The Meadow: Following Night

My desire to return to the Meadow was intense.  I was excited.  Here was my happy place, carved out for me and myself alone, by my mind's own architecture.  I could go here and finally get some sleep before 0200.

I'd been wrestling against sleep for the past three or four months, ever since I was deployed.  I can't figure out why, except for maybe a night, my mind is still ablaze with desires, inventions, burning stories, a need to socialize, and simply a lack of desire to sleep.  Sleep came easily when I bade it most nights, but most nights I fought it with caffeine after 2200, chatting with the night shift, and episode after episode of TV shows on a hard drive.

As I settled down into my mind, into the lazy stream of the Meadow, I opened one eye and saw not the happy sun, but stars and a quiet, yet bright full moon.  Try as I might, the sun would not come out to greet me.  I realized only then that the sun had been bright on my face in my last visit to the Meadow because my rack light was on, pouring lumens of synthetic light directly into my eyes.  I shrug and decide the moon and stars are fine, I'm trying to sleep anyway.

The sky is charcoal and pristine, like the sky on a clear night out to sea.  With no light (or toxic) pollution over my meadow, I need no flashlight or lamp to get around.  I step out of the lukewarm water, sparkling in the moonlight, and tramp up to the Great Oak.  Looking about, I see that everything against the bright sky is a dark, velvety black.  I grin.  I flop down onto my back in the grass and close my eyes in the dark.  I smile, feeling a humid, lukewarm breeze caress my wet body, but feel no need to be dry any time soon.

My calm is interrupted by a presence.  There's someone cuddled up next to me.  Fully expecting to see my wife, I smile and look down.  This isn't my wife, I think to myself as my pupils dilate, my brow furrowing, confusion building up inside my chest as the figure turns its large eyes to me, batting its eyelashes sleepily.  No, this woman, for it is a woman after all, cuddled next to me is Ramona, who is most definitely Not My Wife.