Brightly Shining Stars

Truth be told, I've been feeling a bit under the weather of late. Despite idle speculation that it's Coronavirus, my symptoms are mild enough that they wouldn't warrant testing anyway, so I mostly just stay home, occasionally feeling a bit feverish, but despite often elevated temperatures, they rarely venture even into the low-grade fever range—if my not-very-consistent thermometer can be trusted, that is. And of those they do test, it seems only a small percentage test positive, so chances are this is something else anyway. Cabin fever perhaps, from being cooped up too much.

This afternoon we had a heavy thunderstorm. The power's still out, most notably announced by my neighbor's generator's constant puttering hum, like a muted jackhammer. Or perhaps that's ours. My spouse mentioned our housemates borrowing one to keep the fridge running. Not that it matters whose it is; may even be both blending together. I'm not certain if the power has been out so long because the utility company is less responsive due to the virus or overburdened after the storm.

We ordered pizza for dinner because nothing works in the kitchen without power. Then I headed up to my room and fell asleep. After dinner seemed like a good time to do that, and I didn't sleep well last night, so I did need my rest. I awoke to my spouse grumbling about me falling asleep fully dressed.

I'm not feeling particularly in-the-mood, and even less so with the grumbling, but I remedy the situation and decide I can probably arose myself enough to appease my spouse, Aunt Flo having recently left after breaking quarantine. Not that that generally stops us. My brother once told me that women are 25% happier if they get sex during their period; I answered that it does generally last one week in four. Still, it's much more pleasant not to have to worry about a bloody mess afterward.

Rebuffed by my spouse, though, who wasn't actually ready yet and generally prefers to take the initiative despite complaints to the contrary, I roll back to my side and fall back asleep. I did just wake up after all.

I'm not really sure how long before my spouse's attention returns to me, or how awake I am as I'm teased to sufficient arousal for my spouse to join with me, but I do wake more at the appropriate time for my own release, and my spouse seems also to be content as well; we roll onto our sides, spoon, and I'm falling asleep again...

There's some sort of long shiny fruit, almost like soft, animated, joined sticks. Egitee or ekigey, it seems to be called; the name came phonetically, though, and I'm not sure what it was exactly or how one would spell it.

At first they seemed to fold in on themselves, but now I find they stretch perhaps my full length, and seem more like a spider's legs. Like a human-sized daddy-long-legs, but animated as if it were a Pokémon (I guess I've been playing too much Pokémon Go if I'm inventing new Pokémon in my sleep; about now I'm realizing that this is probably a dream, but I guess I slip back into dreaming), which would make its body about the size of a tomato, and yes, there it is, except the whole thing seems to be a dull shade of neon green.

I wonder what this fruit is like, and pluck the body from the legs and eat it, but I must not be too interested (I've heard it's a symptom, but haven't experienced a loss of taste while awake, so this probably isn't the virus' fault), because although I'm certain bit into it, I experience neither texture nor flavor, but instead recall a different dream I had long ago:

The spider's legs form a star. In the other dream, the meter "[this/that/etc.] star which shines so brightly..." repeates frequently in different contexts, often space contexts, but typically expressions of hope or love.

Like the scene from a Star Trek movie where Spock goes into the reactor to save the ship and Kirk at the cost of his own life, the reactor being the star shining brightly in that context from about the middle of the dream, the self-sacrifice also shining quite brightly.

Another scene from that dream was a sort of space construction site, out on a steel beam that protrudes out into a star-speckled vastness, where perhaps the star that shone so brightly was the flare of a welding torch, but now, talking to my beloved the star which shines so brightly is the gem in a wedding band and wording in the proposal.

There were other contexts, too; I wrote what I could remember in a notebook when I awoke, the beat of the dream's poetry still heavy in my brain, but a lot of the sequence and detail lost, and I don't generally have them available to consult. Years later, and perhaps a year ago, I attempted to put together a more polished version; it also seemed to fall short of the dream in duration and detail, but ended with our children being the brightly shining stars.

I realize my spouse is still awake, so I must have woken up again. Still staring at the phone is more like it, a counterproductive activity when it comes to falling asleep. My hands explore skin and find evidence of our earlier activities, which rouses me sufficiently to take the initiative this time.

Our intimacy is habitually quite quiet, but we have discussed some aspects over the years, so I know that while a second round on occasion can be fun, there is less chance of and no real need for actually achieving climax. Still, it's fun, and lasts long enough that my spouse opens a window to help alleviate the heat.

Now my spouse is asleep, which is good because of work in the morning, but I have so much that keeps looping in my brain that I need to write at least some of it down to ease this circle of thoughts, capture some of that dream logic.