Some dreams have teeth.  When you wake the marks show on your skin, the images burned behind waking eyes.

We are in a field, tending pigs, my husband, myself and a child (maybe our child). We are focussed on the animals, watching their behaviour, noticing how they interact.  It is a flow moment, we are captivated, enjoying the time outdoors, completely at ease with this time together.

I look up. It is a wide, prairie landscape. In the distance is a rambling, ranch-style house and behind it, on the horizon, incongruous against the clear blue sky, the black spinning column of a twister.

My heart begins to pound.  Time rushes back into the void and I urge them to pack up and head for the house, but they are slow, sleepy with the relaxation and calm.  I am urgent, shouting, calling instructions, dragging at hands and possessions, picnic blankets, bags.

When we arrive back at the house it is full of people, kids on the floor playing Lego, parents on sofas chatting.  It seems we are staying with friends.  The house is surrounded by a porch and all the windows are floor to ceiling, I can see the twister through the windows.  It’s a wooden house.   When the twister hits it will splinter, the glass and nails becoming deadly shrapnel. I start to yell instructions, to try and rouse people, but they are all engrossed in their own activities, the wind is screaming now and I can’t make my voice heard over its shrieking.  Slowly, like a nightmare (oh, wait) they begin to respond. Children whine because they want to take their toys, adults seem indifferent, they are sarcastic about my panic, as though it is unwarranted, chill Fi, seriously.  I get people to collect water, some food, essential supplies.  It seems there is a basement.

Gradually the room empties.  I am checking the window, monitoring the twister’s movements, I know it could miss us, I know it could vanish back into the sky, but it isn’t. It is moving forward, sinuously snaking, brushing up shrubs and small trees in its skirts.

The last person leaves, there is still enough time for me to get downstairs. Only there isn’t. The twister has somehow jumped, it is right by the house, I try to get myself to the stairs but I am paralysed, I try to drag myself forwards, to shout. Nothing.

Everything goes black.

Half awake and before coffee I am spilling this into my journal, my eyes blurred as they watch the images again, my pen racing across the page.  I want to know what this means, what it is here to tell me.  I have dreamed of twisters before.

In this instance there is something about being asleep.  About not listening.  About being too comfortable to see the risks and dangers.

And there’s a message about putting others first.  About expending all your energy at huge personal cost to make sure others are safe and happy, even when they are busy sleepwalking themselves towards oblivion.

I know what this speak of in my life and my patterns.  I know that I need to learn when to stop.  When I have given enough. When it is ok to get myself to safety.  Lessons.  Reflections.

I wonder too about the idea of creating safe space, of what my storm-shelter looks like in the waking world. Of how I can furnish it, of how I can set in place a warning system so I know when to go. How I will bring this into reality is the work.