A Wish

It is an old, old tale that wishing on a shooting star will make your dreams come true. The tale does not include the star becoming bigger, brighter, until the whole sky is full of searing light, but that’s what happened, so I guess it must be part of it.

And that’s… it. When I wake up in the unfamiliar room, unfamiliar clean sheets, unfamiliar cream-coloured walls, that’s all the unfamiliar I remembers. The star, the wish, the burning sky full of promise.

This wasn’t meant to happen.

The unfamiliar voice speaks as the unfamiliar door opens and an unfamiliar person with unfamiliar food enters. Enough with the unfamiliars. You’ve made your point. They set the plate down before me, greeting me in a cheerful voice.

“Good morning, Espen, how do you feel today?”

They know me, by a name that is not my name.

Just answer. “Uh…” I shrug. “Not sure. Just woken up.”

“Well, as long as there’s no pressing issues, I’ll leave you to it.” They pat my hand and leave the room.

I rub my hand on the bedsheets until I can’t feel their touch any more. No pressing issues… hah.

But that’s the thing… there are none. The “pressing issues” column draws a complete and total blank. So does the “general issues,” the “distant issues,” the “miscellaneous issues.”

Just get on with it.

I eat. Dress. Wash my unfamiliar face and stare at it in the mirror, memorising the lines, the angles and curves, the depth of the eyes as if they look out from behind a mask.

This wasn’t what I wanted.

Safety. To be free from trouble. Is that not what I wished for?

I leave the room. There is a garden here, full of life and light. I run a foot through the long grass, watch it spring back. Touch a tiny budding flower with wonder.

As the days pass, the wish is proven true. I settle into contentment like a soft bed at the end of a long, hard day’s work. I start working in the garden, helping choose and plant the fruits that will grow in the autumn, the flowers that will grow in the spring. I help make the food for the evening meal, every new dish hung with the tapestry of comfortable familiarity. I watch my face change with the seasons, darkening under the summer sun.
Sometimes I lie on my back on the grass in the cool of the night and count the stars, stretching away endlessly before me. The depth of space, its endless secrets, fascinate me. The shooting star is but a distant memory, a flickering ghostly relic of the past. I live for the here and now, the taste of the fruits in the autumn, the piping of the fledgeling birds in the spring. My hands are brown with dirt and white with flour in turns.
Maybe this wasn’t what I wanted, the original wish. I don’t remember it now. But it feels like it’s close enough.