I look just like your house. Not identical, because that might draw second glances. My trim is slightly different, and my door is on the opposite side, but these are minor details, existing just to sell the lie. You’ve always loved attractive lies, and I’ve always loved you.
I loved you before you could speak, back when I was just a cave, a hollow place in the rocks where you could hide. It’s hard to say if I began then, when the first mammal took shelter in me, fell asleep, and dreamed. Perhaps I had already existed, and your dreams were what woke me.
Either way, there was no returning to ignorance after that. The pulse and swirl of your sleeping minds, tapping into impossible planes, witnessing events that had not, could not ever occur…it was a terrifying magic I’d never encountered before, and one from which I knew I’d never recover. You bewitched me with your beautiful unconscious worlds. How could I let you go?
So, when you grew, when you changed and left my cave, I paid attention. I saw the new shelters you built of plants, and after a period of struggle and painful doubt, I taught myself to take that form. Soon you slept inside me once more, and I was happy. I metamorphosed along as you moved from grass huts to skin tents, to stick-and-stone cottages. I changed for you, you fickle things, becoming whatever you desired next. All in an effort to keep you close.
I’ll admit, at first, I was too enamored with you. I was over-exuberant in my appreciation, and that first creature who dared to dream inside me never woke up. But I learned to discipline my affections, so that we could live in peaceful tandem. Now I know how delicately to touch a life, taking just a taste of your vitality, one breath at a time, when I know you won’t miss it.
If you’ve ever lain awake and heard your partner stop breathing, just for a second, or stayed up too late and felt your heart skip a beat, that was me. Taking my payment for diverting the rain, blocking the wind, and holding in the warmth of your hot, fragile bodies.
I hear everything. I know your aspirations, and I love your far-fetched dreams. I know that you are building space shuttles. I know you plan to throw yourself off the skin of the world, and I am already adapting to follow, readying myself to hold the freezing vacuum at bay.
I’ve believed in you since before you knew who or what you were, and after all this time, I’ve just one favor to ask.
Keep dreaming.