could touch the sun and place it inside a marble? It takes eight minutes for someone on Earth to realize the absence of the sun. Eight minutes and the world would be drenched in darkness. Eight minutes before gravity disappears and Earth flies off its orbit. Space-time would be strangely altered but no one would ever see it.

Colors flooded Ukiyo’s senses. The same colors he had seen before, but in a different context. Remarkable how context could change perception.

As another breeze kicked in, a sweet tinkling noise invaded Ukiyo’s ear canals. The leaves on the tree behind him were made of glass shards that knocked into each other and created a sound like dozens of wind chimes dancing in harmony.

Abruptly, Ukiyo grabbed a glass leaf and tugged it off. He winced in pain as the shard dug into his skin and drew blood. It stained the glass bright red. Ukiyo could see his pale face reflected back at him.

He slumped back onto the ground, exhausted. This dream was curious indeed, but it was dragging too long. He was all alone in a sea of blue grass, the rays of a green sun providing him with imaginary heat. He even felt pain in this dream.

As he waited for it to end, his thoughts strayed, thinking about school and the assignments he still had to turn in. He kept on getting the nagging feeling that in dreams you did not remember your real life. Is this all a fake life I’m remembering then? Maho was real. He was convinced of that. But if you were convinced of something in a dream then it still meant nothing about real life. Right now, Ukiyo was too tired to wrangle with his mind on this one. He felt like his brain had been turned inside out and flooded with pond water.

But he still remembered quite vividly what had supposedly happened before he fell asleep. In the world where the sun shone yellow and grass was green, Maho had led him to the top of a hill buried in snow. She had given him a memento mori. An eternal memory of summer.

Ukiyo held up his left hand and observed the marble he was still clutching. The single dandelion warmed him to his very core, something the green sun failed to do. He opened his right hand. There was the shard of glass bathed in his own blood. Somehow those two things felt more real than anything else.

Where was Maho now? When would he wake up again? The panic finally settled in and he felt like his head would split apart. Ukiyo stared straight into the face of the false sun. It offered no warmth or comfort. Nothing to tell him ‘it’s all okay’. His grip tightened around the marble and the shard of glass, teeth clenching.