The World Where There Is Not

The raindrops thudded against my window like a thousand little fists pounding the walls around me. I preferred to focus on that sound instead of Mom and Dad fighting. They were yelling about something again. They were talking too fast, their voices too muffled, for me to understand what they were saying. The sound was so loud, but it drowned out the rest of it. Eventually, I fell asleep. In my dreams, I saw a world before me. There was sky, and there was grass that stretched off into the horizon. And there was a dinosaur. It was a brachiosaurus, covered in glimmering green scales. It was three times as tall as an elephant, and it wandered this endless horizon, making long, low sounds as it walked the expanses. I looked next to it. There was a baby, presumably following its parent around. I followed them around as my mind began unraveling all of the information I knew about brachiosauruses. They were herbivores, eating both bushes on the ground and leaves in the trees. They were slow, but they were hard for a predator to take down. No predator was interested in fighting something three times its size. As I thought about these things, the world filled up in a small radius around it. I woke up in the morning, thinking about what a beautiful dream I’d had. Though, I was only a little kid at the time. I didn’t have the words to explain the majesty of it. My parents smiled at me when I said I’d had a dream about dinosaurs. Whenever the rain fell, or if I heard yelling coming from below, I dreamed about dinosaurs. And as my world grew, I dreamed about more. I still loved dinosaurs, but I steered my dreams towards the words they inhabited. Grand rivers that fell into even grander waterfalls. Mesas and plateaus that seemed to touch the sky. Endless planes of savannah grass, and the twisted trees that grew from the earth below. It was all so real to me. I could feel the mist of the waterfall on my face. I could feel the blowing sand whipping against my skin. Every time I woke up, I was back in the real world. I’d go to school, I’d go to piano. But they were fighting more, even when I was doing my homework. If they started fighting, one would say, “Let’s go to another room, so we don’t disturb him,” and they’d go to another room and start fighting again. “Why do you fight?” I asked Dad. “It makes me want to go away.” “Well, that’s why we go to another room,” Dad said. “So we don’t bother you.” “It doesn’t help,” I said. “Next time you fight, I’m going to go outside where I can’t hear you.” “Don’t do that. It’s unsafe.” I understood. So I didn’t do it. Whenever the rain fell, or if I heard yelling coming from below, I dreamed about the world and its dinosaurs. Every time, I woke up in the morning. And whenever it rained, or if my parents fought, I continued to dream. Thousands of different types of grasses, the kinds I ran my hands through at recess. Smaller fauna, like shrews and toads, I found on the side of the road. And the people that lived within those worlds. I had dreams of different peoples, different cultures, living within mountain caves and the branches of giant trees. Sometimes they had moth ears and branches poking out of their heads. And they were all so friendly. They carried baskets of fruit and talked with each other, though I could barely understand their language. And, of course, dinosaurs. The people of my world didn’t mingle with them. They lived far away from the dinosaurs, who themselves lived peaceful lives. Unless they hunted for food, but even that was fun to watch, like a documentary on TV. I had friends who listened so intently to my words about the world I created. I checked out geography and anthropology books from the library, desiring to expand my world. Strife didn’t suit me. I just wanted things to be peaceful. Even my friends at school knew me as the mediator, who tried to prevent fights. If I was stressed, I’d just regress into my world of dinosaurs and people for a bit, and come back stronger. Mom and Dad never stopped fighting. I could understand now that it was about both of them going behind each others’ backs to do things that harmed the other. Neither of them stopped doing it, no matter what the other said. And that was the cause of every little fight. I knew that in some ways, issues ran through bloodlines. If that was what I was made of, I didn’t want it. I just wanted a peaceful world without the problems that would cause me to fight with people. The rain was especially strong on the eve of my eighteenth birthday. And my parents were fighting again. I couldn’t understand them, but it had to do with one of them misappropriating funds for whatever my present was supposed to be. And so I drifted off to sleep, to the sound of the rain. How long and vivid this dream was. I followed a group of nomads as they climbed up a towering mountain, seemingly made of salt. I followed them, wrapped in woven cloth, as they climbed to the apex of the world. Below, I saw the fields of green and the dinosaurs that wandered them. I saw the peoples, and I saw the cities and landmarks they lived in. I saw the plants and the animals, the sun and the clouds. I followed their journey. And then I followed the journeys of many more people, listening to their words that I couldn’t understand. How long have I been asleep? I haven’t found my way back to the real world yet. Are Mom and Dad begging me to wake up, or are they still fighting? It’s okay. The world is peaceful here.